The toilet tank in my apartment had a broken release valve in it (the toilet kept running), and it was causing the rod that holds the plunder to vibrate, causing a high pitched whine (it was self oscillating), after i tried to adjust it to make it stop, it became much worse and started vibrating the house’s entire pipe system violently in about 15 seconds. if i didn’t stop it (by tuning it differently), it would have busted the pipes or worse, as the lever was feeding back on itself and amplifying the vibration throughout the whole plumbing system, which did sound like an earthquake. just by adjusting the rod by 1 or 2 millimeters totally made it stop, so essentially I was tuning it.

i think teslas machine worked on this same principle. i mean you shake the hell out of a street lamp with one finger in about five minutes, so i can’t imagine tesla’s idea wouldn’t have worked.

Really?

Out of all the moronic things people have said in this thread, Trevor takes the cake. Telling a scientist to “do it again” until it works out how you want is silly.

On one hand we have Tesla, who invented a lot of stuff that doesn’t seem to work as well as he said, plus a few things that do (alternating current for example). This is indistinguishable from a scientist who also has some crackpot ideas with no basis to them. Just because Tesla did a couple things right, doesn’t mean everything he did was genius.

On the other hand, we have people reproducing experiments of Tesla’s. One fundamental element of the scientific process is reproducability of experiment results. If nobody can do what Tesla claimed to do, in a given experiment, we must conclude that Tesla’s information about that experiment was bad. Whether he lied or just made a mistake is meaningless now. What matters is whether we can do it ourselves.

Talk about pseudoscience. Right here we have a lot of steampunk fanboys who have mythologized a clever, perhaps exceptional, but not magical scientist.

Grow up and be skeptical. You’re not 5 anymore.

P.S. I have a lot of respect for your work but you guys really didn’t do a good job on this experiment.

To actually gauge any kind of result from a somewhat limited range of experimentation into Tesla’s earth quake machine (and in consideration of the result on the bridge after ‘just’ 60 minutes) indicates to me that contrary to the ‘Busted’ conclusion there is truth behind Tesla’s claims and with further refinement and experimentation I have no doubt in my mind that the results that Tesla himself described would be achieved.

I enjoy MythBusters, however when you’re watching the program you have keep in mind that you are in fact watching an entertainment show and not a scientific documentary. I have allot of respect for what they manage to achieve with the limitations of their budget, resource and time scale and I wouldn’t be surprised if that one I saw a news paper headline saying that they’d managed to prove something really profound even if in the slap dash manor of the nature of the show. Government conspiracy with-holding of course!

I personally couldn’t imagine how thrustrating it must be to have to draw a conclusion on a topic or experiment knowing that there is far more research that needs to be done but due to time, money constraints and pressure from my producer, I’ve had to make a conclusion that deep down I know could be wrong.

I think that you’d have to have allot of strength of character to be able to do that and move on to the next myth. So where as there is always room for criticism in the method, I think that sometimes we pass judgment harshly when it should be offered with the appropriate respect.