I asked yesterday whether a video of a slip-‘n-slide was a fake. Turns out it was. Here’s how Mythbusters debunked it. Watch the video in full-screen mode for best results.
Those two seem to have an awful lot of fun, don’t they?
Peter
The idle musings of a former military man, former computer geek, medically retired pastor and now full-time writer. Contents guaranteed to offend the politically correct and anal-retentive from time to time. My approach to life is that it should be taken with a large helping of laughter, and sufficient firepower to keep it tamed!
I asked yesterday whether a video of a slip-‘n-slide was a fake. Turns out it was. Here’s how Mythbusters debunked it. Watch the video in full-screen mode for best results.
Those two seem to have an awful lot of fun, don’t they?
Peter
That's not a myth bust, since this wasn't a myth. All they have to do is find the guys who did the video and ASK them. I assume they are still alive and aren't the same guys who scraped Earth in wing suits. All this video proved as that the mythbusters crew were unable to get the same results. Lots of variables were not disclosed. Water? soapy water? Vegetable oil? What the wet suits were made of? Ramp inclines and elevation of the pool WRT the ramp. Etc.
At the end of the full Mythbusters episode, they reveal that they DID find and ask them, and the creators admitted it was fake 🙂
(It's one of the myths where they admit they knew the answer beforehand, so maybe they didn't necessarily try as hard as they could have.)
Watching Mythbusters is addicting. I'm still waiting for the film from the time they shot a cannonball, missed the target, and it flew over a mountain and through two or three apartments in the Bay Area, before coming to rest. That was the closest call they ever had with disaster, in a program filled with close calls. Naturally, that episode never made it to TV, but I know it's out there somewhere.
https://www.cnet.com/news/mythbusters-cannonball-busts-through-house/
You Are Looking For The episode "Cannonball Chemistry" which aired in 2012
A simple search on Google for the URL shown in the video reveals in seconds that it was
a) fake
b) a marketing gag from Microsoft
There is actually a making of video from the advertising agency that created it.
The "flying" man was CGI for example while the man "rushing" down the slide was a stuntman secured by a rope that moved down the slide much more sedately than in the edited version.
The man landing in the pool was jumping of a wooden platform.
There is only three variables to play with.
End ramp incline
Friction modifiers
Body weight
The ramp end angle is something I would have liked to see them make adjustable. It looks like it was set up for altitude gain, but I expect that too much velocity was lost, to attain best distance. The drawback is a flatter water entry angle, at a possibly higher velocity.
Neat show. Fun challenges to play with. I would have been inclined to do things differently in a lot of them, but in most cases, their choices were probably more visually entertaining, which was the important point for them. They were fairly local, but I didn't discover the show until near the end of their run. Still boggles my mind that those two didn't hang out together in RL.
I have to say that even though it's fake that I had a hard time spotting it so they did a good job of editing and someone had a lot of fun making it.
Thanks for the link Peter, I am still trying to wrap my head around the fact you visit my Blog in the first place…
😉