Mythbusters Recap: Killer Whirpool

Whirlpool of Death. The largest (known), naturally-occurring whirlpool is found near Deer Island Point in Canada. The vortex is 200 feet in diameter and turns at a speed of 14 knots. Can something like this affect a swimmer? How about a boat? It's up to Adam and Jamie to find out!

The first task is to see if a ship can sink in a whirlpool. So new Myth-tern Jess Nelson (who we met originally on the girls team in the Archimedes Burn Off during the Archimedes Death Ray episode) is assigned the task of building a couple of models: A 1/500 scale freighter and a 1/50 scale tugboat.

Meanwhile, Adam and Jamie set about trying to figure out how to create a whirlpool. Adam suggests using a small pump and letting the water do the work, while Jamie wants to use a paddle in the water to spin the water about. Wonder of wonders, Adam's design works brilliantly, and actually scales remarkably well, while Jamie's design, well, doesn't. So after building a couple of progressively larger models, it's time to move to the big boy - a 9000-gallon monster built especially for this task.

A massive pump is brought in, and a few hours later, the tests begin. As it turns out, 14 knots to a tanker or a tugboat is effectively nothing. While impressive results can be wrought be turning the pump up to full-throttle, it would effectively create a whirlpool with a mile-wide vortex, and nothing like that has been spotted in nature. Busted.

The second part of this is to test the myth against a person. So Adam dons his wetsuit, and before anyone can call to tell him that it's too dangerous and he can't do it (as happened in the Mega Movie Myths episode), he's in the tank, with Jamie holding him up by a trapeze of sorts, spinning wildly as the whirlpool spins below. It doesn't look good.

Just to be sure, Adam and Jamie decide to lower Adam a bit and see if they can make it a little more realistic. So they do, and Adam quickly waves out - he can't take it. While it's good that nothing actually happened to Adam, it seems like a person caught in such a predicament would be in for some serious trouble indeed. Adam was safe, though not particularly sound. We all got to see what he had for lunch as it came back up most colorfully. Plausible.

Snow Plow. While the water fun was happening, the build team checked out a winter-time myth of epic proportions - that a monstrous snow plow could simply drive by a smaller vehicle and blow it off the road by the sheer force it generated.

Grant, Kari and Tory found themselves a snow plow in the mountains that apparently hadn't been used for a while and spent the next three days trying to get it running. They weren't all that successful. But they did get a snow plow for nothing. After spending three days of work to get it running, it may have been cheaper to just buy one - because they weren't done yet.

They ended up calling on some professional help to get the brakes fixed, because they couldn't get them working and nearly injured Grant in the test-drive. But once it was all done, they sent the monster plow down the road, headed towards the other vehicle and... nothing. It's like it wasn't even there, even though they created a massive plow out of plywood to increase the amount of wind thrown at the other vehicle. Busted. Totally busted.

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