Original subtitles

The stuff we do is dangerous.

Don't try this at home.

We're what you call experts.

On this episode of "Mythbusters"...

...Adam and Jamie go full throttle...

...For the most dangerous stunt in "Mythbusters" history...

Did such an aggressive wheelie, his head fell off.

...Testing the viral video

That a motorcycle could surf the surface of a lake.

I want to try it.

But will it be man over bike?

Could he plant himself right here

And just start flying?

Or will Jamie torque on water?

Meanwhile, kari, tory, and grant

Get the drop on a free-fall free-for-all...

Oh!

I don't even want to know what the g's are on that.

...Finding out if a criminal

Could make a parachute

Out of the paraphernalia inside a hotel room.

What is that, the new fall fashion?

Ah!

But will their crazy canopies...

Gonna be a lot of wet floors

With all these shower curtains missing.

...Let buster skydive and survive?

Come on.

Open!

Oh!

Who are the Mythbusters?

Adam savage...

This is science in action.

...And Jamie hyneman.

Buh-bye.

Between them, more than 30 years of special-effects experience.

Together with grant imahara...

That is crazy.

...Kari byron...

Aw!

...And tory belleci.

It's about to get real.

They don't just tell the myths.

They put them to the test.

-- Captions by vitac -- www.vitac.com

Captions paid for by discovery communications

Jamie, you remember when

Kari, grant, and tory did the episode about

A sports car skipping across the lake?

I do.

50 miles an hour.

That car didn't skip!

It flipped!

We got one similar to that this time,

Except this time,

It's a motorcycle riding on the water.

A motorcycle actually riding on top of water.

Apparently.

We got a motorcyclist,

He's riding down the freeway way too fast,

He comes to a bend,

And when he comes to the bend, he can't make it.

So he plows right through it, and there is a lake,

Except that he stays on top of the lake

And makes it safely to the other side.

Sounds dangerous and fun.

I'm in. Excellent.

I can't stop it.

Motorbikes and water

Seem like a catastrophic combination.

Yet, according to this myth,

If you take the lake at freeway speeds,

You could burn aqua all the way to the other side.

But will this physics-defying feat

Prove more sink than skim?

Clearly, this episode ends with

One of us-- I'm guessing it's you --

Riding a big, powerful motorcycle

And attempting to keep it on top of the water.

Yeah, but I don't think

We should just jump right into this,

Because it involves high speed, crashes,

Drowning, broken bones.

It's risky.

All right, well, they do make

Some very powerful r.C. Motorcycles.

What say we take one of those out into the field,

Ride them over a small body of water,

And see what we can learn on the high-speed camera.

Sure, why not.

Now, we're not gonna be going stampeding towards full scale

Right away in this story.

We've come to a, basically, off-road motorcycle park

Not far the "Mythbusters" shop, and we're gonna be doing

A little bit of experimenting with these.

These are the little radio-controlled motorcycles,

And they happen to have a gyroscope in the rear wheel

To help them stabilize as they go.

The top speed on them is about 20 miles an hour.

What that'll do in water, I have no idea,

But that's what we're here to find out.

Well, our scale bikes require a scale pool,

And that's just what this is.

With a nice, gentle transition over there,

It's only a couple of inches deep,

And with the aid of our high-speed camera,

Hopefully, it will illuminate some key things we need to know

About whether or not bikes can stay on top of the water.

And with the h20 ready to go,

It's time for the wheels to meet the water.

Here we go.

Oh!

Oh!

Nice!

Mr. Hyneman delivers.

No riding a bike through water.

He wheelies through water.

It's not quite the "wheel" deal,

As this myth is about skimming on two wheels, not one.

But luckily, they don't have long to wait.

Yeah, this is it.

Whoo!

As the hyneman masters the two-wheel maneuver.

Yeah!

Whoo!

And four triumphant trips later,

It's time to see if the bike's riding

The top of the pond or the bottom,

Thanks to the high-speed review.

Let us see what we can learn.

Wow.

Sort of on the surface right in the beginning

'cause it's coming off of that initial ramp.

The rear wheel is down, though.

And it's going down further.

At this point, it's clear that both wheels are down.

It is definitely deep in the water.

