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Written by Laurenmacsporran
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Sunday, 28 May 2006 |
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Exploding Pants/The Great Gas Conspiracy Episode #53 Original Air Date: 5/17/06
Exploding Trousers
Episode 53
Original Air Date: May 17, 2006
The Myth: In 1930’s New Zealand, a sudden and deadly epidemic hit the country – farmer’s pants started exploding.
The Expert: Former FBI special agent Frank Doyle
Memorable/Quotable Moments:
Grant: “This is like the world’s most dangerous cooking show”
Tory: “Frank, why are you standing so far away?”
Frank: “’cause I want to continue to live”
Tory: “So then the next question is, why am I standing so close?”
Tory: “If it’s worth doing, it’s worth over-doing right?”
The Action/Results: In order to test the myth, Kari, Tory and Grant make up some potentially explosive concoctions out of typical chemicals found on farms at the time, starting with small-scale tests on 100% cotton overalls. The mixtures they test are a 1930’s fertilizer, black powder, gun cotton and an herbicide, and four different ways of ignition are tested on these mixtures: flame, friction, radiant heat and impact. When Kari soaks the overalls in the gun cotton mixture, the reaction is so strong that the overalls disintegrate and the jar breaks, suggesting that the gun cotton may be their answer to the myth of the exploding pants. However, in testing, the team discovers that the most reactive of all is the herbicide, which ignites quite violently in 3 out of the 4 tests. The most violent reaction from the herbicide resulted from impact. Even the team seemed surprised by the way it exploded! So decision made – Buster is going to wear the overalls saturated in herbicide for the full-scale tests. The FBI set up a remote triggering system that is similar to the impact test from the small-scale testing. When the trigger is set off, the pants ignite suddenly and burn very rapidly. There is some discussion between the team about whether or not it could be considered an explosion. Technically it wasn’t an explosion but the pants did burst into flames very suddenly, so they seem to agree in the end that if it had happened to them, they would have described it as their pants exploding.
MYTH CONFIRMED
In true Mythbusters style the team wanted to see a pair of pants properly explode so Frank Doyle coated the new overalls in a high-velocity explosive. After a couple of false starts, the trigger eventually worked and Buster was literally blown to pieces.
The Great Gas Conspiracy
The Myth: The automakers and the fuel suppliers are in collusion with each other to keep us dependent on expensive gasoline and inefficient cars. There are many devices that claim to cut fuel consumption but do any of them work?
The Experts: Adam and Jamie
Memorable/Quotable Moments:
Adam (to Jamie): “Do you actually have moods?”
Jamie: “No”
Adam: “I can’t believe it doesn’t work, I found it on the internet man!”
The Action/Results: Adam and Jamie get two cars for the experiment as some devices work on carburetted cars and some on fuel-injected cars. They create an exterior vessel to hold the gas which makes it easy to measure how much is being consumed, and the cars are placed on a dynamometer where the car can be tested while kept stationery. First they do some baseline tests to calculate the normal rate of miles per gallon for each car, and then they try out the first fuel-saving device – magnets placed as close as possible to the carburettor. The magnets supposedly align the fuel molecules in such a way that they burn more efficiently, but no-one seems to understand how or why. Needless to say, they do nothing to the gas consumption – BUSTED. The second device is acetone mixed with gasoline which is supposed to make the gas burn more completely. In fact it used the fuel up a little faster – BUSTED. The next device is a ‘miracle carburettor’ that is meant to increase mileage to 300mpg but again, it fails to live up to expectations – BUSTED. The final test is the hydrogen fuel cell that Adam and Grant made from instructions on the internet. It uses electrolysis to create hydrogen gas from water, which you can then supposedly run your car on. By some miracle, the car actually starts – but wait – it turns out that there was a small amount of residual fuel left in the engine. The second attempt to start the car yields no result much to Adam’s disappointment – BUSTED. The guys want to know if it’s actually possible to run a car with enough hydrogen, so Jamie pumps the gas from a cylinder straight into the carburettor. It works! Cue much giggling and excitement. They try again but this time the car backfires and sets the hydrogen on fire! Cue even more giggling, this time from shock rather than joy. In one last attempt to defeat the monopoly of fossil fuels, Adam and Jamie decide to try filtered used cooking oil and putting it straight into the tank. Surprisingly, the car works perfectly and the fuel efficiency was only 10% less than regular diesel fuel without them having to make any modifications to the car.
But since the cooking oil didn’t improve efficiency and may one day cost money to buy, the myth that car makers and fuel suppliers are in collusion to keep us dependent on expensive gas is BUSTED.
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Episode Descriptions 
