To the person that decided to post entire episodes almost without ads on youtube for FREE , i just wanna say, you're an angel and thank you so much. This show was my childhood.

I never heard that shape of trenches is to dissipate shock wave. I was taught that it is to a) stop shrapnel and to limit visibility/cut short line of aim down the trench in case enemy forces manage to invade it.

They should have shown what purpose-built airbags would have done in the situation.

About the small scale trench thing, how is everyone carrying on about margin of error? The waves are produced mechanically and perfectly consistent, removing any possible errors. Consistency equals accuracy, and i think they nailed it.

this was the special-est show ever. So glad we have this much footage of Grant, Kari, Tori and the two nuts. Very important viewing, love every second

32:35 Focusing effect, not amplifying.

I imagine that there's a lot more you could do to mitigate shockwave propagation through a trench. So have the trench step back and forth (at the end of the test trench there would be another two turns to get the trench back in line with the original line of the trench... BUT, have the trench always overshoot the passageway that connects the forward and rearward trenches. That way the blast can partially continue forward into a dead end, and the portion of the blast that travels down the branch to the other line would also split left and right into the dead end here as well.

25 pounds of TNT sound a hell lot like an artillery shell rather than a mortar

Wow, the jolly happy narrator describing trench warfare as wretched over footage of the horror feels a bit weird! 😂

10%: Trench stuff 90%: Uninteresting filler with baloons

Airbags aren't designed to hold the gas inside the way a balloon does, the safety comes from the controlled deflation in a similar way to the crashbags stunt performers use for jumping off buildings safely. Trenches should really have been twice as long with the explosion in the middle as an explosion at one end is directing the blast down the same way, skews the numbers quite a lot when comparing to the surface control.

The square vs rounded trench data they obtained from the large scale experiments was almost identical - probably within the margin of error.

Imagine being a soldier stuck in a trench, cold wet and scared. What a horrible time for humanity

Gold paint ? Oops 🤫

The moment when Adam is describing the first trench blast and remembers what it represents 🙏

13:53 This is a great transition, works really well!

26:37.... Epic

There is something I have not seen them test via trenching. When you carve out tunnel shelters in a snow bed, you usually want to make sure that the breeze does not funnel in to your room. What you would do to counter that, is make something like a T junction, where at the end of a sharp corner you just continue digging 2-4 feet further past the next turn, to force the pressure from the breeze to just stop and push back on itself. If that were to be tested with explosives, I can for certain expect a drastic amount of change in the pressure wave going through the whole thing.

Thumbnail error?

Another reason why WWI trenches were zig zag shape is that in the event of an enemy making it into your trench he couldn't simply point his rifle down the length of the trench and shoot anyone within sight and you could set up an ambush for a raiding party round the corner.

the 90 degree angles were used by both sides and it was to stop firing lines in addition to mitigating incoming artillery. it's much harder to take a trench dug in this fashion and much safer for it's occupants.

99 Luftballons for the clown car myth. The highspeed footage from the round corner trench is incredible and the explosions are stunning. Even today they use sharp corner trenches like in the Ukraine war.

This really makes you feel for those poor guys in Ukraine going through this right now, as we're watching this. 😧

what effect would a slope or ramp have?

seatbelt: 150g large balloons: 130g i'm replacing all my seatbelts with ballons now

I'm curious if acute angles in the trenches epuld have further lowered the eave propagation? But logistically, that wpuld have required more digging to cover the same front distance.

Rip Grant. Looked upto you as a child. Still do.

Interesting that the straight angle trench doesn't seem to reduce the pressure that much. I wonder if digging an alcove at each corner would help reduce the pressure more?

So, aim your explosives at the corner of trenches so it spreads both ways down the trench. We learned from test 1 that it actually magnifies the blast. Useful info if ever needed.

adam is having a blast 16:45. Let's just say you don't want to be in any of these trenches.

Can someone explain why the two angled trenches produced significantly lower numbers on the first 10ft measurement than the straight line trench. The 10ft measurements were all taken before any corners. I can understand why the trench amplifies the blast wave. I would've expected that to be the case. and I can understand why standing at the far end of the sharp angled trench would be the safer option. Again, its what I was expecting But I would've expected the first set of measurements from the blasts in the trenches to be around the same point. They were closer to the above ground test than the straight line though.

Now, how would it have worked to have corners at _less_ than 90 degrees (so sharper corners, like in a Z)?

