Mythbusters ·
Season Unknown ·
Episode Special ·
Aired December 6, 2006
Needle Drop. The build team gets this assignment to see if several suggested methods of keeping the needles on a live tree (or at least, a formerly live tree) will work. Let’s face it - the primary reason that fake trees have taken off is that we all hate cleaning up all the needles that end up on the ground during the time that the tree is up! So without further ado, the team splits up to make it happen.
Kari is given the task of building Needle Catchers. These are simple wooden structures that will collect the needles as they fall from the trees, so that they can be compared to see which methods work and which ones don’t. After she builds the first, she says, quite clearly, “one down, nine to go”. Remember that. It will be useful. Meanwhile, Grant and Tory head to the tree farm, where after taking out the sign to the entrance, they load up eight trees in the truck. That’s right - they have eight trees, there are eight tests, but either Kari has been mistakenly told she needs to build ten catchers, or she simply can’t count to eight. You figure it out. Either way, something is amiss.
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Close to Home ·
Season 2 ·
Episode 11 ·
Aired December 15, 2006
When a young woman ends up dead, her uncle is the only suspect. It seems that there were several witnesses who saw him drinking that night, even though his family says that he has been sober for years, and knows that he isn’t supposed to drink when he is on his medication. Further investigation finds that his computer contains more than 500 images of his niece on his computer, including her as the desktop wallpaper. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but it’s just a little odd for an older man to have pictures of a younger woman like that - even if none are inappropriate. He’s arrested for the crime and offered a deal, but he doesn’t take it.
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Ghost Whisperer ·
Season 2 ·
Episode 11 ·
Aired December 15, 2006
Though it is very cold, Melinda is suddenly almost feverish, and before long, she is being transported to the jungle of all places. This is new. While ghosts have visited her, she’s never had them take her anywhere before. This one is also melting things in the house (like ice cream) and making it rain inside, as if the humidity is near 100% (like in the jungle). It’s very odd indeed.
It also so happens that Delia brings her a load of things, and in this load is a hat, and when Delia puts on the hat, she looks just like Wide Brim, so that means it’s time to go visit Professor Payne. Maybe he will know if the hat actually belonged to Romano or not. Alas, when Melinda arrives, the professor is his usual dismissive and unhelpful self - but he does have an idol on his shelf which matches one that Melinda saw in her jungle dream.
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According to Jim ·
Season 3 ·
Episode 13 ·
Aired December 9, 2003
It’s Christmas, and that means just one thing - since Dana doesn’t have a job, she must have found herself a new credit card so that she can buy everyone gifts this year! Though it seems that she doesn’t like it when Jim points this out to her, because she gets really upset. In fact, she’s so upset that Cheryl says that it is okay if she puts her name on one of the Christmas gifts that she bought for Jim - just make sure to put it on the big box with the green bow. Dana brightens up and goes out to put her name on the gift.
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Mythbusters ·
Season 4 ·
Episode 24 ·
Aired November 29, 2006
Firearms Folklore: Mystery Backwards Bullet. Newspaper reports of a shootout in Seattle include a picture of a gun that appears to show a bullet lodged within the chamber not of the gun the shot the bullet, but the gun that was shooting at it! You heard that right - the police officer’s gun was apparently the recipient of a visitor, shot right up the barrel and into the chamber that had been recently vacated. Talk about your one-in-a-million shots. Is it even possible to recreate this one?
Adam and Jamie get two guns like those in the story and line them up in the indoor shooting range, including mounts that will prevent them from moving. They rapidly find out that even when using a laser to line things up, things aren’t always as easy as you would expect. But after some last-minute adjustments, they finally start to get closer to what they need. But then it becomes even more of an issue, because the firing gun has a larger-bore bullet than the receiving gun. That could be an issue.
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Mythbusters ·
Season 4 ·
Episode 23 ·
Aired November 8, 2006
Train Suction. If you stand too close to the tracks, you might get sucked in. Frankly, I always thought that fat yellow line was there to keep you from getting to close to the train and getting smacked by it. The thought of train suction never really crossed my mind. But I’m open to the possibility that maybe I missed something. The build team gets to check this one out, and the first thing that they do is head to the hobby store to buy some supplies for setting up a wind tunnel to see what happens around a train.
The end result is that the smoke indicates that the suction around the train is most severe at the end of the train. The high-speed cameras indicate that at the very end of the train you get some small swirling air pockets, like miniature tornadoes. It looks like this is where the suction is likely to be the worst. To figure out just how much force it will take to knock over a human, they bring out an old favorite - the air cannon from Chicken Gun (shown originally in Chicken Gun, Octopus Egg Pregnancy, Killer Laundry). Then they aim it at Tory (after giving him the appropriate safety gear, of course).
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According to Jim ·
Season 1 ·
Episode 14 ·
Aired February 13, 2002
When Dana tells Cheryl that she doesn’t have the guts to give Jim a racy gift for Valentine’s Day, that’s just what she goes and does. Jim, of course, goes and does what he does best - he screws it up. Much like in Thanksgiving Confidential in Season 2, Jim gets into a discussion with the guys, and ends up arguing that his wife is hot, and one thing leads to another, and he shows them the picture.
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Mythbusters ·
Season 4 ·
Episode 22 ·
Aired November 1, 2006
Disposable Lighter Explosion. Apparently there are reports of disposable lighters exploding in certain circumstances - like when they are in your pocket, which would be a very unfortunate place for them to be when they choose to explode. So naturally, it seems like a good idea to see if there is any way to figure out if they do, indeed, explode. The most important part of this test is probably going to be to define “explode”.
As in the Exploding Trousers segment Exploding Pants episode, it’s one thing if the lighter, well, lights. It is, after all, what it is supposed to do - even if it does so in rather spectacular fashion. But in order to truly explode, there needs to be some rather significant force to it. So with that in mind, let the testing begin.
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Mythbusters ·
Season Unknown ·
Episode Special ·
Aired December 22, 2004
This episode took a bit of a different format than the rest. Rather than the larger myth (or two or three) that is tested to see how it holds up, this one looks instead at six holiday “mini myths”, as well as the ten favorite myths, as chosen by the viewers of the show. As such, each myth isn’t given a whole lot of time. On one hand, it’s a nice change of pace because you aren’t given a whole lot of time to become bored with any particular methodology. On the other hand, you aren’t given a whole lot of time to become bored with any particular methodology. So without further ado, we’ll take a look at the myths.
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Dirty Jobs ·
Season 3 ·
Episode 2 ·
Aired December 5, 2006
Concrete Stamper. During the Concrete Spreader job of the Termite Controller episode, Mike didn’t get terribly dirty - but he certainly worked hard. It seems that at least one person saw that episode, and decided that while he did a decent job, he missed something dealing with concrete. Difficult to believe, but I’m not the expert, and (apparently) neither is Mike. So he heads out to learn about stamping concrete.
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