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Sometimes they called stuff busted because they couldn't personally do it though, even though the myth involved elite athletics. I was pretty stoked when they brought in an actual ninja to test if ninjas can grab arrows out of the air. The guy actually did catch some arrows, which was quite amazing.
Yeah... There are many pitfalls to doing a Skepticism based program, sadly one of the few Mythbusters DIDN'T avoid was "Well I can't personally do it, so it's impossible for everyone!"
"Could the DOOM marine actually carry all those weapons while running around?" - Adam and Jamie couldn't manage it, but they brought in someone who could.
Ha! That was fun.
I thought you were joking till I clicked the link.
Man i should rewatch the whole thing. I only watched few of the earlier seasons, totally missed this one.
Which was ridiculous considering they're a couple of science nerds with no physical aptitude at all. LOL. They nailed the science stuff though.
I liked the one where they tested it you could stop a sword by slapping your palms together to stop the swing like in ninja movies They actually built a machine with rubber hands to simulate it. Long and short of it ... No you can't
But maybe... JK. The strength required to do that would be inhuman.
Yeah, one that I always think of is the see-saw one where a sky diver's parachute failed so he aimed for a see-saw with a girl sitting on one end which resulted in the girl launched shot upwards and then landing safely on top of a building.
Their first test used basically a metal plank on a fulcrum and the forces did more to bend the plank than they did to launch the girl and she didn't get high enough.
Their second attempt used a see-saw that was built using suspension bridge tech to essentially make it instructable, resulting in fatal forces from the launch. At this point, they called it busted.
But I see two unrealistic extremes where reality would exist somewhere in the middle where see-saws are designed to not break easily but not to the point of being indestructible and there might be a sweet spot where the forces are high enough to launch girl several stories up but not high enough that she dies from the forces.
Also, for the bull in a china shop one, I'm guessing that saying resulted from a bull ending up inside a china shop during a running of the bulls event, where stress would be high and there wouldn't be an easy and obvious path out on the other side, plus maybe a shopkeeper suddenly trying to get it out in a panic. I think that would get the expected result, especially after a few shelves have broken and each step makes more broken sounds.
If you want to accelerate a person to "fly high into the air" speed over a distance of a see saw's arc is going to kill the person. There is no sweet spot