Original subtitles

On this episode of Mythbusters. Let's go.

Adam and Jamie light up a festive myth that's tremendous.

All I know is this is going to make some little child really happy.

Can lights on a tree cause it to burst into flame?

I look so cheery now.

Then Cary Grant and Tori make light work of a heavy concept.

When does the time -space fabric start to weave around this?

When they investigate the possibility that you can flick a switch.

And turn off gravity.

It worked.

And if that wasn't enough, Carrie takes one for the team.

I didn't know what I was getting myself into here. To find out if vodka can cure

the sting of a jellyfish. Okay, now we can start treatment.

Okay.

Who are the Mythbusters?

Adam Savage.

I'm making a rocket out of meat.

And Jamie Heineman.

I'm so excited.

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

That's what I'm talking about!

Joining them, Carrie Byron. I'm a piñata!

Grant Imahara. Don't say anything.

And Tori Bellacci. Oh, yeah, totally.

They don't just tell the bits.

They put them to the test.

What do you got?

Well, this one has been flooding my inbox.

It is a very popular seasonal myth, but I can't wait until Christmas to test it.

Okay, well, what is it?

Well, you know, during Christmas season, you will have your tree festooned with

lights. The myth is if you leave that tree on overnight, the lights can cause

the tree to heat up, burst into flames, burn your house to the ground.

Well, Christmas tree fires do happen every year. Right, but is it because of

heat from the lights or from some other reason?

So we need to dial in on exactly what's going on there.

Precisely.

It's the epitome of the festive season, a tree dressed with colored lights. But

is it dressed to kill?

Free fires are no laughing matter. But is this nightmare before Christmas

caused by simply leaving the tree lights on?

Well, the Mythbusters are getting fired up to find an answer.

What's the plan on this one?

Well, we'd get a regular tree and a normal amount of lights, put it on it,

fire it up, see what happens.

Right. You know, it occurs to me that we should test several different types of

lights, because if there's one that gets hotter than the others, that should be

our test platform.

Okay. And then if none of the normal quantities of lights of whatever type

that tree on fire, then we need to really ramp it up and put a bunch of

there. Right. But if your ridiculous number of light fails to ignite that

we're going to have to resort to something other than the heat of the

You mean like a short.

Exactly.

But before all that, the first step in turning the spotlight on this myth is to

get some lights. And the boys know just the place.

We've come to a place called Fantastico in downtown San Francisco. And when you

want really weird, esoteric, strange things, and you want a lot of them, and

want them cheap, this is where I have been coming for well over a decade.

Let's see if store manager Mike can shed some light on the storm.

Now the question for us is, are the cases of the trees being set on fire a

function of the lights themselves or of the operator putting up too many of them

in one? These lights nowadays have a safety fuse and a plug.

In the old days, you know, on the box it would say don't put more than three

sets, and a guy would have, you know, 20 sets strung out, so it would overload

your circuit and cause the house to burn. But now these actually have a

fuse in the socket.

There's a multitude of lights to choose from. The chili pepper and lobster ones

are tempting.

Now, why would you want to put lobsters on your tree? But the guys stick with

tradition. These are the screw -in ones.

Looks like my grandma used to have them, and these are the little tiny blinky

ones.

Adam and Jamie buy dozens of boxes of the two most commonly used indoor tree

lights, C7s and C9s.

But bulbs aren't their only purchase.

I'm going to go home, and tonight, after my wife goes to bed, I'm going to put

this in the yard.

I'm going to freak her out.

She's going to be like, wow, what is that?

From this Aladdin's cave, it's back to Jamie to get this myth up and running.

These two types both have a 3 -amp fuse in them. This one has a 5 -amp fuse. And

even just kind of holding my hands over here, I can feel a lot more heat coming

off of this one. So that one right there is the one to keep an eye on.

To test just how sizzling each variety can get, before loading up a tree, Adam

first makes hot boxes.

Look at that.

So I'm going to take one of each of our sample strands and put them in these

metal containers to foil over the top, leave them overnight, come back and

measure them in the morning and see what the actual temperature I get to. Is

that temperature hot enough to set fire to anything?

Well, there you have it. For a little pink foil and some regular old Christmas

lights and some...

Trial things from the hardware store, you give them the best Christmas present

of all.

Science.

With the boxes warming up, the guys plant a pine forest for their next test.

question is, will the heat from the bulbs ignite a forest fire?

Second test is going to be to wrap the maximum amount that the manufacturer

allow around some trees.

And the maximum allowable amount is dictated by the fuses that are built

into these lights.

