Time Warp (2008) s01e08 Episode Script

NARRATOR: What happens when a man appears to defy the law of gravity and literally walks on walls? LIEBERMAN: You can actually see the skin in your right leg compress in a shock wave.
NARRATOR: When two guys try and walk on water? All right, it's time for a hoedown! NARRATOR: And when a humble water droplet transforms into the world's most sublime water fountain? LIEBERMAN: We're real close, yeah.
NARRATOR: What happens? "Time Warp.
" Uh-oh.
Oh, my.
NARRATOR: Take two guys whose slow-mo cameras can stop the world in its tracks It starts out pretty asymmetric.
It has to move the mass of this thing out of the way.
All right, Greg, I reset this camera.
We're gonna take a look at your takeoff this time.
NARRATOR: add a high-tech laboratory, where anything can and will happen Oh, boy.
NARRATOR: and toss in some of the world's wildest talents.
What happens? There are some laws that are often broken.
We're thinking of those mattress tags you're never supposed to rip off, and other laws that cannot be broken, like -- Well, we don't know.
Uh, let's say gravity, a law that the urban athletes called free-runners seem to break every time they do this.
And this.
Now, are these laws being broken, or have these guys just found a clever loophole? In order to find out, meet Victor "Showtime" Lopez.
Hello, Showtime.
-Thanks for joining us.
-Thank you.
Now, why are you not limping? LOPEZ: I was very creative going over the railing.
I was very precise when I landed.
Obviously very strong and very fluid.
When in did my roll, not a single part of my body was hurting.
No impact in my toes.
My knees aren't aching.
I feel great.
NARRATOR: He feels great? After doing this? Say what?! This calls for a "Time Warp" investigation.
Ultra-high speed, frame by frame.
Can you explain the next move you're gonna go through? The next move is called a "kong to cat leap.
" -"Kong" as in "King Kong"? -King Kong.
Why is it called that? You actually look kind of like a monkey.
I'm gonna run at the bar.
I'm gonna put my hands on the bar and explode through my legs, and my knees will pass through my arms like a monkey.
NARRATOR: Oh, come on.
That is so easy.
Why don't you try something that we can't do? LIEBERMAN: So, this is 50 times as slow as normal.
LOPEZ: I'm flying through the air with the greatest of ease.
[Laughs.]
LIEBERMAN: That's a pretty serious impact, even over this distance.
My legs took most of it, though, my legs first.
Absolutely.
-And here's the front flip.
-LOPEZ: Oh, shoot.
Look at that.
Geez.
It's a great landing, though.
Totally flat landing.
NARRATOR: Showtime stuck it, but notice how his feet immediately come off the pavement in a transfer of momentum.
As we'll see, it's subtle moves like this that save his bones from breaking.
LIEBERMAN: You can actually see the skin in your right leg compress in a shock wave.
-There it is.
-Oh, yeah.
LIEBERMAN: There's that wave coming up.
LOPEZ: That's incredible.
NARRATOR: Showtime may say that his body isn't enduring stress, but he's wrong.
It's just that he knows what to do with it and where to dissipate.
Round two.
The next move I'm gonna attempt to do is called a double kong.
Okay.
Notice how there's a gap between the two walls? I can pretty much lay down in there.
NARRATOR: Well, you're not going to, Jeff, and Showtime's not going to explain his leap, either.
Let's just do it.
LIEBERMAN: And three, two, one, go.
[Laughing.]
Holy moly.
NARRATOR: Okay, even we're impressed.
Let's watch that again.
LIEBERMAN: What's going on right here? LOPEZ: Oh! Oh, wow.
LIEBERMAN: You just had, like, three new veins appear.
Oh, geez.
LIEBERMAN: When you plant your hands, you specifically want to let some of that momentum change your orientation.
NARRATOR: Once again, Showtime expertly shifts downward force into forward momentum, all with a flick of his wrist.
So what do you need to know to make this happen successfully over and over? The only reason why I don't wreck shop, I don't hurt myself, is the way I jump out, first of all.
When I jump out, it brings all of my energy going forward, my momentum going forward instead of directly downwards.
NARRATOR: You know, we neglected to tell you something you hear a lot from us.
It starts with "don't try" and ends with ALL: This at home.
NARRATOR: Lloyd, our faithful crash-test dummy, has volunteered to show you why.
Why are we chucking this thing off of here? LIEBERMAN: Because it looks and weighs approximately what Showtime weighs -- about 150 pounds -- and at the top of Showtime's jump, he's gonna be about 25 feet off the ground.
Okay.
NARRATOR: Our dummy doesn't have much talent for shifting momentum, so all of its energy is absorbed, if you can call it that, by the concrete.
Showtime may be cool on the outside, but inside, he takes this very, very seriously.
Let's give him a few minutes to get ready for his last jump.
Well, hopefully not his last jump.
LIEBERMAN: Three, two, one, go! Sure.
[Applause.]
Ugh.
NARRATOR: Showtime displays moves similar to those made by parachutists upon landing.
[Applause.]
LOPEZ: The minute you land, you absorb impact with the rest of your body.
When you tuck and roll, you really got to make sure you watch your neck 'cause if you obviously mistime that, you will break your spine.
Your neck will obviously hit the cement, and you will hurt yourself.
NARRATOR: The difference between this and this? Showtime is a living, breathing, moving example of Isaac Newton's law of gravity.
But that law will always get your in the end.
