Mythbusters ...

I'm a big fan of The Discovery Channel, and particularly the show Mythbusters. For those unfamiliar with the show's premise, two engineer-types dig up urban legends and "common knowledge", and put them to the test.

I've noticed, as much as I enjoy this show, that the tests that they conjure up are sometimes lacking any sort of scientific basis, and are largely an excuse for the engineers to build cool contraptions (which admittedly, is half the fun). But I've got a wee bit of a bee in my bonnet over the last episode, "Is Yawning Contagious?"

No, it's not about the yawning myth (which, with very close results, they decided was Confirmed), but rather the old saying that toast knocked off a table will land butter side up. The very first test they did was a "natural model", with a very simple device that would push a piece of toast off a table, and then they would note the results. As far as I could tell, it seemed that invariably, the toast would land butter side down. That is "Confirmed" in my book, because this is most likely how it would happen in "real life". Toast knocked off a table would only have enough time and momentum to turn once before hitting the floor.

Then a second device was screated that would basically hold the toast vertical, then drop it, and the results were inconclusive, but slanted towards butter side down. Again, there is only enough time for one turn, but they decided that the both devices were biased, because they weren't getting a "random result". I thought that the point of the experiment was to get a non-random outcome? So they set out to automate as much of the process of toasting and buttering the toast as possible, then to drop it from the top of a building with a pneumatic device, to keep the test as "scientific as possible".

This is where it came off the rails, as far as I'm concerned. First, while they automated the toasting process (including testing for temperature), and the buttering, they did absolutely nothing to regulate the size and weight of the slices of bread, which when falling from a greater distance, would likely have a magnified effect. They also dropped the slices from a much larger distance, and did it outside, where the wind would have an effect (and was even seen once as a piece of toast was blown into one of the "researchers" on the ground. Finally, in ALL cases, they drop very few pieces of toast, certainly not enough for true trending to occur.

Here's how I'd have done the test. First, trim each slice of bread, square them off, and weigh them to ensure equal weight for each test piece. The toasting / buttering contraption would work fine. Then I'd drop each piece of toast with the pneumatic device in a vaccuum, to ensure that only the toast and gravity are in play.

I'm probably way overanalyzing this, as I tend to do, but it just irks me a bit to see someone claiming to do a scientific test, then doing a really half-assed job of it. :)