It's almost deep enough where I can say

It really feels like it's riding on the bottom.

It's not the news they were looking for.

On each and every run, their bike is

Driving through the water and not over it.

And that means, for this myth to stay afloat,

Adam and Jamie are going to need a plan "b."

Next, kari, tory, and grant shoot the breeze.

All right, so, this next one

Sounds like a hollywood action movie,

But apparently, it's totally legit.

All right, let's hear it.

All right, so, wanted criminal, surrounded by police,

Tracked down to the 20th floor of a hotel.

After a protracted negotiation,

They break down the door, and guess what they find?

Money, jewels.

Yes.

But also a homemade parachute.

That one sounds familiar.

The guy was stuck in his hotel room for three hours,

And he started making a homemade parachute

Out of sheets and shower curtains,

But he never made the jump

Because the police broke in and caught him before he could.

So, he never jumped.

We don't know if the parachute actually works.

Exactly.

Can you make a homemade parachute

Out of things you can find in a standard hotel room.

Cool.

Yep, this audacious escape escapade

Comes straight from the criminal mind.

Supposedly, this bad guy

Was going to wing it with a makeshift chute.

But could he have

Defeated gravity for this getaway?

Is there any way an improvised parachute

Could let you down safely?

All right, guys, how about this?

We get all of

The standard contents from a hotel room.

You know, drapes, sheets, shower curtains, lamp cords.

And then we have three hours to build a parachute.

Oh, that's great.

We can connect each of our chutes to buster

And drop him from 20 stories, just like in the myth.

All right, well, we better get crackin'.

The police are on their way.

Where's he going?

Yep. First, it's a build-off, or "chute-out."

We're working on the myth that you can make a parachute

Out of common things you might find in a hotel room.

Now, that gives us so much material.

We've got the bedding on the beds,

The curtains, the blackout curtains,

The rods, the strings,

Any cords you can find from lamps or tvs or ethernet cables,

And the wealth that is the bathroom.

I mean, we have shower curtains, towels --

Anything you can think of.

Now, we have three hours to do this,

Because the burglar only had three hours,

To see which of us can come up with

The most successful parachute.

And the clock starts now.

So, the first decision is to choose their weaving of choice.

So, what I'm gonna use is this blackout curtain.

It's fabric coated by plastic.

That's gonna give me a lot of wind resistance

And not only that -- that plastic coating

Is gonna give me more strength.

Hopefully, this'll work.

I'm starting out with the lightest,

Least-porous materials that I could find,

Which are the shower curtains, the liners.

I'm going to attach them

And make them the base of my parachute.

I figure they'll hold the air the best.

What I'm doing is

Using these curtain rods to make a frame.

And, then, from that, I'm gonna drape this duvet cover over it.

The reason I chose a duvet cover as opposed to regular sheets is

I didn't want to sew any seams.

I think if I have any seams on there,

It's going to be not as strong.

Indeed, because strength is vital,

Considering what their improvised chutes have to mimic.

Now, the way a parachute works

Is by increasing the surface area of a falling object

So that way, it has more contact with air.

And it's this air resistance

That decelerates the terminal velocity of a human

From 120 miles an hour to less than 5 miles per hour

For a soft landing.

So that's what we're trying to match.

Yep, it's a head-to-head challenge

That's going to require some clever crafting.

Whoa.

What hotel are you staying in?

The ritz? I don't know.

This looks more like the kind of hotel

Where you could rent the hot tub by the hour.

And each mythbuster is opting for

A different shape of canopy.

It's quite a challenge,

Especially with shower curtains and sheets.

Grant's going for 144 square feet of fabric.

I already ripped it.

That's not a good thing.

While kari is sewing sheets into

A more traditional dome design.

I'm using the cord from the curtains to tie it together,

And then I'm leaving a hole right in the middle

So that it should sail down straight.

If that doesn't work, I'm gonna

Tie a pillow to my head like a helmet.

And tory is

Patching together a rectangular chute.

So, we're already one hour into this challenge,

And I'm looking at the size of my parachute.

I don't think this is gonna be good enough.

I don't think I'm gonna get this done.

It's my harness.

What is that, the new fall fashion?

Okay, time pressure is starting to get to me

Because I just don't think I can get this done.