They have a fuse. So if you hook up four strands of the light just fine, I think

between four and five strands, those fuses will start to fail. So we're going

get to that point, wrap them around some trees, and leave those overnight.

It's one big happy family as Mr. and Jess joins Jamie and Adam to trim the

trees. That's kind of an excessive amount of lights for one tree.

All right, Christmas spirit in three, two, one, go.

I feel like in such a good mood for some reason.

Ah, doesn't it just warm your heart? To recreate a typical in -home situation,

the lights are going to be left on all night. And it's Jess's job to watch over

them. Some of these might actually blow after a short period of time. And in

that case, you would remove just one strand and let the other remaining

glow all night.

And we'll be back tomorrow morning to find out what happened.

Here's hoping that for Jess's night, all is calm and all is bright.

See you tomorrow morning.

All right, thanks, guys.

Sure.

Thank you. See you tomorrow.

I'll be here.

In the past, the Mythbusters have tested and busted crazy concepts such as

pyramid power. I'm reading your thoughts right now.

Free energy.

You might as well just go get a battery.

And mind control.

Make him take his breath.

But Cary, Grant, and Tori are determined to get this frontier technology off the

ground.

Okay, guys, we've got the next big myth. Have you ever thought it would be cool

to control gravity?

Woo! Great!

I can't wait. Another one of these.

Yeah.

Okay, look.

There's a lot of credible research going on all around the world. There's a

Russian scientist doing a lot of cool stuff with superconductors.

NASA, the European Space Agency are all interested.

Yeah, that just pretty much proves that there's nut jobs and fruitcakes all the

way to the top.

Anti -gravity is the mythical holy grail of science.

But can it actually be done?

Can you flick a switch and turn off gravity?

Is anti -gravity science or science fiction?

If these questions our intrepid trio will try to answer. And guess where

going to start?

As with all these fringe technologies, we have the magic of the Internet to

us find information.

The Patent Office has issued numerous anti -gravity patents.

They don't have to test if they work, but they do have to issue the patent.

Okay, you know, some of these have nothing to do with any sort of

technology, and most of these have nothing to do with any sort of reality.

All right, well, then why don't we just get a cross -section and then, I guess,

start testing these.

Before the testing begins, let's talk about gravity, a force that Tori is

familiar with.

But in case you're not, let's get back to basics and a clever fella called

Newton. I'm okay.

In 1687, Sir Isaac explained that gravity is the tendency of objects with

to accelerate toward each other.

And because that really big thing beneath our feet, planet Earth, has some

serious pulling power, what goes up must come down.

But the concept of anti -gravity doesn't just mean avoiding the downs.

So an airplane or a helicopter or anything with wings is not an example

of gravity modification.

Yes, they generate lift, which is in opposition to gravity, but they are not

modifying the gravitational field.

So the team is going to be testing devices that claim to alter gravity.

Sounds simple. Where do we start?

The anti -gravity device that I'm working on is...

Basically, it's just sort of a floating, spinning top.

Okay, but how does a spinning top make gravity disappear?

I don't know, but I think it takes batteries.

Well, according to the instructions, the trick is to get the top spinning above

the base plate, which should hold it in an anti -gravity field.

This is how it says to start out.

It also says for ages 8 and up.

A quick read of the manual and a change of venue later, and it looks like Carrie

has turned off gravity.

The future is here.

Twas the night of the fairy lights test, and all through M5, not a creature was

stirring, not even a... To test a seasonal story,

Jamie and Adam strung three strings of lights on some trees and left them on

night to see if the heat generated would cause the trees to ignite.

Myth -turned -Jess was left to stand guard.

Good morning!

Morning, guys.

How'd you do?

Um, it was pretty uneventful. No fires.

There were no flames, but it wasn't exactly a silent night. Nothing more

the shop is pretty scary at night. There's a lot of weird noises that go

Have you ever spent the night in your own shop?

No.

Adam checks the temperature of the lights in the hot boxes. The 3 -amp C7s

no signs of damage. But at 350 degrees, the 5 -amp C9s have started to

melt. Why is the Christmas tree light sickle?

The C9 got hot enough to start melting the plastic and rubber encasing the

and the wires.

And that is totally significant to our testing here because that could lead to

wire short. And wire short very easily means fire.

So, normal amount of lights on a normal tree, we get nothing.

Let's ramp it up.

I agree. I think this time we should go for 500 of the C9 bulbs.

And while we're at it, why don't we get a thermal imaging camera and see what

the heat distribution looks like? I totally agree. That is an excellent

Unlike last time, for this upping the ante test, Jamie and Adam are not

following the instructions on the back of the box.

