Stephen Caver

If you missed Mythbusters tonight, you missed a good one. The Mythbusters tested airplane on a conveyor belt myth which states:

A plane is standing on a runway that can move (some sort of band conveyor). The plane moves in one direction, while the conveyer moves in the opposite direction. This conveyer has a control system that tracks the plane speed and tunes the speed of the conveyer to be exactly the same (but in the opposite direction). Can the plane take off?

If you know anything about physics, it should be immediately clear what will happen—the plane takes off. Jason Kottke, who had posed the question in an earlier blog entry, was live blogging the event (in my opinion every Mythbusters episode should be live blogged) and after watching the episode, reading Kottke’s post and reading a majority of the comments to his post, I’m walking away with a few things on my mind.

First of all, why in the hell does Jason think the Mythbusters is “slow?” And who are these jokers in the comments that agree with him? This is the first time I’ve ever heard of somebody actually disliking Mythbusters. After all, it is the greatest show ever conceived. I’m a little miffed at the suggestion that it’s not top notch quality entertainment for the whole family. I’ve been known, thanks to my craptastic Time Warner Cable DVR, to watch it through an entire weekend. Nonstop. My crush on Kari Byron burns red hot.

Mythbusters promotes science, dispels of silly ideas, and advocates critical thinking. A healthy skeptical attitude towards observing the world around us is a beautiful thing, and I applaud The Discovery Channel for putting the Mythbusters on. Lesser people watch Ghost Hunters. I think it is one of the most important shows on television. Right next to South Park (which I have said, and will say again, is the Shakespeare of our time).

Plus, Kari Byron. Hello, Jason? Kari Byron. Need I say more?

That aside, there is this issue with the plane. Why the plane takes off is plainly (no pun intended) obvious. The energy being generated by the engine is being acted upon the air via propellers or a jet engine, not the ground. It is the force against the air that drives the plane forward and up to a speed where it can take off. If you disagree, you’re wrong. I’m not making an argument for the plane taking off side, I’m simply stating what the facts are for backstory. No emails telling me I’m wrong, please. Because I’m not. I’m right.

What interests me the most about this (besides being so utterly flabbergasted that there are people out there who don’t enjoy The Mythbusters on the scale I do) is that it shows how our brains are constantly deceiving ourselves. Intuitively, it seems like the plane would stay put. That is what us crazy upright apes, with our poorly evolved monkey brains, intuitively grasp. But that is not always the case. It is a classic example of why we need shows like Mythbusters that encourage critical thinking and a healthy skeptical attitude about the world.

After all, the Sun intuitively looks like it is orbiting the earth. And that took a little myth busting to crack as well.

Note: Actually, to be technically correct, the earth doesn’t orbit the sun. The sun and earth orbit a common center of mass. But you get what I mean.