Tbh the ballon test is pretty useless, the reason an airbag works is because its a fixed ballon. During the car crash the "passenger" pushed the ballons out of the way. Which will always be the case for unfixed ballons, it will always just move out of the way instead of absorbing the energy. Now the ballon crusher was also a bad rig, since the baloons were confined to the tube forcing them to actually absorb the load, which wouldn't have hapenned in the actual car, once again they would have simply been pushed out of the way. And the last car also wasnt a perfect comparison since its the first car completely filled with baloons so the baloons couldnt move outof the way. (They basically controlled for it) the last tests with ballons bunched together is fairer since its pretty obvious it cant be compared to the starting test

Season and episode number?

RIP Grant

i really wonder if that 397 on the 20feet straight was a fluke sensor, or some flaw in the testing like the explosive went more directed or there was more trench on the other side of the explosion on the others idk but i do believe its probably higher then the rest but by 5-6 times compared to the corner trenches feels off.

There is one imprecision was inthat experiment with oil. Blast waves and sound waves are compression, longintudional waves, and wave on surface is transversed wave. They refere to each other like electic field to magnetic field. I.e. one can create another in liquid and solid medium.. but not in air

Having dug many (too many_ trenches in the UK military - the corners are designed to stop shrapnel, and provide a break in the line of sight to stop enemy invasion of the trensh just shooting down the whole length. Nothing mentioned about the blast really...

i bet the people that lived there evey time they heard that siren, they would say there goes the mythbusters again.

The balloon test is flawed, the Tari ballon did great considering the speed the load was going. Also, the car didnt crash full head on with all his weight, the wheels are on the floor dissipating some of the weight

100g is only very likley dead. The highest survived was in a F1 crash and was above 400gs

Why are the numbers at the first sensor in the angled trenches lower than the straight trench, when the first sections of those trenches are also straight..?

I think you want to use strong balloons but you do want a good number of them to pop to dissipate energy

Werent the angled trenches built to hinder "line of sight" from the attackers too? Was no mention of it

Remember guys, don't crash a car at 50km/h without a seatbelt into the ground.

Since there are questions, the answer is: #191/S10E13 "Trench Torpedo" October 14, 2012

The balloon test is flawed, the Tari ballon did great considering the speed the load was going

Your trenches arent deap enough + your supposed to have a higher back, that ussually overhang's over an even deeper part of the trench

I want one of these as a feature on my window sill, like someone woould have a lava lamp.

problem is it didn't look like the numbers in the Serphentine compared to the right angle was that great of a difference. Besides...not so much the shockwave that will get you...did you see the shrapnel that the construction created?

0:40 that is foulllllll 💀💀💀💀💀💀

12:13 OLOLOLOLOL They censor the Ford car, but not the Ford Truck

00:20

I understand why they use dummies but it's not really a fair result considering a human can brace and absorb and slow down the impact with their arms and not just allow a full impact

So For the trench Cause and effect = attention to Quickest react/response = test

Please, we want to know number of season/episode...

Why have we stopped putting season and episode number in the title?

Why do they fill the balloons to the max? Fill them just 2/3 and they have some room to absorb energy without popping.🎉🎉🎉🎉

reminds me on my time in the german bundeswehr... nowadays the shirts need to be folded in exact angles ... ;)

Its good you can change your thumbnail after uploading the video

RIP grant..

Did they get their ghostbusters reference wrong?

Balloon animal indeed...

Big bangs, woooohs and lots show... this is U.S. science 😎

With the party balloon myth why didn't they use an actual airbag as a control? I think they got that part wrong.

As a pure mathematician with a basic understanding of fluid dynamics, I could have explained why the right angle trench was better in about 5 minutes and with absolutely no use of construction tools, hahha

The trenches were at hard angles because it's actually more effective against shrapnel and easier to defend in a same trench shootout

trench bomb... 20 feet marker (none have meet a bend or anything jet, so all of them have been straight so far... 397 vs 60 vs 76... how come that big a difference...? And why havnt they noticed that, with that huge a difference before a bend? Oo

Anyone notice they made a orange trench and didnt blow it up.. Wonder why they bothered making it?

Ok, just one crucial observation - the clowns were not crashing by a free fall, they had horizontal vector of travel ( where the mass of the car DOES NOT influence the speed of the crash as much as if the car fell vertically). The speed of 35Mph is roughly about 50 Km/h, so that in itself should not be quite as lethal even if the passenger clown was not strapped in but was alert enough to brace himself before the crash.