I want to bypass the safety measures implemented on the C9 light and put as

of them as a person could put on a normal household circuit.

We forgot one thing.

All right, yeah, get my game face on.

Let's go.

Getting into the festive spirit, they load up the tree with 500 lights.

This test is to see whether a ridiculous amount of lights put on a tree is going

to set it on fire.

All right, yeah, actually, I think we can stop there.

That's the light, here's the thermal camera, and the action is about to heat

This is going to make this so much fun.

That is too funny.

Like some demented elf.

Adam, the heat -seeking cameraman, is ready. So you might want to put on your

shades for this one.

All right, in three, two, one.

Hey, everything went on.

I can definitely feel the heat coming off of here.

Now we wait.

This is going to be a while.

So they wait, but it's not long before nothing happens.

What we're going to be looking for here is either the tree auto -igniting

because of the general level of heat being created, or some sort of a short.

Several hours and a snack or two later, and even with a crazy number of lights,

there's no sign of a fire.

It's been three hours, and we're still pretty much leveled off, aren't we?

I'm getting up close to 225 thereabouts.

It's gotten a little higher.

I am noticing it's getting extremely dry right in the middle around the lights.

The needles are just like they fall off the branches over here.

This is like a heaven.

Five more hours on, the tree is baked in the middle, but not flambéed.

I don't know, Adam. I think we need another about 5 ,000 or 6 ,000 light.

Another 5 ,000 lights may be exactly what's needed, because 500 are doing

diddly.

I don't see no fire.

I'm not even seeing any real melting going on.

We took 500 lights and let them sit on this tree for eight solid hours.

And although it got hot, you'll notice the tree is not a charred husk of a

We did not get fire.

Gravity is one of the four fundamental forces of nature.

So is it possible to just turn it off?

Grant, Tori and Carrie are surfing the net and testing a number of devices to

find out.

Carrie has a spinning top that appears to be defying gravity.

But really, it's just being held up with a magnetic field.

The stability is created by the spinning.

So if it's not spinning fast enough, it wiles out and runs away.

Fun, but hardly anti -gravity. Maybe Grant has something better. Well, the

thing that we've found is the anti -gravity lifter kit.

And this is basically a triangular device that makes use of an

field without any moving parts to produce some sort of lift.

As fanciful as this may sound, there's actually... There's actually some

behind the idea. There's interest from NASA.

There's a lot of documentation on the Internet.

But we have yet to find out whether this is actually gravity modification by our

definition.

The theory known as the Bifield -Brown effect is that by forcing 30 ,000 volts

through this wire, a new gravitational field is established, and the lifter is

freed from conventional gravity.

But despite being a bright spark, Grant and his new device are grounded.

Does it say anything about buzzing?

Could this build be a bust for Big Brain Grant?

Several hours later, Tori and Carrie check in for a progress report.

The anti -gravity machine is a little anticlimactic.

Hey, just you wait. When this thing's hovering off the table, you're going to

eating those words.

But progress is in short supply.

I don't know what this is supposed to do, but so far it looks pretty cool.

Fire.

Grant, in an admission of defeat, calls the manufacturer for some advice.

It's jumping across P1 to where R7C connects.

And just a few modifications later, the team is finally ready for liftoff.

It's a Mythbusters First, an internet -bought device

that actually works.

You could say the team is shocked.

Tori and I entered this little experiment with extreme doubt in our

Grant somehow pulled it off. This thing actually got airborne.

It electrocuted all of us standing next to it, but it got into the air.

I'm so impressed.

Even Jamie is impressed.

Well, Kniefer did actually work. I mean, most of these things that we run across

are just total nonsense, but that's real.

It's definitely getting up off the table, and there's no fans, there's no

rockets, there's no magnets, there's nothing but electricity going into it.

And Adam? Well, he's looking for the strings.

He doesn't believe it. He thinks it's a trick. It ain't a trick, man.

My dog does that when he sees himself in the mirror, too.

It's one of the cooler things I've seen on this show. I was not expecting, when

you guys started out on this, to see anything but electronics that didn't do

anything. Well, that would be par for the course. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You just

bumped it above free energy and ice bullet and a host of other... Pyramid

Yeah.

So, Pat's on the back all right. But has the myth of anti -gravity been

confirmed, or is there something else going on?

Our team of super sleuths get testing to find out.

Whoa.

Wacking it out.

