MythBusters Episode 4: Penny Drop, Deadly Microwaves, Radio Tooth Fillings
Air Date: October 17, 2003
A penny dropped from a skyscraper lands with enough force to either kill a pedestrian on the sidewalk below or embed itself into the sidewalk.
busted
A penny’s total mass is not sufficient to perforate human skin – let alone penetrate concrete or asphalt – even when fired from a rifle.
It is possible to pick up radio signals through a tooth filling.
busted
The tooth filling did not act as an antenna.
It is possible to cook one’s insides by using a tanning booth too often.
busted
Tanning booths work on UV radiation, which penetrates the body from the outside in, meaning that all one would get is a sunburn.
It is possible to blow up a microwave oven by microwaving metal.
busted
Neither a spoon nor a fork had any effect. Tinfoil scrunched into balls caused a light-show with electric charges, but the microwave did not explode. Microwaving metal can ruin a microwave by arcing against the inner wall, sending electricity back to the magnetron and destroying it.
If a glass of water is microwaved, and then removed, it will explode due to superheating.
confirmed
If the water had no impurities in it at the time of superheating – if one used distilled water – then any sort of additive placed within will make the water explode.
(The term "explode" is used loosely. The water violently boils over the edge of the container, which can be very dangerous.)
If you put a poodle in the microwave, it will dry its fur.
not tested
Adam and Jamie thought this myth was too cruel to test on a live animal, and did not carry it out.
Newer: Episode 5: Hammer Bridge Drop, Buried Alive, Cola
Older: Episode 3: Barrel of Bricks, Urinating on the Third Rail, Eel Skin Wallet
If you put a poodle in the microwave, it will dry its fur.
It depends how long you leave the poodle in it. If you leave it in for a short while, barely any change will occur, however if too long it will explode.
*when an elementary school was vandalized, a pet snake from the 1st grade room was heated in a microwave and the snake blew up*
June 23, 2007 at 6:15 PMMythbusters tests things with simulating persons all the time. I don’t see why they couldn’t use a simulated poodle.
And the myth is stated backwards here. The myth is that some idiot tried to dry her poodle and it exploded.
I don’t see anything about a poodle or a snake that would make it explode just because it gets hot inside.
But it seems pretty obvious that the poodle’s cells would cease functioning due to cooking before all the water in the fur evaporates.
June 23, 2007 at 8:14 PMMy neighbor has a poodle. Where can I send it?????
June 25, 2007 at 12:34 PMI don’t think you can dry anything in a microwave, because they don’t use heat. So water does not evaporate from the surface of the microwaved object.
This is why microwaving a frozen pizza results in an awful, awful pizza.
June 27, 2007 at 3:55 PMActually, a microwave is pretty good at drying herbs in a hurry, if for some reason you need them dry in a matter of hours rather than days.
I’ve tried this myself once when I needed some sweet woodruff to make May wine for a festival the next day. (For some reason, the fresh herb just will NOT work, and ya need the dried herb.)
Uh, only do batches for a few seconds at a time, or else the herbs burn.
July 2, 2007 at 4:55 PMMy father has tried drying clothes in a hotel room microwave before, and did not have very good success. The dog test would surely not turn out well.
July 12, 2007 at 8:26 AMDear shizannigan – Microwaves are not infrared so they are not heat per se, however they vibrate molecules which in turn cause friction and then heat. Cook something, like slice of pizza or a meat pie (we eat those here in Australia) for long enough and they will dry out, and burn even and be pretty awful. Hot cross buns very quickly dry out from the heat this way if not eaten quickly enough after a “refresh” in the microwave
August 4, 2007 at 8:23 AMI have actually seen the fork in the microwave work. My electronics teacher in high school, put one in a microwave and had a blast frame put around it, after about 20 minutes the fork exploded and left a hole in the side of the microwave. The mythbusters should have left it in longer, try 20 minutes or so. Trust me it works I almost pissed myself when the explosion happened.
August 13, 2007 at 3:49 PMMy toddler sister put the cat in the microwave back when microwaves were brand new (70s) and merely had turning timer knobs (thank goodness for the newer safety features). I saw her do it, ran across the room fast and opened the door and released the cat… none too soon, the cat survived (slightly demented) to an old age, but the one litter of kittens it had was quite deformed (I believe that the vet sent them too some Colorado University).
September 19, 2007 at 10:13 PMHi I would like you guys to bust a myth regarding subliminal messages in the form of audio tapes,mp3 that you listen to it would alter or change a subject’s behaviour.
