How fast can a cannonball travel? Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage were tackling this question yesterday for an episode of their TV show Mythbusters when things went completely wrong. The cannon misfired, and the cannonball went up into the air over Dublin, California. The next question they will probably tackle is whether the footage will be used on TV.
The story doesn't stop there, and neither did the cannonball. It finally came to rest inside a minivan. The driver had just left the vehicle minutes before. Incredibly, no one was injured in the incident. Ta da! Link -via reddit
“This cannonball was supposed to go through several barrels of water and through a cinder block, and then ultimately into the side of the hill,” said J.D. Nelson of the Alameda County Sheriff’s Department.
Instead the cannonball flew over the foothills surrounding Camp Parks Military Firing Reservation, before spiraling back toward Dublin like a cruise missile.
It flew straight though the front door of a home on Cassata Place, and bounced around like a pinball, flying up to the second floor before blasting through a back bedroom wall.
The wayward cannonball then blasted across a busy road and through a second home some 50 yards away, demolishing roof tiles.
The story doesn't stop there, and neither did the cannonball. It finally came to rest inside a minivan. The driver had just left the vehicle minutes before. Incredibly, no one was injured in the incident. Ta da! Link -via reddit
Yeah, go for it! What could possibly go wrong.... Besides the sponsors are gonna love this!
For people who can be seen endlessly supporting "science" and proclaiming its superiority the actual methods used in the show are more like "Trial and Error". The same kind of techniques a "special effects" expert might use. There is no "double blind" or satisfactory "control" in most of their experiments. But people believe this to be "science". Shooting a ball out of a cannon does not equate to an experiment rigidly holding to scientific methodology. It's just a bunch of people who like explosions blowing stuff up to see what happens.
Take a look at CERN or Fermilab. Could these particle colliders be operated in the same half-ass way? What happens if they start leaking gamma rays and other radioisotopes into the surrounding area? Even with crunching all the numbers and decades of planning there are occasional mishaps and meltdowns. Chernobyl. Fukushima. This stuff happens for the same reason, poor planning, lack of oversight and cutting corners.
In their experiment where they wanted to see if slapping someone would "wake them up" and make them more capable cognitively, there never was any "blind" or similar controls. "Experimenter Expectancy Effect" is a HUGE problem for science. This is made infinitely more important when the experiment depends on "self-reports" as that experiment did. It doesn't matter that they all did (3 trials), they all knew what the experiment was about and even described their "expectancy" prior to the experiment. Then their self-reports were entirely consistent with their expectancy. No surprise considering Rosenthal identified this failure in experimentation decades ago.
Viewers like it because violence and destruction (next to sex) is the content viewers most like to consume. This video would have twice as many views if someone had died.