I won’t hide it… But Mythbusters (on Discovery Channel) is one of my television favorite shows… Yes, there are the sometimes issues with the experiments, but considering the constraints of television, and budget, they do an excellent job.
Lifehacker, has edited transcript of a phone interview with Adam Savage, MythBusters: MythBusters ‘ Adam Savage Talks Tech, Obsessions, and Science, Lifehacker: What can we look for in the new season?
Adam Savage: The new season’s going to be phenomenal. We did a two-hour disaster special, where we actually took on the bus turn from the movie Speed, which involved me and Jamie getting to do some terrible things to a full-size bus. The one we were doing out at Fort Mason … One of my favorite (experiment) categories over the past couple of years has been thought experiments. Things like, if a plane is on a conveyor belt, will it take off? One of those we hadn’t tackled yet was, if you drop a bullet, and fire a bullet, from the exact same height, at the exact same time, they will both hit the ground at the exact same time.
Lifehacker: That’s a classic of 11th-grade physics.
Adam Savage: Yeah, except the fired bullet is however many thousands of feet away. This is something I’ve been wanting to do for years. Last year, during a story discussion, Jamie and I hammered out a way to do it in full scale, and, last week, we tried it out. I’m not going to tell you how it turns out, but I can guarantee you, nobody else has ever wasted their time trying to get the shot that we’ve got.”