Episode Name:   Biscuit Bazooka

Original Air Date:   January 23, 2003

Myths:  Airplane Toilet, Biscuit Bazooka, Leaping Lawyer

Myth:The Biscuit Bullet
 
A woman goes to the grocery store on a hot summer's day and buys some tinned biscuit dough. She places her grocery bags behind her on the back seat of her car, but before she can drive away she hears a BANG and feels something hit her in the back of the head. Believing that she's been shot, she waits for the paramedics to arrive while she holds her "brains" in. When the paramedics remove her hand they find she's holding a wad of biscuit dough to her scalp.
 
The Experts:
Elaine Viets, writer and reporter, tells the story that happened to "a friend of a friend of a friend". Dr. Frank Caporaso, Food Scientist, explains how the tinned biscuit dough explodes. The main leavening agent in the dough is baking soda, which combines with an acid produced in the dough when it gets warm. When the leavening agent and the acid combine they create carbon dioxide, which increases the pressure in the can causing it to violently explode.
 
Quotable Moments:

Adam "This is stupefyingly boring, but, things are blowing up in my car. What could be better?"

Adam "We should have done this in Vegas, then we could have said we went to Vegas and blew some dough!"
 
Action/Results: The boys use Adam's car for their experiment, using heat lamps to bring the temperature above 130 degrees Fahrenheit. They mount two different kinds of tinned dough, buttermilk and flaky, on board in the back seat of the car. Some tins are unrefrigerated (control group) and some are cold. Jamie bets that the smallest tin will explode first because it has the least amount of area, which it does at 58 minutes and 133 degrees. Regardless of brand name or formula, the rest of the tins explode with force individually. The boys declare that this myth is "entirely not only plausible, but possible".

Myth: The Vacuum Toilet

Two hours into a flight from Europe to America an obese woman has to use the restroom. She flushes the toilet while still sitting on it and the resulting suction prevented her from getting up. She is stuck until the plane lands and a team of firefighters is able to free her.

The Experts:
Mark Pondelick, a vacuum toilet engineer, says that the pressure in a vacuum toilet is 8 PSI at altitude and 3 PSI on the ground, roughly two times that of a shop vac.  He also states that this story broke in early 2001.

Wayne Dyer, Chief Inspector FAA Work Station, states that he never heard this myth, but if an object, such as a hairbrush, got stuck in the outlet valve while a plane was at altitude, a differential in pressure could occur. He also states that this would only occur at altitude.

Special Helper:
Kari Byron volunteers her dignity and her butt in the name of science.

Quotable Moments:

Adam: "Think of all the twinkies that go into the actual production of something like this."

Adam: "I’m not sure what we proved here, but at least it’s good television."

Action/Results: The first step in busting this myth resulted in a field trip to Interface Aviation Inc. in Hollister, Calif. There they get help in selecting the proper toilet to test this myth. There is a catch: The toilet costs $9,000 and in order to borrow it they make an agreement to not damage the toilet while testing the myth.  Next Adam decides that "hot melt vinyl" is the ideal synthetic butt material because it is fleshy and soft.  Jamie then scans Kari’s butt into a computer where it is enlarged and has "cottage cheese" added to simulate a 300-pound posterior. The hot melt vinyl is used to make a cast of the butt. Using a forklift and some weights the butt is weighted to 300 pounds and a scale is made to determine the force needed to lift the butt off of the toilet.

The test is simple, turn on the suction, place the butt on the toilet and then see how much force is required to remove the butt from the toilet. However, the butt won’t make a proper seal on the toilet and the solution is to raise the seat.  The butt still won’t seal because there is an air gap between the shroud and the toilet bowl.  It looks like the toilets were designed not to seal, so the shroud is removed.  The butt does indeed form a seal around the bowl and is distended 3 inches, however, the butt is easily removed. Adam isn’t convinced and volunteers his own butt to be tested. He then learned that there was fairly significant pressure and had some difficulty getting off the toilet.  Myth Busted.

Myth: Falling Lawyer

A lawyer giving a lecture on the 24th floor of a building decides to show off in front of a class and having some fun runs into the window, instead of bouncing off the window as he had in the past, this time the window breaks and the lawyer plummets to his death 24 floors below.

The Experts:
Heather Joseph-Witham, folklorist, helps explain this myth.

Bruce DeMara, reporter with the Toronto Star, helps explain this myth and confirms that a lawyer did fall out of a 24th story window and the coroner ruled the death a freak accident.

Pat Quinn, structural engineer, explains that glass is an unpredictable substance and glass in high-rise buildings is thicker than window glass in houses. He also explains that there is a stack effect in buildings caused by mechanical equipment moving air in and out of a building, and if the air going out isn’t the same amount of air coming in there will be pressure on the glass.

Action/Results: A standard 4-foot by 8-foot pane of glass ¾ inches is set into a wood frame to mimic they window in a high-rise building. The frame is sealed and a leaf blower is used to put a 1.47 PSI pressure differential on the glass plate.  A water barometer is used to measure the pressure differential.  A roller coaster-like track and sled is constructed to ram the lawyer into the glass plate. Surgical tubing is used to propel the lawyer.  The lawyer is constructed of eight 20-pound sand bags evenly distributed on a metal pole. Adam designs a scale to be placed along one side of the track and a side-mounted camera is then used to calculate the speed of the lawyer. The sled is then pulled back one yard and the lawyer is then allowed to hit the plate glass. After several attempts and increasing distances Jamie has an idea to redistribute the weight on the lawyer to make him more top-heavy. They also add a second piece of tubing to increase the speed of the lawyer. At a distance of three yards and a speed of 5.7 mph the glass plate shatters.  Jamie and Adam both agree that the speed and distance are reasonable.  Adam also wins a $5 bet from Jamie. Myth Confirmed.

-Biscuit Bullet written by Amanda

- Vacuum Toilet and Falling Lawyer written by ndgeoman