Myth I Want Busted

MythBusters was great yesterday. Well, half great. They were testing to see if you could use a fall into a dumpster as a guaranteed escape a-la-Hollywood. Rather bland. They were also testing what would happen if the air line on an old-fashioned umbilical-fed diving suit failed. Rather not bland. I’ll leave it at that. It’s on YouTube if you don’t want to wait for it to show up on your PVR.

I have a myth I want busted. Busted as in “evaluated on MythBusters”. It’s along the same vein as “dropped bullet vs. fired bullet”. You’re not going to bust gravity, so there is little surprise when it’s confirmed. Still, it’s really cool to see it played out. Much like when Commander David Scott dropped a hammer and falcon feather on the moon (spoiler: Galileo was right).

cc-by:wiki:Mark Fosh

I have heard a Formula One car could race along the ceiling of a tunnel. The physics certainly bear that out. The downforce matches the 605kg weight of the car and driver at a little over 125 km/h. At about 190 km/h, the downforce is about double.

The trick would be organising it. The tunnel would have to have a large enough diameter so that the curvature wouldn’t impede the ground effects. That, or build a cool MythBooster that held the car upside down and pushed it along the top of a tunnel until it stuck. Well. That sounds pretty cool. I’d like to see Grant whip that together using parts from the sword swinging rig. Also, before the run you might want to check the tunnel for lose tiles, traffic signs, extraction fans, and what have you.

There is also the little problem of fuel. I don’t imagine the engineers spent a great deal of time getting the fuel system to function efficiently while inverted. Then again, guessing without having any knowledge about it, perhaps the fuel is in a collapsible bladder that already works inverted. They’re fuel injected, so no issues with fuel pouring out of the carburetor. Similar issues with oil and cooling.

So, MythBusters. Are you up for it? Borrow a five million dollar car. Spend three or four times that getting it to run properly inverted. Find a suitable four or six lane tunnel and close it for a few days. Might be cheaper to build your own, actually. Do that, and when the episode airs I promise not to fast-forward through the commercials. Deal?