October 13, 2007 at 10:06 AMIf you put a live animal in a microwave you will kill it if the exposure is more than 60 seconds. Under that time and you will have cells begin to mutate and then die.
November 5, 2007 at 3:06 PM@Atheleas:
November 28, 2007 at 6:01 PMQuite true, my herb leaves dry very nicely and smoke just fine.
To It Happens
December 4, 2007 at 11:32 AMWhy didn’t you tell your sister “NO!” if you were close enough to see what she was doing? Either you’re lying and are an attention-seeking bozo, or both you and your abusive moron of a sis lack common sense. STFU.
why can you not do the penny one using a small scale model?
December 12, 2007 at 5:00 PMi wonder if it will dry its fur
December 17, 2007 at 1:15 PMdf
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December 17, 2007 at 1:16 PMUr mom it appears you fell asleep on the keyboard again.
December 28, 2007 at 11:55 PMJL: Maybe the magnetron failed in a spectacular way. But a fork? Why in the world would a piece of metal explode?
December 31, 2007 at 9:50 PMTo IT HAPPENS
I beleive you are a lying “bozo” and also just looking for some gay attention. (thank goodness for safety features my ass…f n ass)
January 5, 2008 at 11:18 PMto hating bastards
thats mean!
January 7, 2008 at 6:47 PMPoodles have hair, not fur.
January 9, 2008 at 10:46 AMI personally witnessed Radio waves being picked up in about 1974 accidentally at a school concert. If memory serves me correctly it was at the VA hospital, wichita, Ks, under the direction of instructer F. Johnson USD357. A girl playing electronic keyboards during setup accidently touched the amplifier plug to her mouth or braces, It picked up a local radiostation on the amplifier. Her last name started with a C. All the students were astonished and she attempted to replicate it which she finally did by again tounching different places in her mouth onto the amplifier plug. I believe an additional student attempted to intercept radio waves on the same amplifier and completely failed.
February 16, 2008 at 9:55 AMAbout 1 1/2 weeks ago I woke up shortly after 4am, experiencing a great pain in one of my molars. Felt like it was burning from the inside out, similar to how a dentist drill would feel without painkillers. I thought that I could hear a music playing faintly so I checked my alarm clock. It was off. When I adjusted my mouth in agony trying to understand where the pain was coming from, it openned and the sound got louder. It was distinctly musical and although I could make out only a few words the singing voice clearly was that of a woman.
March 4, 2008 at 1:29 AMThe whole thing only lasted 3-4 minutes, and was very painful. It has not happened since, thankfully.
I have been looking into it and came across this site. I was disspointed that you guys “busted” this myth, because you’re usually dead on.
From what I’ve read usually it is a non-grounded signal that gets picked up by human body (like a reciever) and with the right combination of saliva and metal a LOOSE filling will vibrate with the frequency of the signal. The sound of the vibration is then amplified by shape of the mouth.
Now I’m no expert on radio signals, but I do know that if your loose filling is vibrating enough to play music, let alone vibrating enough to make any sound, it’s going to hurt like heck! And it did…
To clarify, I should say that my filling didn’t act like an antena, more like a speaker. I would be interested if anyone else has experienced something like this.
March 4, 2008 at 1:44 AMThough it probably doesn’t make a difference, the pre 1982 penny weighs 3.1 g (vs. the 2.5 g of a post 1982 penny). i wonder which one they tested?
March 31, 2008 at 4:14 AMTooth fillings should be plausible. It’s not a good antenna, but you don’t need good antenna nearby powerful AM station. It’s the contact between two different metals (with different electron energy levels) what makes things act like radios. It acts like very poor diode, but still a diode and able to detect strong AM signals. I witnesed a toaster, and aluminum spoon left in stainless steel pot playing, nearby (~1.5 km) very powerful (500 kW) AM station.
August 6, 2008 at 8:08 AMI am very glad you guys didn’t test the “Poodle in the Microwave” thing, because i heard one lady did that to her cat and it exploded. Then she sued the company.
August 15, 2008 at 2:31 PMDear Poodles: Hair is the same thing as fur. DUHHHH
August 15, 2008 at 2:34 PMIts just longer. DUHHHH
August 15, 2008 at 2:34 PMJonathan: Hair and fur are COMPLETLEY different. Hair dosen’t shed. Fur does. You see you pets shedding, but do you shed? NO! DUHHHHH you idiot. And BTW, its good they didn’t test it, my friend tested it on her hamster and it exploded… poor hamster
August 18, 2008 at 4:58 PMI feel that you have not taken velocity into account and that a penny would penetrate the skull and definitely kill if shot from a rifle.. Velocity is how fast something falls. I learned all this in a college class a few years ago.
