Ancient Death Ray. We are introduced to Archimedes and how he supposedly used sheets of bronze (likely the shields of his warriors) to focus the sun’s rays on Roman triremes, in order to set them on fire. The first challenge is to build a section of a trireme. Being that the boats don’t exist any more, this is a bit difficult. Still, the build team comes up with some replacements and makes it happen. The next problem is that bronze is really expensive.
So in testing, Adam finds out that mirrors are pretty useful – and also that Archimedes would have had access to polished glass. But this leads to the next problem in that getting even a small group of eight people to focus small pieces onto a single spot that isn’t moving is darn near impossible. This myth is falling apart before it even starts. Eventually Adam builds a satellite-dish looking contraption that can be easily adjusted to focus the mirrors, the boat is launched and… they can’t get the thing to light. Busted.
Skunked! Next it’s time to check some stench – in this case, that of skunks. Once it does spray, they want to test different cleaning products. Again, the problem is getting things to work. The skunks don’t want to cooperate. First one, then another – the skunks just don’t want to spray. Once they do get a skunk to spray, it sprays only Adam’s foot. And then another problem comes up – after a skunk sprays, it can’t spray again for a while (as in a few days). So they turn to synthetic stink, which just doesn’t work as well.
In any case, after being sprayed on the foot, they wash off with tomato juice, which seems to work. But it only sprayed Adam on the foot, so did it really work? It’s tough to say for sure. As luck would have it, the bathroom where the skunk sprayed does smell. And the only product that really worked well to clean that was a home brew – hydrogen peroxide mixed with baking sode and a squirt of detergent. Every other mixture was busted, even the commercial cleaner.
What is Bulletproof? Lots of things tend to show up as being bulletproof, but what is actually bulletproof? It’s time to put them to a test. First up are books, then lighters, and then a deck of cards. Wouldn’t you know it – none of them stop a bullet. Not even a bullet from a handgun.
Finally, the blast shield from last season, made of 1/4 inch polycarbonate – which Jamie said would “stop a bullet” – was tested. It wasn’t even remotely bulletproof. However, if you get the 1/2 inch variety, it stops everything short of a high-powered rifle. Watching Jamie waffle on what he said, then watching Adam narrate the clips back to him, was a riot.