So we know there's a large electrical field around this, which, you know, just

by nature of the device, we kind of figured.

doesn't mean that that's necessarily anti -gravity. So next we should do

and that will tell us whether it's actually some mechanical form of

And it's bad news for anti -gravity believers because there is some air

movement. We are getting 1 .6 miles per hour of wind, so there is thrust.

Yep, that is a thrust effect, not a gravity modification effect.

It's like a fixed -wing aircraft.

pushing air out of the way to overcome gravity.

So 30 ,000 volts is forced down the wire and that ionizes the air around it.

These ions are attracted to the foil below and the flow of air thrusts the

lifter off the ground.

And if Grant is right, it won't work in a vacuum.

My suspicion about what's going on here is that the large DC voltage is ionizing

the air around the lifter.

It's creating a flow of ions, which is bringing air along with it, creating

thrust. Now, what we can do to prove this or disprove it is to remove all of

air. If that's the case, then there should be no thrust.

And sure enough, when they perform the test in a vacuum, the lifter is

And it's not flying.

It's not flying.

It worked beforehand.

We put it in the vacuum.

No flight.

No flight.

No air, no thrust, no anti -gravity.

Can't say it any better than that.

Can leaving tree lights on overnight cause a Christmas catastrophe?

Well, not if the Mythbusters are anything to go by. They put 500 lights

regular tree, but there was no fire in the hole.

Yeah, I'm starting to think that we're going about this all wrong, that what we

really should be looking for is an electrical spark.

Well, all the lights are a piece protected, though. They're not going to

generate a spark.

That's true about the lights, but you could still plug too many lights into a

standard house outlet by using those three outlet adapters. If you tree

of those on each other, you could overload the house circuit.

I think I could do a bench test that will demonstrate whether or not we can

a spark from that kind of arrangement.

Okay.

Okay, let's get cooking with Adam.

Now, the critical ingredients in creating a spark fire from Christmas

my old favorites, the old grandma 8 -foot extension cord, 18 gauge, a nice

-on ammeter for monitoring the amount of power being consumed by the Christmas

lights, and... Aw, more

Christmas lights than you could possibly imagine.

Okay, maybe just slightly less.

The preparation is so easy. Just take some plain cube sockets and put them one

on top of the other.

Does this look familiar? If it does, I'm not coming over to your house for

Christmas. Plug them into an old -style extension cord.

Modern extension cords are a little thicker, but this is very likely to be

in just about any house.

And a generous amount of tree lights.

The 10 strands, I am now exceeding the Underwriters Laboratory's

by 50%. And bake for about 15 minutes.

286 degrees.

This is crazy.

Come on, I want some failure.

It's probably best that you don't try this at home. I'm running double the

power through it.

Well, that right there is kind of scary.

Isn't it? Yeah. I mean, if you put too much into an extension cord, just plug

into your house.

Whoa!

That's what I was talking about. That's what's going to happen.

The insulation on the wiring melted, and that made two of the

wires touch together, and that caused arcing across those wires and a large

spark.

Unfortunately, in your home, this is a recipe for disaster.

We're demonstrating a totally viable method for too many lights causing a

failure, and that failure causing a spark.

People get really, really enthusiastic about their Christmas decorations, and

I'll wager that a few of you have done this.

Now do you see the danger?

Like commuting by jetpack and miracle time -saving kitchens,

The control of gravity is a mythical technology that has been promised but

delivered. Or has it?

Okay,

guys, the lifter, super cool, but no gravity modification.

I think it's some sort of thrust.

You know, this whole gravity thing is really tricky. Maybe we should bring in

some experts.

Yeah, there's got to be some sort of instrumentation that measures gravity

accurately. I bet if we looked hard enough, we could find something.

Well, let's get both, because we never know how to use the instrument.

Actually, they get three men and a machine.

Micro -G Lacoste physicists Tim and Derek bring a box full of ultra

gravity meter.

And there's Dr. Bob Jacobson, who's a professor of physics. So, pay attention

the back there. Okay, let's get down to basics.

What's the difference between anti -gravity and gravity modification?

747s fly by countering gravity with another force.

You can fight gravity by having some other force that acts against it. Anti

-gravity is canceling it. It's making it go away so that it doesn't act on a

particular object.

Instead of lifting something, you make its weight disappear so that it just

floats. Bob, what do you think about the test that we're running here?

I think that's exactly the right approach. If there are phenomena here,

will find them, and they'll identify which ones are real and which ones are

So that's the theory. And for confirmation that the anti -gravity

actually cancel gravity, it's time to fire up the gravity meter.

