Air Date: October 19, 2005
The ancient Chinese were able to detect an invading army tunneling beneath the ground by using a drum submerged in a shaft.
plausible
Kari was able to hear Jamie and Tory’s digging in an underground mine shaft in two of the three tests. She actually detected them better by listening to the drum compared to Grant’s use of modern geophone equipment.
The "five-second rule" is valid when it comes to food dropped on the floor.
busted
This myth yielded a varied number of results, but in the definitive test where the only variable was time the myth was definitively busted. There was no real difference in the amount of bacteria collected from 2 seconds exposure as there was from 6 seconds exposure.
The toilet seat is the cleanest place in your house.
confirmed
Adam tested this myth just out of curiosity and when the results were compared to the bacteria samples from the "five-second rule" tests, the toilet seat actually proved cleaner than all other surfaces tested.
A dog’s mouth is cleaner than a human’s.
partly confirmed
The sample collected from Adam’s mouth had much more bacterial growth than the sample collected from Lulu the dog. Jamie suggested, however, that the bacteria from the dog may be more potent.
I believe that the dog’s mouth myth is hard to test. I’m pretty certain that a dog has different types of bacteria than a human’s mouth, thus not being able to compare “cleanliness.”
June 25, 2007 at 3:38 PMYeah, kissing dogs isn’t my thing. I mean the people who do that normally have other germs anyway, or other STD’s. It is interesting with all of the technology that we try to remove germs from areas that are actually created to deal with these things.
June 26, 2007 at 9:53 AMHuman bites to human limbs lead to greater infection rates than dog bites to human limbs. So it seems that a dogs mouth is cleaner than the human mouth.
August 22, 2007 at 3:34 PMAbout the Chinese Invasion Alarm… in the myth it is stated that an army was tunneling beneath the ground. In the MB test there were only two people tunneling. Wouldn’t the army, with more people tunneling at the same time, put off more vibration and cause the drum to emit more and louder sound? It’s been a while since I have seen that episode, but that question has been nagging at me ever since I watched that episode. I’m just thinking that maybe Adam and Jamie should try that myth again with as many people tunneling that they can get.
October 15, 2007 at 5:01 PMI don’t understand why the myth is “Plausible”. The experiment was a success… What more can they do to prove it than that??? It’s not about the history; it’s about the science in historical context.
November 23, 2007 at 12:19 AMPlausible because this method would work if they were tunneling in just the right spot, but a tunneling force could come from so many directions it’s not confirmed that this would be successful enough to have been the best method. That’s what I think anyways.
December 30, 2007 at 6:45 PMI agree with Ninja on the dog’s mouth myth. Dogs have different bacteria on their mouths than humans, and they have very different imune sytems than humans. (I mean, it’s not every day you see a person getting into a cat litter box or an animal carcas the way a dog would) And on Keith’s note, another reason alot of human bites lead to greater infections than dog bites is because humans carry alot of diseases that dogs don’t, such as AIDS, herpes and other defilements that can be carried be people.
January 2, 2008 at 2:11 PMBy the way, sorry for the long comment.XI