MythBusters

I know it looks like we have fun on this show,

But we spend weeks and sometimes months

Planning how to do our myths safely,

So, please, don't try this at home.

Narrator: On this episode of "mythbusters"...

Fire in the hole.

...Adam and jamie have a blast...

Oh! good morning.

...Testing the cinematic cliché

That you can dive underwater...

Building your body and your mind.

Narrator: ...To survive an above-water boom.

Oh, yeah.

Wow.

Meanwhile, kari, grant, and tory...

...Let their trigger fingers do the talking...

Science gets more fun when I get a bigger gun.

...To find out if you can bulletproof a car...

I don't know about you guys, but I'm having an "a-team" moment.

Narrator: ...With nothing but phone books.

Yes, it's alive!

Narrator: Who are the mythbusters?

Adam savage...

...And jamie hyneman.

We're gonna have an adventure.

Between them, more than 30 years of special-effects experience.

Joining them -- grant imahara...

It's lethal, people.

...Kari byron...

But least we still have good chemistry.

Narrator: ...And tory belleci.

Crashes and fire -- this is awesome!

They don't just tell the myths.

They put them to the test.

Captions paid for by discovery communications

So, what's the story?

Well, I've been thinking, wouldn't it be cool

If we were action heroes in our own movie

And some bad guys were trying to blow us up, but we manage to escape?

.Harp play ] is that a harp I'm hearing?

Shush. Here comes a clip.

Narrator: It's a climactic cinema cliché.

Our heroes are trapped on a boat,

And a bomb's about to explode.

To escape certain death, they take the plunge...

And, after a huge ka-boom, resurface completely unharmed.

.Harp play ]

So, you're wondering whether diving underwater

Could help protect you from an injury

In the case of an explosion.

Exactly.

Sounds like a blast.

A shock wave is created

When the rapidly expanding gases inside an explosion

Travel faster than the speed of sound.

And it's this shock front that causes a wave of destruction.

But can you avoid imminent annihilation

By leaping into water?

Well, to find out,

The mythbusters are hunkering in the bunker

For a proof of concept.

I put together this bifurcated tank

With a plan to fill this half with water

And that half with dry-ice fog, or "air," that we can visualize.

We're gonna put a firecracker right up here in the center,

Explode it, and, hopefully, we'll be able to view

That same shock wave in the two different media

And see if there's a difference on the high-speed camera.

Narrator: And for that, jamie's turned to string theory.

These will hang in the water and move if a shock wave hits.

With the tanks filled and a firecracker primed,

Stay by for mayhem in miniature.

Everything's perfect.

Ah, I saw the water move.

Let's see how it looked on the high-speed.

But a closer look at the high-speed

Reveals...Not much, actually.

I think we need something bigger than this firecracker.

I think we do.

Officer smith, I think we need something a little bigger.

Can you hook us up?

The m-80.

That ought to do it.

With shock waves, apparently size matters.

Cue the m-80.

Come on, baby.

Wow! Wow!

that was loud.

And, interestingly, I saw the fog move but not the water.

Well, let's check it out on the high-speed.

I didn't see much. Did you?

I'm seeing the smoke move around.

See that divot there?

Remember, they're looking for proof

That a shock wave behaves differently in water to air.

But the shock waves aren't showing up on the close-up.

So, for a bigger boom, it's back to officer smith.

The m-1000.

Ah.

More? About 100 times more.

Hopefully, that should tie up jamie's loose threads.

Oh, it's getting close.

Here it comes.

Whoa.

I think we're going to have seen something.

I think so. Oh, did that blow the door open?

There's water on the ceiling.

That's always a good sign.

Yeah.

A good sign, but once again,

The high-speed replay has the same problem.

There's no clear shot of the shock wave.

It's reacting,

But they seem to be reacting differently somehow.

Well, they're not telling us what we want to see.

I think we're gonna have to concoct a different test

If we're gonna learn whether or not there's a difference

Between a shock wave in the water and a shock wave in the air.

I think you're right. We're done here. Okay.

every day is the 4th of July.

Next up, the team calls for directwry assistance.

So, "phonebook freedom" -- what is this one all about?

Okay, so, this myth comes from a spy tv show.

And they say that if you're desperate and penniless,

There is an easy way to make your vehicle bulletproof.

Using phone books? That's right.

If you put the phone books in the panels of your car,

You can actually stop non-armor-piercing rounds easily.

Kari: Okay, I could see how that could work.

The bullet hits the car door.

It hits the metal first, absorbs most of the energy,

And the rest gets absorbed by the phone books.

It could work. Wow.

Sounds like they really phoned this ove in.

Narrator: Well, according to this small-screen spy scene,

You can bulletproof by numbers.

Just one layer of phone books inside the doors,

And it's a free ride to safety.

Okay, this one should be pretty simple.

We get a bunch of car doors, a bunch of phone books,

Shoot at them, see if they're bulletproof.

Yeah, that's pretty much it.

But just to be thorough,

We should fire a bunch of different types of guns,

'cause in the real world, you never know what you're gonna be up against.

All right, well, I think our first trip

Should be the junkyard, and we'll get some doors.

Narrator: They'll test this myth by the book.

So, first thing's first -- they need something to stuff.

Okay, my way's not working.

So, we got four doors off of this car.

That's pretty much all we need to take down to the range.

They're already hollowed out,

So we can just stick the phone books in there.

This should be a piece of cake.

Narrator: Back at the shop, the cake comes together

In what has to be

The most low-tech build in "mythbusters" history.

Wait, round hole, square peg, what?

This doesn't seem to fit.

And with one layer of phone books wedged inside the doors,

They head for the shooting range...

You guys ready to start shooting?

...To hit the books.

For this experiment, we have car doors

Lined with a single layer of phone books,

Which, according to the myth, is all it took to stop a bullet.

And on this side, we've painted a target.

Then we'll set up the doors at the end of the firing range,

And we'll start shooting at them with a variety of guns

From 30 feet away.

We'll be firing a 9mm handgun,

A .357 magnum, a .45-caliber,

And, finally, a 12 gauge shotgun.

Narrator: Right, and before they take a shot at the myth,

How about a prediction?

Kari: We're starting out with the 9mm handgun.

I'm thinking 2 1/2 inches of phone book,

1/8 inch on the outside of the car door of sheet metal --

Yeah, we could be bulletproof right now.

All right, this is the 9mm,

The smallest round in our arsenal.

Here we go.

Kari: Whoo. Grant: Good shot.

Narrator: There's an entry hole but no exit for the 9mm...

Kari: Look at that.

No way. 2 inches in.

Narrator: ...Meaning that's one for the books.

But can they get the same result with gun number two?

Firing at 1,450 feet per second, it's the .357 magnum.

Nice shot, tex.

A clean strike, but what's the verdict?

No way.

So, it didn't make it all the way through.

That means the phone book actually made this bulletproof.

Grant: The phone book's blocked the 9mm.

They blocked the .357 magnum.

But I've got one of these. It's a .45-caliber.

If this doesn't make it through, I'll be really surprised.

Going hot.