When does the vortex open up and, like, the time -space fabric start to weave

around this?

23 minutes.

Listening to this, I imagine, like...

And then everything in the shop starts vibrating, you know. He watches a lot of

sci -fi.

I'm really excited. This is like the closest thing to sci -fi that we can

experience on a daily basis.

Excellent.

Okay. Grant has successfully released his inner geek. So why don't we find out

how the gravity meter works.

So this is a vacuum.

There's no air, no nothing in there. Well, that's what we're actually trying

get right now. This is helping establish that. Okay. So there's a little mirror

in here, a little motor that lifts that mirror to the top and then releases it.

It free falls.

There's a vacuum. There's nothing to slow it down, so it falls purely under

gravity.

This black box here has a laser coming into it, just like a cop's radar gun.

It bounces the laser off the falling mirror and cracks it extremely

And then there's a bunch of electronics we'll hook up that read out the tracking

information to that laptop, and it'll tell us what the acceleration of gravity

is. Which sounds ideal for the myth. If there is any change in gravity, this

awesome piece of equipment will detect it, right down to one part per billion.

What was your analogy for part per billion? I came up with, if you took a

standard typing paper, stacked it up 300 ,000 feet, which is roughly...

I think I came up with 1 ,000 Eiffel Towers or 100 Mount Everest.

Got a stack of paper that big and pulled out one sheet, we would get that same

kind of precision. We could actually see one sheet out of a billion. So even if

it isn't perfect anti -gravity, even if it's just a billionth of normal gravity.

A billionth, one billionth of gravity if it can change it, we would see that.

To perfect the vacuum that's so crucial to its accuracy, it has to warm up

overnight.

And when they come back in the morning, the guys get an idea of just how

impressive it really is.

So during the night, did you record anything out of the normal?

Yeah, I would say that I could just be there in the Bay Area here or what, but

the data were pretty noisy from what we expected. It's possible that we had a

little micro -earthquake.

Apparently there was an earthquake this morning, and I think that correlates to

some of the noise we saw this morning.

The meter not only mapped the effect of local earthquake activity on gravity, it

detected tidal fluctuations caused by the passage of the moon.

So your instruments tend to be enough to measure the moon passing overhead, but

what about some sort of real -world example?

In the University of Colorado, where this machine was developed with a

professor, James Fowler,

we would see something weird every weekend the gravity would change every

weekend and we struggled to figure out what that was and we eventually found

that it was the stadium football stadium was filling up with students and uh

that would make the gravity in that case go down because the students were above

us and we were in a basement and then when they left the gravity would go back

up and and that would happen a little little bump right during the football

so crazy

so it should be able to detect an actual anti -gravity field.

Okay, there is no effect on the gravity meter.

Hey, Bob, you've witnessed the top levitate, but we've reported absolutely

modification in gravity.

That's because the gravity detector is not sensitive to magnetism, and it's

magnetism that's holding up your top.

That one device down. Up next for Judgment Day is the lifter.

Cary Grant and Tori and a trio of top physicists have busted the spinning top

an anti -gravity device.

Okay, there is no effect on the gravity meter. Now it's time to get the final

word on the lifter.

Okay, now you can smell the ozone and you can feel.

Yeah, don't get too close. But you can feel the wind coming off.

So I definitely thrust.

That's the theory. But with the lifter levitating right below the meter, the

gravity graph is unmoved.

The number this morning was 979 -982 -924.

Yes. 979 -982 -912.

So it's 12 parts per billion.

And that's within the noise of us all walking around. That's a pretty normal

noise level.

Do any of our resident physicists have any theories on what's actually

here if it's not modifying gravity?

It's doing the same thing a wing does, throwing air down.

So how is it throwing air down?

It's probably ionizing it at the wire so it's got an electrical charge in it and

then attracting it down toward that big aluminum coil plate.

And once it's moving, it continues on past it.

So basically, the lifter is grounded.

That gravitometer was amazing.

It was pretty mind -blowing how accurate that device was.

It busted the lifter, but where do we go from here?

I do have one more device that I found, but you can't really test it with

traditional science.

It's the Hamill generator, and apparently this guy was abducted by

showed him around their ship, and from seeing that, he came up with the designs

for this generator.

Well, if anybody's already solved anti -gravity, definitely the aliens.

Okay. Well, the Mythbusters have tested crazy claims before.

Merry Christmas to us all.

And they've come across stranger ingredient lists in their time.

Three jade balls.

A roll of aluminum and a thousand magnets.

Yep. But why are they taking this one seriously?

The reason why we're taking it seriously is because he has very specific design.