I don't think I can get this done in three hours.

With less than five minutes to go,

The guys race to stitch up this challenge.

So, what I've done is I've ripped out

All the electrical wiring in my hotel room.

Saw macgyver do this once.

And I'm gonna use that as my stringers for my parachute.

I am feeling pretty darn confident.

And with some last-minute adjustments...

If this is knotting on the ground,

What's it gonna do in the air?

Oh, man!

I got 60 seconds.

...The cutting, taping, sewing, and sweating

Comes to an end.

And...

Done!

Done.

Done.

Three hours, three Mythbusters,

And three hotel rooms full of fabric later,

And they've got three parachutes ready for the drop zone.

You might think it looks a little flimsy,

But, hey, it's only got to work once.

Is this gonna save buster's life? I don't know.

But if I had to jump off a building

And I had a choice between no parachute and this parachute,

I guarantee you, I'll take this choice.

Wow, kari, that's a nice-looking parachute you made.

It actually looks like a parachute.

Yeah, it's an artistic rendition of a parachute.

Let's see if it actually flies like one.

All right. Are you ready?

Let's do it. All right.

Later, buster goes down...

- Whoa! - Hey!

Look at him! Hey!

...And the tension ramps up.

Let's launch the beast. It's now or never.

But can a motorcycle ever turn motorboat?

It's a myth that's hell on two wheels,

But could a motorbike ever turn motorboat?

Well, so far, you can lead a bike to water,

But you can't make it skim.

However, all is not lost.

Well, I, for one, learned a lot from that test.

Yeah, who knew that you could wheelie across water

And that your head would fall off?

Look, I want to somehow see

If a motorcycle wheel at speed

Gains real buoyancy on the water's surface,

But how are we gonna get one of these

Going 60 or 70 miles an hour on water

Under controlled conditions?

Well, riding on water says "boat" to me,

So why don't we hang a wheel off the side of a boat?

They make boats that go 70 or 80 miles an hour?

You bet they do.

With top speeds of over 90 miles per hour,

Powerboats sure can pace across a pond.

But before they feel the need for speed,

First they need to rustle up the wheel in the water.

What you got?

Well, at its most basic, this is the boat.

This is the motorcycle wheel in scale to that boat.

Obviously, it can sit in the water like this,

And when we get up to speed,

If the wheel does get buoyancy, it would rise up.

And then the question is, how much weight can it support?

And that's where this comes in.

We can put on barbell weights of various sizes

Until we determine how much weight.

Sure.

I think this is pretty straightforward.

It may be straightforward for Adam,

But for the rest of us, here's a graphic.

The weight of a motorbike means that in water, it'll sink.

But if its wheels were spinning at highway speeds,

Could that keep it afloat?

To find out, the plan is to

Attach a motorbike wheel to a speedboat.

Then, as the boat accelerates,

The wheel should spin up onto the surface.

But will it stay above water

If the weight of a rider is added to it?

It's a dastardly design,

But in the workshop,

Adam's galloping through the build.

I don't know, for some reason,

It reminds me of a horse rearing up.

a horse made of steel.

And before you can say "chrome pony,"

His steel-rim rig is ready to saddle up.

And at a local lake, it's time to put it to the test.

The open air, the sun --

There's just nothing not to love about boating.

Honestly.

Let's get this thing in the water.

Okay.

This here is our test platform --

20 feet long with a 300 horsepower outboard engine

And a tunnel-hull design.

She is built for racing, built for speed

And will go between 85 and 90 miles per hour --

Perfect for our testing purposes.

First up, we need to get our rig bolted to it.

The plan here is simple --

Bolt the wheel to the boat...

I claim this scientific rig in the name of "Mythbusters."

...Lower the boat into the water...

Perfect.

...And then take it for a spin.

Let's get this party started.

All right.

Are you ready? Ready.

Go!

But almost immediately,

It's clear that there's a problem.

The tail end is so heavy that

The boat's not only taking on water...

You're spilling water over the side there.

...Its top speed has plummeted.

Our problem is, there's so much drag,

The boat's not able to get up on a plane,

Where it sits on top of the water.

That's where the real speed happens.

Jamie's gonna crawl up to the bow,

I'm gonna rig the wheel up,

And we'll see if it works.