August 31, 2008 at 7:39 PMWow David I think you need to retake a physics class. Look up terminal velocity and see what you find out. As for the rifle experiment I don’t know and don’t really care, since people aren’t going around with penny-loaded rifles. Although I suppose that would depend on the distance the penny is fired from, its angle of impact, and deceleration rate.
October 2, 2008 at 2:49 AMi agree with Brian, why would it explode?
October 26, 2008 at 1:58 AMthat doesnt make any sense at all. it would just cook tteh poodle alive.
When I was a kid in the late 40s, a woman picked up radio signals in one of her teeth. She lived in Modesto, Ca., and everyone in my neighborhood knew her. It bothered her so much that she had the tooth pulled. “They” (the people who know everything about everything) told her it was because her tooth filling picked up a signal from a home made crystal set in the area. I know this is the truth, because I was there and saw it for myself.
November 15, 2008 at 7:23 PMthanks for not testing poodles
November 19, 2008 at 6:04 PMyes I used to get reception in my fillings. If the guys ‘busted’ this they they are themselves ‘busted’. A group of fellow Marines was very skeptical about this once when I said a certain song was playing, we turned on the radiona d found it right away, playing right along in the part I was singing to. They were ‘whoooaaa dude’.
January 5, 2009 at 2:10 PMEmily:
First, hair and fur are EXACTLY the same thing! Culturally, we have developed two words so that we can distinguish people “hair” from animal “fur”. Not all cultures do this!
Second, of course people shed! Haven’t you ever seen hair in your hairbrush? It falls out all the time, and grows back…it just tends to grow longer on human heads (vs. dogs) before it falls out. Poodles shed just like other dogs, but their hair gets matted and the fallen-out hairs stay on the dog (like a person with dreads).
January 14, 2009 at 5:19 PMa piece of metal you slobber on will not play music if it did i’d be plugging earphones in a filling instead o an ipod
January 17, 2009 at 3:04 AMI have a guitar amp at home that I use with my electric guitar and well, one day I held a plug (the plug that connects the guitar to the amp) to my mouth because I was trying to get the plastic around it off and I noticed how there was noise coming from the amp. It was significantly clearer when close to my braces, too. So, I experimented this and pushed the plug right against my braces and through the amplifyer you could hear an AM radio station loud and clear. It was ah-mazing.
March 4, 2009 at 2:28 AMIn reference to the Microwaving untensils
April 20, 2009 at 6:15 PMthis happened to myself, and what they should have tested it while there was flamable food and/or a napkin in the microwave
just a thought
The hair in you hairbrush was pulled out, it didn’t shed. **fur is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as “the short, soft hair of certain animals” whereas hair is defined as “any of the fine thread-like strands growing from the skin of mammals and other animals, or from the epidermis of a plant.Poodle “hair” is “hair” in that it keeps growing like hair on our heads, whereas “body hair” is technically “fur”….it only gets so long then stops, and naturally sheds periodically.
April 28, 2009 at 11:59 AMCan the penny dropping from a tall building injure a person if it hits on his head?
October 24, 2009 at 6:32 AMAbout the radio waves, a tooth filling is probably too small, but just about anything else of signifigant size will probably work. I have used wires, aluminum foil, and even my own arm and hand to adjust the tuning of my radio. It’s a piece of crap.
November 19, 2009 at 12:19 AMP.S. A tooth filling does not have a speaker of any kind, so unless your brain can read radio waves, hen it is impossible to discern anything at all from a signal, even if the filling does pick it up.
November 19, 2009 at 12:24 AMJS, you should probably google bone conduction…..
November 27, 2009 at 1:13 AMWhen the test was ran, they used unmodulated RF. In other words, their radio station was “transmitting” dead air. Looks like Jamie and Adam need a modulated transmitter using music or voice, and retest. After all the carrier carries the signal to your radio, but it’s the modulation you want to hear!
December 9, 2009 at 11:01 PMYears ago, 1950′s, I received radio in my teeth. I had braces and fillings, I had to stand on THAT street corner, and only picked up one station. I surmised it was similar to the effect of an old crystal set radio. I also picked up that station on the crystal set. The signal was never clear like a modern radio, but was definitely there.
