|
22,000 Foot Fall/Lights On or Off? |
|
|
|
|
Written by river95
|
|
Saturday, 06 January 2007 |
22,000 Foot Fall
Episode #69
Original Air Date: 12/13/06
The Myth: A World War II turret gunner fell out of his plane at an altitude of 22,000 feet. He was falling toward a French train station when a bomb blew up inside the station. According to the myth, the shock wave from the bomb saved the man by cushioning his fall.
The Experts:
Joe Pruzzo (Executive Director of the Castle Air Museum) says that he has heard of a similar myth, but not this one. He shows Adam and Jamie the turret of the aircraft from the myth and explains why the gunner would not have been wearing a parachute.
Frank Doyle (Retired FBI agent) helps out again on this myth, helping the guys to set up the 1000-pound bomb.
Memorable/Quotable Moments:
Jamie: (speaking about the French train station) It’s pretty, but it’s going to go away pretty soon.
Adam: Kari, Tory, and Grant actually have made one (a dummy) out of ballistics material, and his name is Ted, as in bus-TED.
Rob Lee: Or as in exploiTED, detonaTED, and annihilaTED.
The Action/Results:
Jamie and Adam first go to the Castle Air Museum where they find out that there is a very good reason why turret gunners did not wear parachutes – there wasn’t enough room! Then, they ask Kari and Tory to do the small scale “bench tests” for this myth, while they prepare for the full-scale test.
Kari and Tory test this myth in the small scale with a 15 pound lead weight and several car air bags. They put shock watch stickers on the lead weight to help determine how hard the ball is hitting the ground, and if the shockwave is cushioning the impact at all. After a bit of work, they manage to drop the lead weight just before they trigger the air bag to blow. The resulting explosion doesn’t seem to slow the lead weight down, but Kari and Adam both seem to think that there could be some detail that is not being replicated in the bench test, so they go ahead with the full-scale experiment.
The team sets up the experiment in Calaveras County. First, they set up the French train station, which is a metal and glass canopy. Then, they used helium balloons to lift Ted 500 feet above the train station, so that he would be dropping at his terminal velocity right before the bomb went off. The bomb was set up under the train station in the remnants of the Shrammer – recycled for use as a bomb casing. Then Murphy struck and everything that could go wrong did – the line that was holding the balloons and Ted yanked Adam off his feet, and some of the balloons broke, causing Jamie to say, “Murphy was in full force today!” So, they decided to try again.
Finally, everything was ready. Ted was flying 500 feet up, under a bunch of helium balloons. He was tethered to the train station. The bomb was packed and ready to go. Ted was released from the balloons and started falling towards the station. Then the bomb went off! Ted did not fall directly into the station – there was a glitch – but, in the end, the amount of chaos and destruction visited upon the train station decided the matter. Jamie, Adam, and Frank all declared this myth BUSTED.
Lights On or Off?
The Myth: Some people believe that it is actually more energy efficient to leave your lights on all the time, rather than shutting them off every time that you leave the room. The claim is that the amount of energy used on startup is actually more than that saved when you shut the light off. Kari relates this to their “little family” in which Jamie is apparently always flipping off light switches in order to save money.
The Expert: Mark Reisfelt (branch manager – Independent Electric Supply Inc.) says that it is better to turn the lights off.
Memorable/Quotable Moments:
Grant: The hot wire is 120 volts above ground. The hot wire is the one that’ll kill you, so don’t touch the hot wire.
Kari: These will explode, these will melt, this will kill you – great!
Grant: You had no idea how dangerous my world was!
The Action/Results:
Grant, Tory, and Kari first got a bunch of different light bulbs with which to test this myth. They wired them all up so they could see how much energy they used at three different phases – when the light was first turned on (start up), when the light was glowing steadily (steady state) and when the light was turned off (shut down). Then they crunched the numbers to compare how much energy the bulb used in a steady state as compared to the energy it used when it first started up. This helped them determine that all of the bulbs used energy efficiently enough that leaving them on while you stepped out of the room for a second was not economically worthwhile. Even the fluorescent bulb, which used up the same amount of energy on start up as it did while burning for 23 seconds, did not make the cut. You do not use significantly more energy by turning the bulb back on. It makes more sense to flip off the lights when you leave a room.
However, the team also wanted to test the wear and tear on the light bulb that would happen if you flipped them on and off all the time. So, Grant built another rig that turned the light bulbs on and off every two minutes for six weeks. This was equivalent to normal use of a light bulb over five years. At the end of that testing, they found out that the wear and tear on a light bulb is also insignificant, and that it is better to just turn the lights off when you are not in a room, even if you are going back in that room shortly.
Myth Busted! Or, as Tory puts it “Jamie’s always right!”
|
|
|
Episode Descriptions 