So, with Jamie

Clinging on as a counterbalance...

I've actually done this before to hang on top of a car.

...It's the moment of truth.

Okay.

All right, here we go.

Come on! Come on! Come on!

Come on! Come on! Come on!

At first, it all hangs in the balance,

But when Adam gives the wheel a heave,

They finally pick up speed.

There he goes.

Yes!

As the boat clocks 50...

Yes! Yeah!

...Then 60 miles per hour...

Totally works!

...It's clear that the wheel is riding the water,

Which is great for the myth.

What's less great is that

This crazy contraption is so dangerous...

Yeah!

Whoa, whoa, whoa.

Wait up.

It's scary.

...That the guys decide to quit while they're ahead.

Ooh.

Whoo!

All right, I've got some good new and some bad news.

I am going to start with the bad.

The bad news is is that

Our rig didn't quite work as planned.

We had really wanted to start to add weight

And experiment with different speeds of the boat

To come up with a graph

Of speed-to-weight ratio that would tell us

Exactly how fast we'd have to hit the water at

For the motorcycle wheel to support its rider.

And we didn't quite get that.

The good news is

Is that even though it took everything we had,

We were able to get the boat up on a plane

And the wheel skipping across the water,

Which means that there is something to this,

And it means we can proceed with some confidence

To full scale that this might just work.

Cornered by the cops, could you improvise a parachute,

Defeat the free fall, and flee to freedom?

To find out,

Kari, tory, and grant have unraveled the rip cord

And now have three makeshift chutes to deploy.

It's time to find out

If any of our do-it-yourself hotel parachutes

Can decelerate buster gently to the ground.

We've come out to treasure island on a beautiful day

With a crane that could lift him 20 stories into the air.

We're going to drop him with each of our designs,

But first, the control -- no parachute.

Now, to find out exactly what buster

Is going to be experiencing in this drop,

We're gonna attach an accelerometer.

Now, for him to survive this fall,

He has to withstand less than 100 g's.

For him to survive the fall without injury,

He has to withstand less than 10 g's.

Don't look so sad, buddy.

Yep, once again,

Buster will have to do what he does best

And take the fall from 200 feet.

All right, here we go.

Bye-bye, buster, in three, two, one...

Ohh.

Oh!

God, I don't even want to know

What the g's are on that.

Well, thanks to the accelerometer...

All right, let's see what we got.

...It's easy enough to find out.

Wow, look at that -- 500 g's.

And he hit the ground at 83 miles an hour.

He definitely did not survive that.

But will jumping from 20 stories

With a homemade chute be any better?

Oh!

Here's why we're hoping our parachutes will work --

Gravity acts on all objects, no matter how much they weigh,

Causing them to fall at the same rate.

Go, go, go!

Yeah!

The only reason why two objects

Won't fall at the same rate

Is because of air resistance.

These two pieces of paper, in fact,

Do weigh the same amount.

But this one has a lot more surface area.

It has to push a lot more air molecules out of the way

To fall down, and thus...

In order for this myth to be confirmed,

This is what our parachutes will have to do.

You ready?

I'm ready.

And first to attempt that

Is tory's blackout-curtain canopy.

That's something you don't see every day.

Blackout-curtain parachute drop,

In three, two, one...

Whoo! Oh!

Yeah!

Amazingly, tory's chute deployed and slowed buster down,

But unfortunately, not enough to head off the impact.

Oh, buster lost his head.

Oh, no. And his hand.

Oh, that is a bad sign.

So, we just dropped the blackout-curtain parachute.

And there's some good news,

But there's some really bad news.

The good news is, the parachute opened

And it decelerated buster's descent.

However, the bad news --

When he hit the ground, he hit it with 160 g's.

That's well over 100 g's.

Therefore, buster is dead.

That brings the curtain down on tory.

But grant's frame-up is still to go.

Aah!

Hey-oh! Whoa!

Oh! Ah!

We got a technical difficulty.

Oh, boy.

Trouble in "mythbuster" land.

The wind has picked up, and apparently,

Grant's rig does not like that.

Had to be a windy day, didn't it?

Grant and his frame are all bent out of shape.

But can the parachute still bring buster down safely?

