Pirate Special
Thursday, August 14 2008 | Comments (0)
Adam and Jamie fire a cannon at pigs to test if the shrapnel from a ship battle is more deadly than the cannonball. Then Tory, Kari and Grant find out if a pirate can use a dagger to slow his descent while sliding down a sail. Plus a few more myths for good measure.
I can't speak for everyone, but I can say this week I was disappointed to find a rerun episode of Mythbusters. The T.V. guide said it was supposed to be a new episode, as did the advertisements on Discovery.
In place of the promised new episode, fans were shown a two-hour pirate special. Although it wasn't a new episode, it was a fun one. To avoid a seven page article, however, we will briefly summarize each myth instead of the usual play-by-play.
For the first myth Adam and Jamie tested if the wooden splinters from a cannonball, hitting the side of a ship, would cause more damage than the cannonball itself.
They didn't have access to a real cannon, so for the test run they decided to build a scale size air cannon. They set the cannon up to fire at three pieces of wood, red oak, white oak and pine (all types used by old fashion pirate ships), and see which would cause the most shrapnel.
All three types created a lot of splinters, but it was the white oak that did the most damage, sticking a splinter into one of the pieces of plywood behind the Styrofoam catches.
With the test run complete, they built a larger cannon, capable of firing twice as fast - about 700 feet per second. Despite this increase, the cannon still fired at only about half the velocity of a real cannon.
The next test was to add he "human" element. They lined up four pig carcasses in front of the cannon to see how many the ball would travel through. Without much effort, it blasted through all four.
Next, they placed the pigs in a semi-circle behind a wall replica of a ship. They fired the cannon and it blew through the wall, created lots of splinters, but no splinters stuck in the pigs.
They were about to say myth busted, when Jamie came across someone with a real cannon, called Old Moses, that they could use.
The authentic 1840 replica blasted through the wall and created larger splinters, but only one stuck in the pig and only 1/2 inch.
MYTH BUSTED
Tory, Grant and Kari jumped on the next myth - did pirates wear eye patches to see better in the dark?
The myth was that pirates didn't wear the patches to cover an eye lost in battle, but instead used them to quickly adjust their eyesight to the dark. Why would they need this? The theory was that if the pirate went below deck out of the sun light, they would switch the patch and easily see in the gloomy space below deck. Or if they were below deck in the light, they could run up on deck and start fighting at night if they were attacked.
Kari made a trip to the ophthalmologist to find out if there was any validity to the claim. She was surprised to learn there was.
There are two receptors in the eye used for seeing - the cones for details and colors in bright light and the rods for seeing in the dark.
Kari then tested the theory with an eye test and found out that even though it took 25 minutes to see in the dark with the eye exposed to light; the covered eye adjusted immediately.
While Kari was at the eye doctor, Grant and Tory designed an obstacle course for Adam and Jamie to run.
The obstacle course contained swing bags to dodge, pop up cutouts - some pirate, some maidens, and a stack of cannonballs to avoid knocking over. They had to make it through the obstacles and raise a flag.
Adam went first. He waited outside for 15 minutes, then entered the dark room. He stumbled around a lot, but finally managed to raise the flag after five minutes and 40 seconds - including two penalties.
Jamie had the same problems, but they didn't reveal his time.
Next, the guys tried the course, after it had been rearranged to prevent memory of the course, with the covered eye. They both did notably better. Adam finished in one minute 55 seconds, three minutes 45 seconds faster than his first attempt. And Jamie was twice as fast as his first run.
Just to prove the test one more time, they then sent the guys back in with the same course and again the times were drastically increased.
MYTH PLAUSIBLE
For the next myth, Adam, Jamie and Kari tested different cleaning methods to get out stains in a pirate's clothing. This was based on a myth that rum could clean out stains better that modern detergent.
Adam stained four pieces of cloth, similar to the shirts pirates would have worn, with blood, tar and orange juice - they originally wanted to use sweat instead of the oranges, but it didn't show up well enough to see any results.
Each cloth, stained with each material, was then cleaned with four products - three old time recipes and one new. They used rum, old fashioned soap, boiled urine and modern detergent. The urine, believe it or not, was saved on some ships for cleaning purposes. Once urine is heated, or left on deck in a barrel, for a period of time, the water seeps out and you are left with ammonia.
Adam stained the cloth, Jamie cleaned it and Kari judged which cleaned the best. Urine did the best on blood, detergent on tar and rum did the worst overall.
MYTH BUSTED
"Any self-respecting pirate would rather drink the rum than use it to get out a stain," Jamie pointed out.
For the last myth, Tory, Kari and Grant tested the old movie myth that pirate could stab their dagger into a sail and slide safely to the deck.
After a few trial runs, they found that a dull knife works better than a sharp one. They also learned that sails have horizontal strips of cloth, called reef bands, that would make it difficult to hold on to a knife.
They started the tests using Buster the dummy. With a sharp knife he plummeted quickly to the ground. The dull knife caught on one of the reef bands and poor Buster fell out and again landed with a thud.
The only other option was to try a real dummy, er, person in order to factor in all variables. Of course they couldn't let Tory break both of his legs, even for science, so they called in a trapeze artist who placed a net under the falling Tory.
His first try was a knife-free free fall. Then they added the slightly dulled blade and let him try again. Like Buster, Tory hit the reef band and the knife slipped out of the sail, sending him to the net. He decided to try again, but had the same results.
MYTH BUSTED
Even though the promised new episode didn't air this week, the pirate special was definitely a fun one to watch. This Sunday there will be a Mythbusters marathon, so hopefully next week will bring a new episode. Till then maties.
Printable version Email this articles Comments (0) Post Comment
