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Hindenburg Skin. Though the Hindenburg didn't claim many lives (only 36 people died), it was by any account a spectacular disaster, and the image of the burning hull of the gigantic zeppelin is famous across the world. Even now, nearly seventy years after it happened, the massive fireball that engulfed the Hindenburg is a matter of speculation.

When the Hindenburg went up in flames, it signaled the end of an era in aviation. Gone were the massive luxury liners of the air, and in their place came the noisy, propeller-driven (and later jet-driven) planes which we have all come to know and love (ha!). This is probably a good thing, as even though the Hindenburg was a huge ship, it simply couldn't carry many passengers and it didn't move quickly. The fact that it could go up in flames is simply a secondary issue.

Though crossing the Atlantic Ocean in 5 days in 1936 is a decent speed, to do so now would be a bit sluggish, especially if the cost of a ticket were as high as it would likely need to be to offset the cost of operating the airship. With a passenger-to-crew ratio of roughly 1-to-1, it's not cheap to operate a zeppelin, though it seems a pretty cool way to fly.

In any case, they myth concerns the skin of the giant airship. Specifically, there exists a certain segment of the population that believes that the airship went up not because of the flammable hydrogen contained within the Hindenburg, but because of the cotton covering. It seems that this covering was coated with aluminum oxide and an acetate infused with an aluminum powder. Apparently these are the same ingredients as you'll find in thermite, which is a very flammable compound indeed. But could it actually cause the disaster that we've all seen?

Some initial tests are inconclusive, so a small-scale build is used to determine what happens. Myth-tern Jess helps Adam and Jamie build three 1/50th-size Hindenburgs to determine what will happen.

The first is covered with a simple covering without the hydrogen. The second, made to resemble the actual hydrogen. The third is the big daddy - instead of layered compounds, they are mixed to actually be thermite on the hull.

The first model goes up in decent speed, but it's not the 37 seconds that engulfed the real Hindenburg. The second goes up much faster, showing that while the hydrogen alone may not have done the trick, it certainly played a part. It took about a minute. The third model was the best, however, sending things up in about the same time as the actual explosion. Busted.

Though the myth was busted, I would have liked to see the myth tested with hydrogen and a completely un-covered skin (just plain cotton), to see what effect no coating at all would have had. It was also dismissed that the real Hindenburg could have carried a load of real thermite on its outer skin, but that was the only model that burned in the exact time as the actual disaster. This begs for most testing. How about it, Mythbusters?

Croc Zig-Zag. Rumor has it that if you're being chased by a crocodile (or alligator, presumably), you can run in a zig-zag pattern to escape it. Since their legs are so short, they simply cannot keep up. So Grant, Kari and Tory use their own, uh, lackluster running skills to build a robot that will run in a zig-zag pattern.

The problem I have here is that they are running in zigs across a square. If you do that, and the croc runs straight, it's going to meet you eventually. But no matter, because by the time they get to the crocodile farm in Florida, they can't get anyone to chase their robot.

They also tried to get it to chase Tory by prodding it with a stick. Lucky for Tory they couldn't get that to work either. The hypothesis is that these critters lurk in the water for a surprise attack, so if you can survive that, you'll probably be okay, regardless of whether you run in a straight line or a zig-zag.