Look! It's batman!

you guys.

He's gonna be "flat-man" in a second.

Oh, man.

Oh, boy.

here we go.

This is canopy parachute,

In three, two, one...

Hey! Hey! Look at it!

Hey! That kind of worked!

Whoo-hoo!

Yep, as it turns out,

That was an impact of 144 g's --

A quarter of the control, but still a lethal landing.

He hit the ground at 29 miles an hour.

That is well above our benchmark of 100 g's,

Which is survivable.

So, buster died with that parachute.

And for buster's final flight,

It's time to put kari's six sheets to the wind.

Look, I like my design, but honestly,

I wish I had thought of kari's design.

I mean, look at it -- it looks like

A real modern day parachute.

Come on, criminal!

It's got a huge amount of surface area,

And it's got a vent at the top to direct the air through,

So it's gonna have great stability.

I think this one has

A really good chance of saving buster.

This is curtain parachute,

In three, two, one...

There you go!

Oh!

Aw!

You had a little deployment issue.

Late deployment!

Kari's late-deploying chute did decelerate buster,

But he still hit the ground at 160 g's --

Well above the lethal limit.

Okay, this is not looking good for the myth.

I mean, we looked at the data for all the drops.

There is not one survivable fall.

We have to start from scratch.

Well, maybe we try different fabrics,

Pick out the best parts of each of our designs.

All right, well, let's go back to the shop

And see if we can figure out how to

Make a parachute that actually works.

Youtube says "yes."

The Mythbusters say "maybe."

Yeah!

Whoo!

But can a motorbike really skate the surface of a lake?

I think I might... Have beat Jamie.

Maybe not.

Well, it's time for this myth

To surf up or ship out.

Ever since we first started talking about doing this story,

We knew, of course, we'd finish on a lake.

And we had a very specific list of attributes

We considered critical for this lake to have

In order for us to have any chance of success.

Number one, the lake needed to be smooth and calm.

Two, we needed the land-to-water transition

To be incredibly gentle,

And, three, we needed that transition

Between land and water to be not too muddy.

And amazingly, we found everything we need

In this lake in ione, california,

And in a few minutes, what looks like a lake

May end up, in fact, being a motocross course.

But before Jamie "trips the lake fantastic,"

They first need a rider with some serious grunt

And some serious stunt expertise.

Meet eric mccrummen.

What do you think, eric? Are you up for it?

Sure.

Eric is the designated driver,

But there's one last thing to clarify.

I am currently standing in

The path our motorcyclist

Is going to take across the water,

And it is 38 inches deep in the middle.

If that motorcycle makes it across,

It rode on the water.

That's official.

Yep, it'll be official,

But only if it works,

Which means it's time for

The rubber to meet the reservoir.

Well, he's all set.

He's 375 feet away.

You want to wave him in?

Let's launch the beast.

It's now or never.

Okay.

Here he comes.

Whoa!

that worked!

He totally stayed on top of the water.

That was beautiful.

He, like, parted it, like a little red sea.

That was amazing!

Amazing is right.

Remember, the lake is over 3 feet deep.

Yet, instead of sinking,

Eric sailed 50 feet at 60 miles per hour.

But now Adam and Jamie want more.

Do you feel like you could go a little longer?

I think so.

Excellent!

I have to say, I'm pretty pleased about this so far.

Eric successfully just crossed 50 feet of open water,

Not fake water with land underneath --

Deep, open water -- 50 feet on a motorcycle.

So, now we're gonna cross 100 feet.

He's gonna go for a 100-foot length of water,

And we're just gonna see how far we can get.

Yep, they're doubling down on the dirt bike.

But will eric make it to the other side this time?

I'm excited -- 100 feet.

It's time to put our money where our mouth is.

Let's do it!

The pressure is on as eric revs the bike...

...Gets it up to 60 miles per hour...

...And...

Wow! Yeah!

...Leaves the lake in his wake.

He was on top of the water.

He was totally! I mean, he was actually --

I saw him do this on top of the water.

That was beautiful!

It's clear from what we're seeing --

When this bike goes across the water,

It's riding on the water.

Because we can see the wheel is bouncing.

It's just like it was

When we were on the speedboat doing our bench test.