Designs are good.

So how does this alien technology work?

Supposedly, the perfectly balanced cones wobble within the constraints of a

magnetic field.

And it's this dynamic equilibrium that generates an electro -gravitational

field, and that causes the alien ship to lose its connection with gravity.

I really wish the aliens were here to show me how to build this thing.

With aliens in short supply, Grant and Carrie will have to do. And Grant gets

the all -important bearings rigged at practically light speed. This is the

bearing, and it's supposed to wobble.

Just a little something like this.

Not bad, actually.

And while Carrie lines the rim of three bike wheels with a magnet, Tori has made

three cones from the roll of aluminum.

Once Tori and Grant finish fighting with foil, they finish the assembly.

It worked!

Look at this. It's just sitting there. The cone is just perfectly centered

inside the ring, and it's just hovering there.

All of the magnets on the outside are perfectly repelling the magnets on the

inside cone, creating a little gap between it as if it's just kind of

there in inner space.

It's looking good. The magnets and cones are perfectly balanced.

But it's when the third cone goes in that things will get interesting.

the generator should take off and start floating in an anti -gravity field.

See, now it's going.

See that?

See it oscillating?

Oscillating, yes.

Levitating, no.

But just to be sure, the guys prepare for the ultimate test.

It's been started. Okay, we started the generator.

Get out of the business. Let's get out.

Remember, the super -sensitive gravity meter can detect even the tiniest

fluctuation in local gravity.

Our world -class physicists stand by, anticipating a major scientific

breakthrough. But really, no one is surprised when the Hamill generator

flatlines. Are you sure you're not tampering with these results because you

don't want there to be anti -gravity out there? Because it is all a conspiracy

and you are part of the man?

No comment.

Actually, we would actually like to see it. I would love to see anti -gravity. I

really would, honestly.

That would be the most exciting result of all. I think physics advances the

when we find things we don't understand.

So the best possible result is a verifiable, repeatable experiment that

understand. And cut.

Did you see that hole in the ceiling where it took off?

No. Me neither.

You would have been better building something designed by Mark Hamill.

Well, the Hamill aside,

how did all our other devices do?

Okay, the lifter, very cool piece of technology. It works great, but in the

it's not anti -gravity. It's all thrust.

So anti -gravity is busted.

Yeah, it's busted.

Well, I don't know if we can bust anti -gravity. I mean, we can bust our

devices. All right, revised.

Anti -gravity busted for now.

And now for something completely different.

Vodka. Most people choose to drink it. But our team of alcohol aficionados have

busted it as a bee killer and poison oak cure.

They've also used it to kill off bad breath and cheesy feet.

But that's not enough for Carrie and Tori. This time, something fishy is

on. We're here at Monterey Bay Aquarium. We're going to pick up a jellyfish and

find out if you can use vodka to treat a jellyfish sting.

It's an old fishwife's tale, and if it's jellies you're after, you can't do

better than this aquarium, which has one of the finest collections in the

country.

They don't know it, but one of these Medusa is about to become a myth

So it's off into the aquarium's belly to find a jelly.

What type of jellyfish is this? These are Pacific sea nettles, Chrysorifus

sessens, one of the big local jellies you'll find out in the Pacific Northeast

Ocean. Is this a really good type of jellyfish to use for the test?

These are very good representative stingers, and these are jellies that

would commonly encounter out on the beach if they were swimming. So this is

appropriate animal to test.

I don't know what I was getting myself into here. This won't kill you or injure

you, but, you know, it'll be uncomfortable for a week.

How reassuring. But you know what they say, no pain, no gain.

See one that looks good?

Oh,

there's a good one.

Jelly catcher away.

One little tentacle. No problem at all.

Wow.

Bag o' jelly.

I can't believe I get to take this guy home.

Have fun.

It's the Mythbusters equivalent of the Funfair Goldfish, though in this case,

it's a bag full of tangs.

Back at M5, despite the vodka at the ready, Carrie's had second thoughts.

not to mention thirds and fourths. I think I'm a little anxious. I'm a little

bit nervous.

I thought I was going to be perfectly fine, but now that it's come down to it,

find my heart going... I really want to do this.

It's not like I want to do it. I'm doing this for the show.

You're going to grab him by the head, Jenny.

And underwater...

Run him across my arms so the little tentacles will slide across, stinging me

with thousands of little stingers, releasing neurotoxins into my body.

That should be fun.

While the jelly limbers up, Dr.

Torrey explains the procedure.

All right, Carrie, so once you get done, the process is going to be this.

