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Written by river95
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Sunday, 22 October 2006 |
Killer Cable Slice/Pottery Record
Original Air Date: October 11, 2006
Episode #62
Killer Cable Slice
The Myth: Can a cable under tension snap and cut a person in half?
The Expert:
Andy Bull (cable specialist) says that he has heard of the myth with rope more often than cable. He also gives Jamie a cable-cutting device that can be operated remotely.
Memorable/Quotable Moment:
Jamie: (on seeing more dead pigs in the back of the truck) You stop some traffic with this lot, or what?
Adam: (laughing) Yeah, I got a couple of looks, but I got looks like this – people driving by, they saw the pigs, then they looked in the cab, and they’re like, “Oh, it’s the Mythbusters guy”!
The Action/Results:
First, the guys decided to do a bench test, to figure out how to make the cable snap in the right place every time. Adam drew a grid so that they could enlarge the scale of the experiment precisely later on, and Jamie put some parachute cord under tension with some clamps. Then Adam cut the cord, and they filmed the results with the high-speed camera. The first test was simple to explain – the cord snapped right back toward the clamp that was still holding it. Now the problem became simpler – how to make it snap and hit something? The guys put a heavy metal piece in the way of the cord, and a bolt off to one side to stand in for a human. The cord snapped and wrapped all the way around the bolt. Perfect! It was just what they wanted. Now they could take this test up to full size.
Jamie got the cable-cutting device and the cable and the rope together, while Adam took care of getting the pigs. They put all the pieces of the experiment together at an abandoned military building. Then they attached two pieces of heavy chain to two pillars in the building, so that they would have sturdy anchor points for the cable or the rope. After that, they hung the pig from a hook in the ceiling, and welded a metal cylinder to the floor so that the cable or rope would snap and hit the pig in the same spot every time. The insurance company insisted on the safety of the crew by saying that the whole experiment had to be filmed remotely. Finally, everything was ready.
The rope could not be put under enough tension by the cable-tensioning device, so Adam used the boomlift to put the rope under more tension, after they first tensioned it by hand. When it reached 3000 pounds per square inch, Jamie pushed the button and the rope was cut. It snapped, and swung all the way around the pig. They decided that the pig needed to be move a little closer, and on the second test, the rope left a white mark on one side of the pig. Then they moved on to the cable.
First they used 3/8ths inch cable. It left a mark, and shot sparks off the barrel, but did not cut the pig in half. They moved up to 5/8ths inch cable, and it left a darker mark, but still did not cut the pig in half. They tried 5/8ths inch cable with a 3/16ths inch “whip” at the end, but, as Adam said, “No dice, no slice”. Finally, Adam looped the cable around the pig and hooked it to the boomlift. When he drove off, the pig was sliced in two. This myth is BUSTED!
Pottery Record (Archeoacoustics)
The Myth: Sounds can be recorded on old pottery, and then played back and understood.
The Experts:
“Thorny” (sound system expert) – believes it is possible, and shows the gang an old Edison voicewriter to prove his point.
Albert Benichou (sound mastering engineer) – helps the gang to test the pot with technologically advanced equipment
Memorable/Quotable Moment:
Tory (to Kari, after she screams his name at the top of her lungs): Now I know what it would be like to be married to you!
The Action/ Results:
After a visit to “Thorny” for some technical advice, Kari and Tory get busy making pots. Then they glue a piece of straw to a drum, so that it could scratch a line into the pot, like the stylus on the record player. They use the drum to catch the vibration of their voices and hopefully transfer it to the pot. Next, Grant says that there is another way this myth has been suggested – that straw was being used as a brush on a pot as it rotated on the potter’s wheel. So, they make a brush out of broom straws, and Kari yells at it. Tory mentions that recording artists sometimes use a shield of thin material so that they don’t get the wind from their voices on the recordings, and they make one out of pantyhose, and Kari yells a bit more.
Once the pots have dried, Grant makes a glass stylus to play the sounds. They can hear some vague whispering sounds on some of the pots, so they decide to delve deeper. They do find out that the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (an organization that Grant belongs to) did publish a paper about this topic in 1969. However, they also find DeNoise Studio, at which sound engineer Albert Benichou tries to help them to refine what they are hearing. He does everything that he can do, but the sound cannot be made understandable. As Albert says “Pas Possible” or, in English, BUSTED!
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Episode Descriptions 