So,.. It's best to have plywood baffles in your workshop, in case something explodes. ...like a clown...

do they have a museum?

Ok, but why does the thumbnail talk about gold paint?!

How about a more acute angle than 90 degrees?

There where not any soldiers in the test explosions...there for i declare the results inconclusive

I think if you deflated them little bit less they would absorb much more

Now test modern trench that gave angle even grater than 90 and close to 120. 🤣🤣

If the driver clown with a seatbelt on experienced 150G - 130G with balloons only would, for most people, still be survivable IMO. Survivable doesn't mean no injuries - or even pleasant. 100G is a very rough estimate for fatality. There is certainly a difference between a 90-year old grandma and a fit 25-year old man.

Everyone who rewinded at 21:19 are true slipknot fans

40:11 Kary starring CJ haha

Why not 10 degrees over 90? ... 100 degrees all over?

Something wrong with the methodology of the testing. Plenty of people survive 35mph car crashes, even without airbags and in some cases seatbelts.

What season and episode is this? Banijay used to include it in the title

It wasn't just the Germans who constructed their trenches that way

2:15 The Germans also had a purely defensive mindset. While they were initially on the attack once trench warfare set in they switched to pure defense as they were on French soil and so they could just wait for the allies to attack them which they did many times. The Germans were fighting a 2 front war and so they minimized troops on the western front as much as possible to sent as many to the east as possible to beat Russia and then launch a massive counterattack on the west once Russia was defeated. This meant that the German Trenches were permanent while those of the allies were temporary.

Wheres the myths bout gold paint

Am I mental? Or should they be using the thick latex or mylar balloons, but 1/2 - 3/4 filled? The starting stress of the surface of the balloon makes a huge difference as to how they will react to being essentially "squeezed"

Man…. Grant. Damn… 😔

I am a bit confused by the numbers in both experiments. 1. Trenches Open air explosion: 39-12-7-5 Straight trench: 397-65-38-21 Sharp Corner Trench: 60-19-12-7 Round Corner Trench: 76-21-13-8 While the myth seems plausible, I do not get the enormous difference at 20ft. That is before the first ned is reached, meaning at that point all trenches were identical. And should have given the same values. There is no reason why the straight trench should give 5-7 times more pressure at 20ft than the other two. This is fishy. The difference between round and sharp corners is small. This could easily be explained by various variables like how the explosive was packaged, how it was placed, how it burned, etc. If it was angled slightly downward, this could make all the difference. And again, at 20ft. there should be no difference at all, yet there is. And I did not get the reason why they shored it up. You can cut a more precise corner with just earth. Trenches in WW1 rarely were shored up, because they were temporary. Only in long-term trench warfare like Verdun and others did it make sense to put time and effort in shoring up. And, yeah, with n=1 you can't really say anything. 2. Balloons The test rig did not work correctly. The drop distance of the weight was different, because the height of the balloons differed. Thus the better dog-balloon cushion lost only because the weight dropped nearly double the distance before contact with the balloons. I am not really impressed with this episode.

they missed a chance to put baloons into trench

what about using fart couchins as airbag

As german I can say: BESTÄTIGT

Car looks like vw benetton and clown wig like O'Malley

Though I think they should have had a softer surface for the car to crash into. Even something like a tree gives a little and another car gives a lot. It crashing into the ground means it's smashing against a completely immovable force. They should have had the clown with the seat belt survive to serve as a valid control.

I think that the main reason why trenches zigzag is to not expose every single soldier to the enemy when and if the enemy enters said trench. A couple of enemy soldiers with a light machine-gun in a straight trench could finish or wound every single soldier in it. Trenches had been used in the past where artillery did not exist. Another thing to remember is that airburst shells reduced the advantages of zigzagging trenches to a significant extent, as the shockwave starts higher up, thus reaching more of the trench system. With that said, against impact and delayed fuzes, zigzag trenches do offer a lot more protection, as the fuzes will initiate upon hitting the trench or shortly after.

the angeled shape was build to provide of shrapnels flying through the whole trench in first place, reducing the shockwave is just a positive side effect

Nice balloon animal shot Carrie. ;)

I miss Grant :’(

I like how they always give the dumb, less interesting ones to the b-team

There's a serious flaw in dropping the car as a test... In a normal car, your body shares the acceleration of the car, which at cruising speed is zero. Then when you hit something that's the starting point of the sudden deceleration. In the clown test, the 'people' are now rapidly accelerating as the car falls, then thrown into sudden deceleration, greatly affecting any possible results.