|
Episode: Yawning/Toy Car Race Original Air Date: March 9, 2005 Myths: Is Yawning Contagious?. Toy Car Race, Buttered Toast - Buttered Side Up or Down?
Myth: Can a toy car beat a real car coasting down a quarter mile track?
First, the team needs to find out how fast a toy car can go, before either the wheels break, or wind resistance flips the car off the track. A toy car is placed on a belt sander, then it is run at top speed. However, the sander only goes as fast as 43 mph - not fast enough. Tory comes up with the idea of jacking up a real car, putting the toy car on the tire, and revving the car to the desired 80 mph. The car held on up to 85 mph, with no visible wear on the wheels.
Next, the build team constructs a wind tunnel out of a leaf blower, to find the maximum wind speed of each car, before it flips out. Most maxxed out around 70 mph, proving they can go as fast as real cars.
Each MythBuster designs their own car, to see who can build the fastest car. Jamie's is a slick aluminum, while Adam's is chunky lead.
Adam: "Whoever wins this race is better!"
Kari and Scotty search San Francisco to find a stretch of road a whole quarter mile, but find none. So the whole crew goes to Lake Tahoe - Ski Boulevard has the perfect road. John Holmes will provide the real car for the race - his Dodge Viper. Mark Kasimoff of Race Grooves has supplied the tracks and is assisted by his children, Amanda and Jeremy.
Race Day! They set out with 1,320 feet of track to the race site. As the day progresses, it warms the plastic track and causes it to buckle. The track keeps expanding and extending, and much time is spent flattening and lengthening it back out.
On the first test, the car stopped at 200 feet. It had jumped the track. More flattening is needed. Everyone decides to scale down the test. 400 feet is the new test length. The white Camaro makes it in 23 seconds-22 mph. Adamís "Boy Racer" wrecks before it reached the end. Jamie's "Silver Bullet" ran an impressive 18 seconds!
Everyone but Amanda and Jeremy are betting on the toy car to win. For the first 100 feet, the toy Camaro is leading the Viper, then things turn around. The Viper finished first. Then they test Jamie's car against the Viper. He is in the lead, to over 100 feet. The Viper still beats it by four seconds.
No speed records set today, but possibly the longest length of toy car track set at once (?).
BUSTED!!
"Is Yawning Contagious?"
The build team is to test whether or not yawns are contagious. They need a test audience, a controlled setting where they can stimulate yawners. They build a room where test subjects will sit under a hidden camera. The control group is left alone for 10 minutes, and nobody yawns. For the next test, they are given tax laws to read. Finally, one subject yawns! Then a couple more yawns, but all from the same person.
Adam and Jamie think the team needs more subjects over a longer period of time. Back to the drawing board. The team goes to the public-a local flea market. Inside a truck, they have a multi-chambered yawning lab. As people approach their booth, they are given "seeded" stimuli. There are three booths, all with hidden cameras. Kari yawns at two of every three subjects, to see if influencing the subjects has any effect. The subject sits quietly, doing nothing. Then, the team is finally rewarded with yawns!
In all, 50 people were tested. With no stimulus, they yawned 25% of the time. With the yawn stimulus, 29% yawned.
CONFIRMED!!!!
"Toast-Buttered Side Down-or Up?"
Myth: Buttered toast falls buttered-side down more often.
Jamie and Adam each design a toast-dropping contraption, to see which one has a better result. Adam has a pneumatic device to simulate toast falling off the table. He tries it out first, using unbuttered toast. With his machine, each piece falls exactly the same way. Jamie's rig is spring-loaded, to simply drop the toast instead of pushing it. Neither Jamie's "Trap Door Dropper" nor Adam's "Top Loading Tosser" gives an unbiased result. They guys work together to build a better toast dropper, complete with conveyor belt-driven toaster.
The contraption is tested out first with untoasted butter. Just watching the toast move along sends Jamie into one of his "schoolgirl giggle" fits. This time, the distribution of results is closer to what is expected. Now for buttered toast. Out of 24 slices, 12 landed butter-side up, and 12 landed butter-side down.
With lots of bread left over, they take the test to the roof. They got nearly the same result from 27 feet. Then, Adam and Kari just threw the rest of the toast at Jamie and Scotty.
BUSTED!!! |
Episode Descriptions 