We're going to do the traditional treatment. That's warm water. I'm going

scrubbing your arm with the brush, and then we're going to put traditional

antihistamine gel on it. Okay.

With the other arm, we're going to take the vodka and pour that on it and scrub

with the brush, and we'll see which one works better.

Okay. You ready? You psyched up? Give me some hits.

Okay. And cue the wins.

Okay, you? I don't know. I feel a little more on this side.

You might have to do it again.

Again? Go from this side to this side now. You love the pain.

Not really.

Listen. Ready? Yeah.

Do it.

Did we get enough on this one? Yeah, I feel some right there, too. All right,

let's go.

Okay, so it's definitely starting to sting more and more, and it's tingling

different places. And what's basically happening from what I understand is that

each of the little spikes is letting off slowly neurotoxins.

Okay, now we can start the treatment.

Carrie could swear that when she took this job, nobody mentioned neurotoxins.

we're going to do the traditional treatment first. Okay. Warm water.

Ready? Here we go.

Okay, and the brush.

Now we've got to scrub the stingers out that haven't released yet. A little

lower on the arm right there.

Yeah.

Okay. Now, pain's a subjective thing, but how does that feel, Carrie? It's not

like petting puppies or anything.

Team player Tori works fast, finishing the traditional treatment lickety

Vodka treatment.

You ready?

And before you can say... How you doing?

All right.

He's also applied the alcoholic antidote. All right, so that's it for

treatment, right?

That's it for the vodka treatment.

At all things considered, Carrie's in good spirits.

Maybe she's been drinking the vodka.

I was expecting some sort of sci -fi kind of pain.

I really was. So I was preparing for, like, jagged spikes, and I was gritting

teeth really, really hard. It wasn't as bad as I thought.

Well, you are a brave individual, I have to say that.

It's definitely not a comfortable feeling.

It's not something you want to do every day.

It's better than a kick in the head.

The jellyfish may not have had a ferocious kick, but did the vodka help

So as we administered the traditional treatment, I definitely felt kind of

It was like scratching an itch that really needed to be scratched.

The vodka arm, pretty much the same thing. The only difference is one felt a

warm sort of relief and the other one felt a cool sort of relief.

As it's progressed, it's been about two minutes, and they feel the same to tell

you the truth.

And it's the same story after several hours.

So between the vodka and the traditional treatment for jellyfish sting, which

one do you think works better?

Both treatments were extremely effective. I really didn't develop a

about an hour and a half, I wouldn't have even known the jelly stung me at

So vodka as a treatment for a jelly sting.

Confirmed? I'm completely surprised, but I definitely have to say that the myth

was confirmed. I think the vodka deactivated the nematocyst in my arm and

me without an itchy sting.

Sweet. Now it's time to take little Titus out to the bay and set him free.

You don't want to eat him?

Adam and Jamie have been testing how Christmas tree lights can set your

fur on fire, and they've just had a result.

If you put too much into an extension cord, just plug it into your house.

Oh! All right, we got a spark. Now it's time to get a fire.

Okay, well, a dry tree is going to be easier to burn.

I agree, so we should dry the heck out of this tree we're going to use.

Wrap the heck out of it. I want five times as many Christmas lights on it as

did in the shop.

Okay, and just in case that doesn't do it, we should also put in a remote

ignition rig as well.

Just to replicate the spark I got in the bench test. Perfect.

One way or the other, we're going to burn this thing.

Sound a siren. Did someone say fire?

To try to ignite a tree once and for all, Jamie and Adam have come to the

of Pleasanton Fire Center.

This is it.

That was kind of funky in here.

It works for me. We've got a couple of door accesses from different angles that

we could be at. I think what we're looking at here is probably the tree in

that corner.

Hi, Captain. Hi, gentlemen. And Captain Dickey has no doubt that Christmas tree

fires are frightening.

Well, what do you think about what we're doing here? Have you dealt with this

kind of situation before in a house fire? Yes. We go to Christmas tree fires

every year. We had a house burn up in December 26th of 1997 where a child

the lights on to the Christmas tree and the tree immediately ignited and burned

up the house and caused a lot of damage.

All right. Well, you ready to go? I'm ready.

In this last test, the guys are going for broke. They've rigged the tree with

hundreds of lights plugged into dozens of sockets. Well, all I know is this is

going to make some little child really happy.

And to further up the fire factor, the pine is totally parched.

What we have here is a kiln -dried tree. This was dried at a place that dries

flowers, so it's dry as a bone.

Now it's time for some tree -trimming fun.

