MythBusters Episode 16: Ancient Death Ray, Skunk Cleaning, What Is Bulletproof?
Air Date: September 29, 2004
Archimedes constructed a death ray by reflecting sunlight onto, and thus igniting, Roman vessels.
busted
In order to have any effect, the mirror would have to be impractically large, and even then, the temperature of wood only raised a few degrees. On the Discovery website, however, a challenge was thrown out to the viewers to come up with an experiment to prove it plausible, and so far, a few of the entries seem to have done so. When all the tests were completed the myth was conclusively busted.
(This myth was revisited in episode 46 and it was re-busted.)
The smell of Skunk musk can be removed with tomato juice.
plausible
The strong odor of tomato juice masks the skunk smell until the human nose becomes desensitized to the smell of tomatoes, at which point the skunk musk is again noticeable.
The smell of Skunk musk can be removed with commercial cleaners.
plausible
The commercial cleaners tested had limited success at eliminating the aroma of skunk musk.
The smell of Skunk musk can be removed with a custom mixture.
confirmed
A mixture of soap, hydrogen peroxide, and baking soda proved to work best for actually eliminating the aroma of skunk musk. The precise formula may be found in the Skunk article.
The smell of Skunk musk can be removed with beer.
busted
Beer did not work.
The smell of Skunk musk can be removed with a douche.
busted
A douche had also no effect at all.
Bullets be stopped by a book.
busted
A hardcover book of at least 400 pages can potentially stop a .22 rifle shot, but anything stronger would shoot completely through.
Bullets be stopped by a deck of playing cards.
busted
The deck failed to stop any bullets.
Bullets be stopped by a Zippo lighter.
busted
The lighter failed to stop any bullets.
Bullets be stopped by a quarter-inch polycarbonate shield like that used by the MythBusters.
busted
The shield failed to stop any bullets.
Bullets be stopped by an inch-thick polycarbonate panel rated bullet resistant.
plausible
They tested using a four-sided box made of bullet resistant polycarbonate laminate. The panels stopped .22, .357, and .44 magnum bullets but a Springfield .30-06 penetrated both front and rear portions of the box.
I believe that the use of coke can deter the odor of skunk. This may not be true? I guess that’s why it’s a myth. haha
June 25, 2007 at 4:48 PMDid they really need to test the deck of cards?
June 29, 2007 at 10:50 PMMy questions is that, My stepson works for a fish plant, he comes home everynight stinking like fish to the point of gaging and throwing up smell type, I remember the skunk episode and wonder if this would work for fish?
June 30, 2007 at 1:41 AMWe have all heard stories of lives saved by Zippos, etc. I expect that the truth is these bullets first passed through something, or someone else, and had only enough momentum to dent the lighter. A ballistics expert might also answer if it is possible for a bullet to travel far enough to loose most of its momentum?
July 1, 2007 at 1:27 AMwill your mixture of soap,hydrogen peroxide backing soda remove the smell of old diesel fuel from your hands/(body).
July 8, 2007 at 7:14 AMjawa, do they really need to test a lot of stuff they do on the show, seriously its just for fun
July 9, 2007 at 9:09 AMTwo observations regarding the bullet myths tested in this episode:”
-I would suspect the origin of the “Bullets stopped by books/lighters/etc,.” myth is the fact that, while a bullet cannot be completely stopped by these things, they can be _deflected_, thus potentially saving the life of the victim by directing the bullet elsewhere.
- A bullet which has already been significantly slowed by distance, encounter with some intermediate medium (leaves on a bush, for instance) or a manufacturing defect, might be able to be stopped, as was the .22.
August 24, 2007 at 11:00 AMYears ago our daughters coat got skunk odor from our 2 dogs. I ran it though the washer & dryer, but smell was still there. For some reason, I grabbed the Spray & Wash and sprayed it on the coat then just rinsed the area in the sink with water. Lo & behold smell was gone. I have not had an occasion to try this since, Thank God, but I am sure it is a good remedy.
August 26, 2007 at 1:16 PMOur dog was sprayed by le skunk. The vet said H peroxide, baking soda and dish soap. It actually did work, but it took a couple of washes. We mixed 100% pure apple cider/juice with baking soda to work around his face, nose and eyes. The apple juice actually worked very well. Its naturally acidic, so we figured it would have some cleaning effect. It is a slow process but we where able to sleep in the same room with the dogs. His eyes where irritated from the spray, we used ambient temp olive oil and a saline eye wash from a animal first aid kit. A good alternative to the dish soap is the use of apple juice along with the peroxide and baking soda. Also we used white towels to wipe down the dog, so we could bleach them. The towels came out fine with no smell. On our clothes we ran them through the washer with normal detergent,but added 1 cup of baking soda and color safe bleach. Came out fine. We kept a solution of the B. soda, peroxide and apple juice by the sink for hand washing.
September 16, 2007 at 9:45 AMIt was funny at first and its getting funnier as the day goes by!!!
Love the show.
The Mythbusters tested modern zippo lighters. During WWII and Vietnam, brass (that the cases of zippos are made from)was a strategic material. Zippo Mfg had to use steel for the cases of lighters during this period. A much stronger material than brass.