That means that it's hitting the water

And rebounding off of it.

It means that we're riding on water.

And that means this myth is well and truly confirmed.

But it's not the end of the road yet.

Dude, I believe we have proven

That you can ride a motorcycle across the water.

I think we have.

But, you know, I have a question.

What's that?

Is what is happening there

Actually due to his momentum,

Like skipping a stone across the water,

Or is a bike this powerful capable of actually

Going out like a watercraft

And continuing to power its way across the top of water?

That is a good question.

I want to try it.

Okay.

Pulling the cords on peculiar parachutes is not new.

But could you source a successful chute

From your hotel room?

After a free-fall free-for-all...

...Maybe not.

Buster did not survive any of these drops.

So now they want to know if anything in a hotel room

Could let you down safely.

Since our do-it-yourself parachutes

Didn't quite give us the results we wanted,

We've come back to the shop

To do some small-scale experiments.

We're gonna test every fabric you might find in a hotel room.

I'm gonna make small parachutes,

Put them on top of a big, industrial fan,

Blow it upwards,

And see which parachute is

Actually going to yield the best results.

Now, our benchmark for this test will be real parachute material.

In the end, what we're looking for

Is the material that best matches

A parachute's loft and weight.

Oh, yeah, and something that can also be found in a hotel room.

Now, instead of having our parachute falling down,

We're gonna have it stationary

And have the fan blow air up into the chute,

Acting as if the parachuter were falling.

And then we're gonna find out

Which material has the best wind resistance

So we can see which material makes the best parachute.

Yep, it's all about the fabric

With the most air resistance, or loft.

So, with a force meter attached,

They fire up the fan for the control --

The real parachute.

Hey!

All right, it looks good and stable.

1.79 for the control.

So, that's our ideal performance.

1.79 is the lift to beat,

And the first makeshift chute is the shower curtain.

We're at 1.86.

This has better wind resistance than the parachute material.

Then they try the blackout curtain.

2.0. 2 pounds?!

That is our best performer so far.

And finally, the remaining swatches.

Okay, we've settled at 1.37 for the polyester drape.

All right, 1.67 for the cotton sheet.

Next.

Okay, looks like we got 1.65.

Canvas curtain pretty good as a parachute.

That's five pocket parachutes

And five impressive lift results.

But that's not all they're looking for.

We have a winner -- the blackout curtain.

It was the most air-resistant,

And gave us 2 pounds of pulling force.

However, the problem here is it's heavy.

So, what I need to do is

Weigh each of these parachute materials

And see which one is the lightest

And has similar air resistance to our parachute material.

So it turns out, the winner is -- shower curtain.

This is what we're gonna

Build our final parachute out of.

So, while the blackout curtain

Had the most air resistance,

The shower curtain was lighter.

And that, coupled with its lift,

Makes it the best material for full scale.

So, we've chosen the shower curtain

As our final material for our parachute.

And now that means we have to scale up.

Here's how it goes.

Gravity over rho.

9.8 meters per second squared.

Diameter is 2 times the square root of...

A diameter equivalent to 17.4 feet.

Now, you could never get that much shower curtain

Out of one room.

But if you had a whole floor?

Now you're talking.

With a diameter of 17.4 feet,

Their shower-curtain chute is gonna be giant.

So they've opted for the classic dome design.

But making a hemisphere out of square curtains

Means they need a plan.

This is a little pattern model of

What our finished parachute should actually look like.

We're actually going to take each of these pieces

And make a large pattern out of paper

And then construct each one out of shower curtain.

Now, it's hard to actually figure the scale

Till you really see the pattern laid out.

This is going to be a huge parachute.

It's a mammoth task of

Attaching 24 curtains with duct tape...

If this duct tape doesn't hold, buster's doomed.

...And then cutting out the six panels.

Now we stitch them all together, right?

Oh, yeah.

All right.

Now, after actually

Making our pattern, cutting it all out,

I think our original parachutes were a lot more labor-intensive

And took a lot longer to put together.

Is that all... The pieces?

Yeah, that's it. That's the pieces.

That's it for the main chute.

Now to bring in the reinforcements.

Our next job is to reinforce this hole at the top,

Which is actually gonna bear a large amount of the load.