We've gone way over the top with these lights. We've got 2 ,500 lights. It's a

couple hundred amps worth of electrical power and heat going into this tree.

The Mythbusters tree is starting to rival the Rockefeller Center's.

Seventy -two strands of light, 1 ,800 bulbs.

I bet this is what Christmas is like in heaven.

I'm going to turn them off. I can't even gaze upon it. So bright is the light it

gives off.

It's as bright as the sun, but there's something missing.

That's right.

Tacky ornaments.

A decorative garland.

As if we needed this thing to be any more flammable.

And some brightly colored bauble.

Ha ha! Are these not glass?

Oh, they are. With 2 ,500 lights, this is the ultimate test in the hot ball

makes fire theory.

But in case that still doesn't work, Jamie's also added a sparker for good

measure. The neon transformer takes 110, just, you know, normal line voltage and

kicks it up to, I think in this case, it's around 5 ,000, 6 ,000 volts,

something like that. This is a straightforward, always works way of

fire. Doesn't the tree look lovely, children?

Now, to set it on fire.

This tree behind me is loaded up with 2 ,500 Christmas lights.

We've got some garland, we've got some bulbs, and this tree has been dried out

in a flower -drying oven for five solid days. It is effectively a Christmas tree

-shaped match.

So, what do Jamie and Adam hope Santa will bring?

We're hoping that we'll get everything to come together and make for a big

Do not try this test at home. Without the fire department on hand, more than

turkey will be overcooked.

Okay, Linda, give us power.

Copy that. Pressing the green button. Over.

And there it is.

It looks so cheery now.

With all 2 ,500 lights on, the guys monitor the tree from a safe distance.

Those light bulbs require more power than most people have in their house.

not just on a single circuit, in their whole house.

The temperature rises rapidly, and soon the tree gets hot enough to make Jamie's

whiskers bristle with anticipation.

Chris, what's the temperature, the maximum?

The top now is at 240.

240 on the scale, that's the highest?

140 degrees.

And it's been 21 minutes.

Soon there's a hopeful sign.

Yeah, it's smoking. You can see it through the windows here.

Dude, we're going to get ignition.

But 40 minutes later, the bulbs still haven't gone ballistic.

And if 2 ,500 bulbs can't heat a tree to ignition, then no amount will.

Well, lots of smoke, no fire. I think we're going to set the spark off.

Sounds good. You guys ready? We'll mask up and be prepared to go in. Okay.

We're going to light this thing up a little sparky, so stand by for our

to cut the power. Over.

It's the final test in this story. Can a spark cause the fur to fire?

Okay, let's try it.

Ignition in three, two, one.

Bingo. We have ignition.

There you go.

That's it.

That's beautiful.

So fast.

The fire department springs into action.

Farmers have the best toys ever.

Our Christmas tree's branches aren't so lovely anymore.

Well, I thought it was an ugly Christmas tree before.

There's your problem.

The short circuit did the job, and the boys are shocked at how fast the fire

spread.

That wasn't an explosion, but it was so fast that it'd be out of control. If it

went up, you wouldn't be able to do anything unless you were standing right

there with the fire extinguisher. Exactly. At the moment we saw the fire,

already pretty much too late to get it under control with anything but a bunch

of firemen.

I was amazed how fast it got out of control.

Right. It grows quickly, and there's no other fuel in that room, so it would

burn itself out. But imagine if you had drapes and...

Furniture inside would continue to grow rapidly.

And with that kind of fire, even if you had a standard household fire

extinguisher, you probably wouldn't be able to deal with it, right?

No, a fire like this would grow out of control before you can even go out and

get your fire extinguisher. The best thing to do is leave the house

All it would take is one little spark.

Whether it's an older set of lights, whether somebody's messed with the fuse,

you can get it short, and if you do, you can set a tree on fire.

This is no myth. In fact, this is more like a public service announcement

because the figures we have says that on December 24th, 25th, and 26th in the U

.S., there's over 10 ,000 fires that cause 40 deaths and over $80 million in

damage every single year from Christmas trees burning down from various reasons.

I think this one is totally busted. I mean, we put 2 ,500 bulbs on that tree,

and it was not enough to create the heat necessary to auto -ignite. I agree.

It's myth -busted. But, you know, that doesn't mean that people should let

guards down, because we did prove that it is possible to overload something

an extension cord with so many lights that you create a short, and you could

start a tree fire.

Yeah, you know, this myth really, I'm amazed, woke up my holiday spirit. I

that we should do a Christmas special.

It's one for the future.

It is.