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Re: [Phys-l] Mythbusters +- science



One good aspect of the Mythbusters show is that they LISTEN and REACT to comments, suggestions, criticisms.

This, also, sets them apart from from some professional scientists ;-).

(Marilyn vos Savant - self proclaimed smartest person in the world - also couldn't understand the 50 mph collision thing - column in Parade, back in the late '70's IIRC).



At 3:02 PM -0700 5/13/10, John Denker wrote:
As I have said before, Mythbusters is *not* a science show.
It is an entertainment show.

I'm OK with that. There are excellent entertainment reasons
for attaching rocket motors to the top of a Chevy, even
though there is not the slightest scientific reason for
doing so.

Sometimes they pretend to be more ignorant than they really
are, to give themselves an excuse for doing an experiment
that is guaranteed to fail.

People ask me, why don't those guys spend 5 minutes per
week talking to a physicist? That way they wouldn't make
so many dumb mistakes. The "standard" answer is that they
want to make dumb mistakes, because it is more entertaining
that way.

Once upon a time, somebody pointed out to Gene Roddenberry
that whenever the starship Enterprise got buffeted, the
crew would fall out of their chairs. Why didn't they
install seat belts? His answer: If they had seat belts,
they wouldn't be able to fall out of their chairs.

On the other hand, there are plenty of cases where the
Mythbusters are really and truly clueless -- no pretending
required -- including cases where having a clue would have
made the show more entertaining, not less.

Example: Consider Jamie's statement (from an earlier
show) that two cars colliding head-on at 50 mph is
like one car hitting a solid wall at 100 mph. They
tested it, in the lab and at full scale, and found
that the head-on collision corresponded to hitting
a solid wall at 50 (not 100) mph. Never mind the
fact that this should have been obvious by symmetry.
The thing that astonished me is that they failed to
check the remaining cases, i.e. the case of hitting
a _stationary_ car at 50 or 100 mph. This would have
been a win/win/win i.e. better science, better pedagogy,
and better entertainment.

Example: The one that really grossed me out came a
week later, when they stretched a piece of duct tape
horizontally and measured its "strength" by pulling
on it vertically. They didn't control for the amount
of sag, which means they had no idea how much
mechanical advantage was involved. It is a classic
result from first-year physics that a straight string,
if it is truly straight, is at an _infinite_ mechanical
disadvantage with respect to a transverse load. They
spent the rest of the show being plagued by stretch
and sag issues, which they found surprising, and which
I found not surprising at all.

And then there are all the situations where they
evidently have no understanding of force, energy,
pressure, or momentum. They appear to use those
terms interchangeably.

So, I think the "standard" answer (i.e. that they /want/
to make dumb mistakes) is not a very good answer. One
shouldn't go too far in either direction, but relative
to where they are now, moving toward a more well thought
out approach would make the show more entertaining, not
less.

I bring this up in this forum because there is an implicit
(and sometimes explicit) question floating around, asking
why we don't make physics class more entertaining, more
like Mythbusters. Well, gee, why don't we all learn how
to drive by watching Smokey and the Bandit?

I'm in favor of making classwork entertaining, within
limits ... but that's just window dressing. In the
entertainment industry, entertainment is the goal. In
class, learning is the goal, and entertainment is a
small part of a means toward that goal. If people
can't tell the difference between entertainment and
real life, we are in big trouble.

The Mythbusters guys know they are not scientists. They
have admitted as much publicly. The thing that shocks me
is that a goodly fraction of the viewing audience thinks
that the show is about science. This is an appalling
reflection on the state of scientific literacy.

I suppose it could be worse. If the public thinks that
Adam and Jamie are typical scientists, that's an improvement
over the previous situation, where the only scientists
known to the public were the villains in horror movies.
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