With a little curtain cord taking up the slack,

The last element is the lines.

almost done.

This is it -- the last two lines.

And with that,

It looks like this canopy caper is all stitched-up.

That might work.

Shower curtains and duct tape --

Who would have thought?

Next stop -- 30 stories high.

Cool.

Please don't try anything you see us do at home.

This is dangerous work, and we're professionals.

So far in this parachute escapade,

For buster, it's been more high dive than skydive.

But will that change with their

Best-case scenario shower-curtain chute?

Dude, this is super cool.

We're at the mare island shipyard,

Where we've been given access to a 50-ton crane.

Now, this is gonna give us the ability to

Raise our parachute and buster 30 stories into the air.

We're going to drop him into this dry dock

With all his accelerometers and find out

If this is going to be an effective parachute.

That's an extra 10 stories

To decelerate their shower-chute.

Chin up, buddy.

So first, they need a frame of reference at this height,

With the most successful chute from their previous test.

All right, go ahead and take it up.

Just like its drop from 20 stories,

The frame buckles under buster's weight.

The good news is, it's doing

Exactly what it did last time.

But now it has more time to decelerate.

Okay, this is hotel parachute with the frame,

In three, two, one...

Yeah. Whoo!

Hey!

Oh. Oh! Wow!

Dang, he hit the ground hard.

Well, let's check the data and see if he survived the fall.

Look, I'm not a doctor, but that does not look right.

Yep, and closer examination

Proves that even from 30 stories,

Buster still clocked over 140 g's on his landing.

Clearly, a 1-room parachute is a flop,

But can a 24-room shower-curtain canopy

Do any better.

There's gonna be a lot of wet floors

With all these shower curtains missing.

I think they're gonna bill it back to our room.

This is it -- the final experiment

To see if you could take materials from your hotel room,

Make a parachute, jump out, and survive.

Now, we've taken

Everything we've learned from our small scale.

We're gonna use our shower curtain.

We've made a dome-shaped parachute,

We put a hole in the top, and we have a drag chute.

This time, we're gonna be dropping from 30 stories

To see if buster will actually survive.

This is gonna be so awesome.

Now, we know from our initial experiment

That without a parachute,

Buster's impact can get to 500 g's,

And that's from 20 stories.

The goal for today with our

Super-final experiment shower-curtain chute

Is to get that number down to 100 g's from 30 stories.

Bonus is if we can get that down to 10 g's --

That's a landing you can walk away from.

The team preps the canopy

And, for stability, adds a drag chute.

Now, I know what you're thinking --

"why do you guys have a drag chute?

That's no fair."

Well, actually, it's my laundry bag,

And I travel with it all the time.

Then the lines are attached.

All of these are 18-feet long,

Which should give us the minimum our lines should be

So that it opens to the perfect circumference

And drops at the most stable rate.

I love your optimism.

Let's take it up.

It's crazy, but a parachute

Made out of shower curtains and duct tape --

I think it's gonna work.

Our science is sound. The calculations all work out.

It works on paper.

I think buster might actually land safety.

Well, buster will have to find that out the hard way,

Or, if kari is right, the soft way.

Suspended from 30 stories,

It's time for this myth's shower-curtain call.

All right, here we go.

Shower-curtain parachute, in three, two, one...

Come on.

Open.

Open! Oh!

Do you think it might have worked?

Did you see how light he landed?

Let's go check the data. Yes!

Initially, buster was on a crash course,

But meters from the ground,

Amazingly, the shower curtains opened

And gently slowed his drop.

The question now is, did he survive?

Am I -- am I seeing what I'm seeing?

Yeah, that's the peak right there.

4 g's?!

He survived the landing without injury.

That's so cool.

Our parachute worked, and the best part is,

Buster received 4.2 g's,

Which means not only did he survive,

He survived without injury.

However, the problem here is,

He had way more shower curtains

Than the criminal would have had,

Way more time to build it,

And the criminal didn't have

The engineering that we used to make this.

So, even though buster isn't busted,

This myth is.

Next, we hook this up to the ironing board

And go kite surfing!

Come on! Whoo!

I can't pull it.

It's too strong.

After the break,

Jamie puts his life on the line.

Here he comes.

