Televizzle.org

Straw Through a Palm Tree. If you're out for a stroll during a hurricane - and I'm not saying that would be a good idea - and happen to be looking at a palm tree, might you see a bit of straw get blown so hard that it would go right through the trunk of the tree? Apparently some would argue that this is possible. So it's up to Adam and Jamie to test it and fnd out.

The first task is to build an air-powered cannon that is capable of shooting a piece of straw at speeds approaching the fastest ever recorded. Since a piece of straw is pretty small, Adam and Jamie figure they will need a mighty small tube, but that by extending it they can ramp up the speed. So they do - to 80 feet. This produces the desired effect.

With a relatively miniscule 80psi in the chamber, they can propel a cotton ball at the speeds desired. By packing several pieces of straw in the tube, and placing a piece of cotton behind the straw to seal the tube (something like a sabot, as used in the Raccoon Rocket segment of the Stinky Car, Raccoon Rocket episode), the straw flies out as needed. Now they just need a palm tree.

Unfortunately, Adam buys a palm that isn't indicative of the kind that the producers want to test for accuracy. It appears the kind found in San Francisco aren't those you'd be likely to find in areas such as Florida. So they haul the nearly 2-ton tree back to the dealer and get another one, that is more like the ones to be found in a hurricane zone. It's not perfect, but it's closer. Then they start shooting things at it.

Straw does get embedded into the trunk, but remember this is only if cotton is in the barrel. I can't imagine that a single piece of straw flying through the air would do much, and in any case it doesn't go through the trunk, and that's the myth. Busted.

They try some other materials, but have no luck. Only piano wire - which looks like a several inch long piece of metal - goes entirely through the trunk (and embeds itself in a board and the cinder block wall behind the tree). As a follow-on, they get a dead chicken and see if a hurricane will blow the feathers off. After cranking the air up to the max, it turns out that the dead chicken loses not even a single feather. Busted.

Primary Perception. Can plants feel? Lots of people talk to plants, on the assumption that they will grow better and bigger than if they are just sitting there all by themselves. The 21-Inch Sun episode of Amazing Stories took this to a bit of an extreme, with a plant that learned to write scripts by getting it's "sun" from a small television. But is there any truth to the myth? That's what we aim to find out.

First Grant and Tory get themselves a lie detector just like Cleve Backster. They hook it up to one another and run some tests, where we find out that Grant wants to build a female robot and Tory isn't always honest about his age. Once we know that the machine works, they hook it up to a plant (who knew the guys would be good at plant shopping?) and Tory starts to hurl hateful thoughts in the general direction of the plant.

In an unlikely turn of events, the plant seems to react about 35% of the time, and this is inside a shipping container, so it seems to be plausible - the container was designed so as to minimize outside influence from affecting the results.

To further isolate any outside influence, Grant sets the polygraph on automatic and Tory hurls his thoughts at the plant from outside the container. While the percentage drops into the twenties, the plant is still reacting, even though the guys are outside this massive container. Is there really something to this myth?

The next tests revolve around trying to get some scientific facts involved, and so on the advice of Kari, Grant builds an automatic egg-dropper. This is done on the assumption that all life is inter-connected, and if those eggs are dropped into a pot of boiling water, the plant will react, just as if Tory was hurling insults at the plant. Then everyone leaves. The reaction? Absolutely none. Busted.

There is also no reaction from yogurt or from cells taken from Tory's mouth.

While I'm not saying that plants feel, it would seem to me that there is a distinct difference between Tory sending thoughts to the plant of destruction of the plant and eggs dropping into a pot of boiling water.

After all, while it wasn't said outright, I'm sure those eggs came off the shelf at a supermarket, not out of a chicken coop, so it's not like there was a viable embryo in them, which is a little less than a life being extinguished, and in any case it wasn't the plants life being threatened. This one might need revisiting to really squelch those real critics out there. Don't say I didn't warn you.