January 19, 2010 at 1:22 PMOk, Here it is, We want myth busters to blow up a House, this is a big request and we think that ya’ll can do it. Who Dat!!
Austin
February 12, 2010 at 9:21 AMAny animal placed in a microwave WILL explode. The reason is because the body contains air pockets and when heated the air expands with no place to go….kaboom! Kind of like microwaving a whole egg in the shell. Try it and see! The egg, that is, not an animal.
April 6, 2010 at 11:51 PMIn an office where I used to work, someone tried to microwave some takeaway Chinese food in a traditional paper container with a wire handle. The wire caused an arc which blackened and melted the plastic lining of the microwave. I didn’t see it happen, but I saw the microwave afterwards. I don’t know what other damage was done because no one tried to use it after that; it was thrown out.
April 26, 2010 at 3:36 PMi think allot of people should do more research before posting comments. there is no physical difference between hair and fur. the only reason some animals fur tends to grow to a certain length and than shed as opposed to growing without end with little shedding depends on the species. all hair has specific growth cycles some (like the hair on our heads) have a growth cycles of a few years with a rest cycles of about 100 days other animals will have a shorter growth cycle with a longer rest cycles, after rest cycles hair can sometimes fall out and a new growth cycle can begin for a new hair resulting in shedding. poodles like most “non-allergenic” dogs seem to have hair because they have a longer growth cycle with a shorter rest cycle. they also lack and undercoat of hair that most animals have that results in less hair loss and less transfer of dander (dead skin and hair molecules that cause most allergies). the myth could be tested by simply wetting hair itself and microwaving it to see if it would dry but it would be pointless because the poodle would in fact “blow up”. mammals have a high percentage of water in our bodies that when heated could reach a boiling point and explode, although the animal would most likely already be dead before reaching this point.
May 8, 2010 at 5:28 PMIf you shoot at a rattle snake, will it/can it strike the bullet an get it’s head blown off? I heard this is true but have not had any confirm or refute it. Thanks
May 14, 2010 at 12:20 PMPicking up a radio signal from a tooth filling is a well documented phenomenon. Do a little research before deciding that a subject needs to be investigated as it might be a myth.
May 28, 2010 at 10:58 AMThe cornea of the eye has the least blood flow and the least ability to dissipate heat. Therefore the cornea of the eye is more sensitive than any other portion of the body to microwave radiation. The poodle will hardly be dry when it is blinded. Sticking your hand in an operating microwave oven for a few seconds is not dangerous. Just watch out to protect the eyes.
June 6, 2010 at 6:50 PMHuman Radio.
When I was in the 8th grade, i has braces. The school which was built in the early 1960′s had had large multi-paned windows. Nest to the school propery was the radio tower of an AM radio station, and one classroom, the window faced the tower. In that room, especially if I was close to the window, the braces would pick up the radio broadcast. The same thing happened with a classmate who also had braces.
A few things of note.
It was no very loud, more like the sould of an earbud from tow or three feet away.
It was painful. The sound was acompanied by a burning sensation in cheeks and gums.
It was annoying because the station never played rock.
To whoever commented that a filling is not a speaker, good point, except that the metal, combined with the tartar buildup to act as a diode receiver, sending a modulated electrical current through the jaw muscles, which were acting as speakers. As for an antenna, being a a distnces of les than 1000 feet from a 40,000 wat transmitting source, did not require much of an antenna.
It did not take long for me and the other guy with braces, to find a spot in the room where the signal and therefore the pain was at a minimum.
June 25, 2010 at 12:07 PMI was just watching this episode and it in Jamie built a device with 4 magnetrons. I’d like you to revisit this experiment. There are a couple things that Jamie may not have taken into account:
July 9, 2010 at 4:16 PM1) Microwaves use wave guides [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waveguide_(electromagnetism) ]. This means the dimensions must be based on the length of the microwaves produced.
2) The cooking chamber is a Faraday cage [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faraday_cage ] that prevents the microwaves from escaping.
3) If the magnetrons are not positioned correctly they will produce an interference pattern. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interference_(wave_propagation) ] This will also occur if they emit different frequencies. This property is called coherence [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coherence_(physics) ].
you are wrong about the radio station being picked up by a filling. It happens to me almost every morning when my head is on my pillow. As soon as I pick up my head off the pillow I lose the sound in my head. I know for a fact that it’s truly happening because I’ve tested it.
July 28, 2010 at 11:16 PM