But can he motocross over 4,000 feet of water?

Whoa!

Obviously,

If you're gonna ride a motorcycle on water,

Weight is a huge issue, as is power.

And that's why I've chosen this particular motorcycle --

Because it's made by a company in indiana

Called service power sports,

And what they do is, they take a lightweight aluminum chassis

That normally only has a 250cc engine on it.

Instead, they put a 500cc, high-performance,

2-cycle motor on it,

And that makes it, power-for-pound,

About as good as you can get in a dirt bike.

It's a rocket.

Welcome back.

All episode long, we have been testing a story

That a motorcycle might just be a viable water vehicle.

Seriously.

And with a motorcycle wheel strapped to

The outside of a high-powered speedboat

Going 70 miles an hour,

It really seemed like

There might be something to this story.

Yeah!

So, then we got a professional motocross rider,

And we gave him 100 feet of open water to cross,

And he was able to do it.

Wow! Yeah!

But now mr. Hyneman has a brand-new question --

Is the motorcycle

Skipping across the water on its own momentum

Or does it have enough power to continue indefinitely?

And Jamie wants to try it.

Yep, while eric crossed a mere 100 feet,

Jamie wants more.

It's a nice flat run.

He wants to see if the bike can get such a grip on the water

That he can speed across the entire lake.

To do so, he'll literally be putting his life on the line,

But not without some modifications.

First, the run up to the water needs to be smoother

To let Jamie really let rip.

I think that ought to do it.

Then the bike needs a flotation device

So it doesn't drag him to the bottom if he fails.

I believe I've got enough flotation here

To make it float.

Maybe.

And finally, a lifeguard team is on standby.

This is where it's all about to happen,

But what exactly is going to happen

Here at the transition between land and water?

By the time Jamie reaches this point,

He should be going between 55 and 75 miles per hour

When he enters the water.

Could he just skip all the way across the water

To the opposite side of the lake,

About 3/4 of a mile away?

Or could he plant himself right here and just start flying

And become his own cautionary discovery channel documentary

About what not to do?

It's one of the most dangerous experiments

In "Mythbusters" history.

Here he comes.

At breakneck speed, Jamie hits the water,

And then...

Whoa!

It's man over bike.

Let's go over to him.

Adam and the medic team rush in.

He's good.

But it'll take more than a 70-mile-an-hour high dive

To hurt the hyneman.

You all right, sir?

I'm just fine.

I think it did a little bit of a --

What is it, a half-gainer or something

Into the water?

Definitely no broken bones or anything.

Good.

The good news is that Jamie's fighting fit.

The bad news is that he traveled only 80 feet,

Far less than eric's effort.

So, what went wrong?

This is one of those cases where

If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

We added this foam, just so that

We could retrieve the bike without drowning it afterwards,

But it turned out that the spray coming up off of the wheel

Was providing a certain amount of lift back here,

Which, in turn, made more stress on the front wheel,

Which made it plunge and made me do a somersault.

So, I'm gonna go back to the original type of bike --

We have a second one --

And have another try.

You heard that right.

Jamie's getting straight back on the horsepower.

And what's more,

This time, he's upping the speed to 80.

But will that allow him to burn aqua all the way across?

Yeah!

Yeah!

Oh!

He's good!

Beautiful!

That was amazing!

It seemed to go on forever!

Riding, riding, riding, riding.

That's, like, easily 300 feet or more, buddy.

That was amazing.

Piece of cake.

How you feeling?

Relieved it's over and I'm alive.

Incredibly, Jamie hit the water,

Throttled the throttle, and surfed for over 300 feet.

And while he wasn't able to

Get a good enough grip to carry on across,

It's still myth, well and truly, confirmed.

In case there's any doubt, I'm standing on the bike.

It's in about 8 feet of water, maybe.

So I was riding on water for about 300 feet.

So, riding a motorcycle across the water --

Busted, plausible, or confirmed?

Confirmed.

Not recommended, but it's confirmed.

Yes, but only for 300 feet.

I was hoping for further.

I'll settle for that.

And so will we,

So why not cue the music for a motocross water montage?

Yeah!

Yeah!

Yeah!

That was amazing!

Have you had enough?

Of course you haven't!

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