Appliances in the Bath. We’ve all wondered what would happen if you actually dropped something in the tub, like they do in the movies. Would you really be electrocuted? Or is it just for show? It turns out that most bath-type appliances, such as hair dryers, have ground-fault interruptors for just this purpose. When they sense a sudden change in the current, they shut off, and they seem to work.
Appliances without these attachments, such as older models, or things such as toasters, that you aren’t likely to use near a tub, won’t have them, and they are likely to shock the life out of you. It turns out that the closer they fall to the drain (and thus the ground), the less force they will impart to your body, but they’re still likely to kill. Confirmed.
Killer Quicksand. Back to the movies for this one, we’ve all seen the quicksand where you walk in and you get sucked in, only to disappear rapidly beneath the surface. So Adam and Jamie do their research, find some fine-grained sand and rig up some water buckets to pump water through the sand at a rate that would create such a beast. The only problem is that they float. While you could get stuck and die of starvation or exposure, you wouldn’t drown. Busted.
Exploding Tattoos. Leaving the world of the movies for a bit, the final myth in this episode is one where if you expose a tattoo to the large magnet in an MRI machine, it will explode. After testing, it seems that the iron oxide in the ink is the likely culprit, so the build team whips up some iron-heavy ink and tattoos a side of pork with some of the ink, then test it out. They can indeed see some deformations on the readouts, but there is no explosion to be had. Busted.
I have not seen this episode of MB, but I’m not sure I believe the quicksand thing. I guess I would ask, were they fully clothed or in swim suites? Perhaps they should have found a known quicksand site to test instead of in their “lab”.
They were fully clothed. And “float”, as I mentioned above, is perhaps a bit over-zealous in my description.
But they didn’t exactly sink, so it is an accurate description. They sank a bit, and were unable to get out on their own, but they didn’t exactly bob in the quicksand.
Perhaps just the inability to free yourself makes it leathal enough. If you’re by yourself, that could be bad.