October 8, 2007 at 7:26 PMHi guys
February 4, 2008 at 3:25 PMMyths are usually the result of human over exaggeration or under exaggeration. In the case of a badge, lighter or deck of cards stopping a bullet, the survivor thought it much more phenomenal to just say his “lighter” stopped the bullet. Whereas he would probably not go into detail to explain that his shooter shot him at an extreme angle sufficient enough to deflect the bullet. Even something as soft as water can deflect a bullet at a certain angle. As kids we used to hone our skills shooting at the round cutouts of electrically boxes. They were roughly the size and thickness of a quarter. Many times, if the token was placed on an angle on the tree, all we’d find was the dented token but no hole in the tree.
Keep Busting!
Namarie an si
Lance
greetings Mythbusters! i would like to ask if you can do a re-re-visit to the Archimedes death ray because i recently read a biography about Archimedes. it didn’t say that Archimedes death ray was flat but in fact slightly curved so that it’ll be more centered. could you please reconsider? if you don’t want to do it then you can roast a chicken with mirrors then. i saw Thai people do it on tv.
October 19, 2008 at 10:36 AMI’ve tried time and time again to shoot a deck of cards with a air-soft pistol and it can only go through one card no matter how many are behind it. I’ve shot two cards touching eachother and the second card only gets a dent.
November 22, 2008 at 10:04 PMI just caught a skunk in a live cage and it spayed. The smell was so horible. I can taste it now. I spayed the area with baking soda, bleach and some pine cleaner. It seemed to kill the smell from that spot but it’s still in the air and all over my house. Does anybody have anything else.
February 9, 2009 at 7:55 PMBy the way if you shot a skunk and think it won’t spray, YOU WILL BE WRONG! It will spray no matter where you shot it.
February 9, 2009 at 8:00 PMAt 40 feet a .45 caliber handgun firing a hollow-point round was stopped by 2/10 in. of lexan–but the polycarbonate was backed solidly by a one in. panel of impact resistant plastic: (UHMW-PE–raw,not processed into the rifle plates one hears about made from the stuff). Still, the polycarbonate was NOT penetrated–though it made a nice dent in the plastic backing.
ON ANOTHER NOTE–I don’t believe 1/4 in. polycarbonate could not stop ANY bullets–specifically, soft lead rounds from a .22 pistol. Maybe with a big enough piece, held in place and with no backing, such a round would penetrate, but even then I would be skeptical. Did they even use .22 handgun rounds? Or just those from a rifle? Making a universal claim that a substance will not stop ANY bullets is a claim ripe for refutation from any direction, unless you add all sorts of qualifications, like,”we meant All and ONLY the specific combination of rounds, guns, and distances used on the show, AND exactly physically equivalent situations. The flat-out statement given was hyperbole. Our intern logician quit.”
One more note: Polycarbonate sheets from your local plastics store, or even Lowe’s and similar home improvement sites, have polycarbonate available that will stop bullets, if you use a thick enough “laminate” tape or glue. Tape might help by the first bullet slug creating an air space between the layers, so subsequent shots tumble as the past through it and are even more easily defeated.
I took FOUR 6 by 8 inch pieces of quarter inch-thick polycarbonate, taped them together with Gorilla tape, and shot that 1 inch thick piece FOUR times with a .357 magnum (jacketed but lead pointed rounds, aka JSP), with the holes all within a 3 in. diameter circle, and with two rounds an inch apart. Not one of those rounds made it past the 3/4 in. panel. The last panel was, with the exception of very slight surface marks from the dents, completely untouched and undeformed, and able to be used in another application. All shots were made with the muzzle 3 to 4 feet away from the target.
Any mispellings, I’m terribly sorry. syntax, errors. too.
July 21, 2009 at 12:45 PMLazarus! Archimedes?
I don’t think Archimedes Death Ray was realized, at least not in the way it is described by ancient historians, or the hypotheses of numerous individuals appearing on Mythbusters.
In theory, though, one can burn almost anything if one can manage to focus enough of the sun’s rays on a small area. I offer the following excerpt:
This is from http://e360.yale.edu/content/feature.msp?id=2144
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A Potential Breakthrough
In Harnessing the Sun’s Energy
by David Biello
“In the high desert of southern Spain, not far from Granada, the Mediterranean sun bounces off large arrays of precisely curved mirrors that cover an area as large as 70 soccer fields. These parabolic troughs follow the arc of the sun as it moves across the sky, concentrating the sun’s rays onto pipes filled with a synthetic oil that can be heated to 750 degrees Fahrenheit. That super-heated oil is used to boil water to power steam turbines, or to pump excess heat into vats of salts, turning them a molten, lava-like consistency.”
__________________________________________
What do you think would happen to those metal pipes if there were no liquid passing through them?
I wonder how much one could scale down the above described array and still be able to ignite wood, or, perhaps scaling down even further, simply ignite the enemy ships’ sails? Maybe the “Death Ray” would be enough of a weapon if it was just powerful enough to blind the ships crew…but that’s much less than what we’re told, at least by historians–only reliable to a point.
July 21, 2009 at 1:20 PMthe myth is WHAT IS BULLETPROOF not WHAT CAN PROTECT YOU FROM A BULLET!
October 12, 2009 at 9:40 AMDeath rays.. Weve made one, it works.. We used 144×4 inch mirrors, in the heat of a fairly standard UK summer day we set fire to a model boat about 30ft away.. When Mythbusters start to engineer things better i will start to trust their results.. Still, its good entertainment, just don’t confuse it with fact or science..
November 28, 2009 at 8:37 AMI second Chris.
November 29, 2009 at 2:10 PMBuilding a working deathray using a mirror array is easy.