My thoughts about S14E08 - Bizarre myths / a reddit commercial
I think it's safe to say most people agree that Mythbusters have been on a downward spiral for the last years, but this episode might just be among the worst of the worst?
It seems like an outright commercial for a website (I had actually never heard of it before but apparently it's pretty popular).
Just a few opinions about this episode (SPOILER ALERT)
There are only really testing two minor untested myth in the the entire episode.
First one is: Is it easy to punch yourself out of a paper bag? Which turns out to be rather difficult which would imply the myth is BUSTED since it's an idiom to suggest something that is always ridiculously easy. They somehow draw the conclusion that the myth is confirmed. Yet another time they draw a bizarre verdict based on their tests.
Second one is: Can infra-red cameras detect farts?
Not exactly the most debated claim of all time perhaps. Anyway how they go about to test this is a good indication of what's has been wrong with the show over the last years. Instead of trying to replicate the circumstances like this =>
Eat lots of onions or other fart inducing food. Fart in front of infrared camera and see what happens.
Oh no that would be to easy so instead they seem to make a lot of efforts into pretending they tried to get themselves to fart but couldn't do it, only to justify to build a "fart machine". It's seems like they are too much in love of creating fancy machines and explosions and a little bit to uninterested in testing the actual myths.
The hamster ball drop is not really a new myth. It's essentially a minor twist to similar myths they have tested earlier. Sort of a combination of the life raft fall/bubble boy fall. It's clear from the get go that it's busted in terms of a solely mean to survive from a very high drop due to the softness of the walls of the ball and speed simply being to high.
Normally a larger object has a higher terminal velocity than a smaller object of the same type. And yes an empty large hamster ball with the same proportions will have a higher terminal velocity as a small hamster ball. BUT in this scenario it's NOT a case of identical average object density as there is a person inside that constitutes a significant portion of the mass (and after all Buster does not increase in mass just because the ball increases in size). So a larger ball would, perhaps somewhat counter-intuitive, actually lead to a slower terminal velocity.
So if the radius of the ball is large enough it could very well work as the mass would almost without any doubt grow faster than what the surface area does if the ball radius is increased (keep in mind Buster is heavy yet not heavier just because the ball is larger). So if they used a ball with double the radius, the terminal velocity would most likely go down significantly (see calculations below) from 56mph to something more survivable (and not increase as the square root of 2 (1.42ish) to 79mph as it normally does if the average density is not reduced and the aerodynamic properties stay the same).
If you combine that with wrapping Buster up the same way Adam was wrapped up in the Bubble Pack Plunge episode, and not the sloppy way they did it in this episode, it might have worked, especially if a larger ball has thicker walls and better yet, done on a freezing day for a higher air density and thus slower terminal velocity. In fact as they didn't even test dropping Buster inside the ball wrapped up properly in Bubble Pack like Adam was, we cannot even rule out that it could have worked with the normal size ball.
Of course the myth is still busted as the myth is about the ball as a sole tool for surviving a long fall, but I find it sloppy of them to not point out how the idea is not really that far out of the realm of possibility. It seems like they don't care about physics at all.
But I guess since the myth did not involve any explosion they couldn't care less to put an effort in trying and replicate what would be needed for the circumstances to make it survivable...