Now, it's time for the classics, the laws of science.
Newton's laws, to be specific.
You can't walk on water.
You'd sink like a stone.
You've heard of Isaac Newton? Gravity? Viscosity? I think the Newton laws have you boxed in on this one, man.
Well, I hate to tell you something, but maybe it's Non-Newtonian Day at "Time Warp" because I'm gonna show you exactly how it is possible.
Well, happy Non-Newtonian Day.
Did you get me anything? NARRATOR: Okay, for those of you out there who don't celebrate Non-Newtonian Day -- make that every last one of you -- listen up.
Isaac Newton was one of those original scientific geniuses who discovered things like gravity.
Well, actually, gravity was always around, but Newton noticed it for the first time.
Anyway, Newton also came up with the law of viscosity.
Here you go.
Did you get all that? No? Too bad.
All you need to know is that any fluid that obeys that law -- say, water -- is a Newtonian fluid.
Any fluid that does not obey that law is -- no, wait for it -- a non-Newtonian fluid.
And these gooey fluids are fun to play with on -- yeah, you got it -- on Non-Newtonian Day.
Our goop du jour? This stew of corn starch and water.
LIEBERMAN: One of the things we can do is use this as a liquid and a solid surface.
KEARNEY: Okay.
LIEBERMAN: So I can move around, but if I punch it completely solidifies upon impact.
Now, because of that, we can set objects on it that are normally floating around.
This is just in a liquid.
And as soon as I actually start nailing something onto it, that stress is gonna solidify the material.
KEARNEY: That's it.
LIEBERMAN: You'd never be able to get a nail in wood on water.
KEARNEY: Of course.
NARRATOR: Well, this is unusual.
The stuff resists Jeff's fist like a solid, even though it appears to be a liquid in motion.
It's worth taking a closer look back at the lab.
The change between states is nearly instantaneous, as warp speed of LIEBERMAN: It's amazing to think about the time scale involved.
You know, you scrape this fluid, and it's solid, and by the time it lands, it's almost fully liquid again, and that's a really fast scrape.
It's not even one second that this thing stays solid.
There's tons of non-Newtonian fluids.
Blood is non-Newtonian.
Ketchup is non-Newtonian.
KEARNEY: That explains why ketchup takes so long to come out of the bottle, then.
NARRATOR: Now, Newton rocks.
No, seriously.
He does.
You saw some cool stuff, but this is gonna blow your mind.
All right, so we got our speaker going? NARRATOR: At warp speed, we can see the vibration of the speaker.
At just the right frequency, the mixture is solid on the way up and liquid on the way down.
These are called the corn-starch monsters.
KEARNEY: Pretty unbelie-- You know what it looks like? The dance floor at my wedding.
Look, there goes cousin Paul.
-There's cousin Jill.
-It is amazingly human.
NARRATOR: The only difference between these corn-starch monsters and Matt's wedding party is the corn starch did not need a designated driver home.
But we digress.
Cool, but you're still not walking on water here.
All right, well, you want to walk on water? Wow.
So, that's literally a gigantic mix of corn starch and water.
NARRATOR: 2,500 pounds of corn starch, to be exact.
But before Jeff goes for a stroll, let's ensure that a big pool of goo acts the same as a small container.
First, the bat test.
It bounces right back.
KEARNEY: That's pretty cool.
Throw a little bowling ball.
Just give it a good roll across.
-Ready? -Yeah.
NARRATOR: But a bowling ball? -LIEBERMAN: Goodbye.
-KEARNEY: That's nice.
NARRATOR: Once again, "Time Warp" cameras capture the extraordinary.
A 12-pound bowling ball glides as if on solid wood.
Then, the other side of the split personality emerges.
And, um, submerges.
The moment of truth.
It's really important that you're very careful because otherwise, you might get in trouble! [Laughs.]
Do I have to make that face? You should try.
Whoo! Whoo-hoo! All right, it's time for a hoedown! A hoedown? What's a hoedown? A hoedown's a dance! NARRATOR: Who says white guys can't dance? Get out of here! NARRATOR: Now let's slow down that hoedown.
KEARNEY: There's no way to describe this feeling.
I can't even figure ou-- I mean, the fact that you don't land solid and you don't sink.
You do something in between.
It's almost like there's people, like, catching your foot, bringing it down a little.
There's little hands.
It's bizarre.
I can't even describe that.
I think everyone should go make this solution and jump around their backyard.
Whoo! Whoo-hoo! NARRATOR: But remember, it only acts like a solid momentarily.
If you don't keep moving Aah! I'm gone! I'm gone! Oh, man.
You can't get out.
NARRATOR: So, by now, you know that Jeff and Matt have the high-speed thing down.
But they're not alone.
[Camera shutter clicking.]
Martin Waugh has spent years photographing one thing.
How is that? NARRATOR: Water droplets.
His still photography exposes a hidden world frozen in time, absolutely familiar and so very strange.
Martin has mastered -- and how -- the art of freezing images in time.
That's pretty close.
NARRATOR: Now he collaborates with our guys And that's it.
NARRATOR: to turn poetry into motion.
Seriously, no one walk for the next minute if you're within 5 feet of the table.
NARRATOR: All Martin has to do is provide the water and some colored lights.
-I think everything looks great.
-I like it.
I'm gonna present you your first high-speed video droplet.
Excellent.
LIEBERMAN: There it is, a small splash.
WAUGH: Oh, yeah.
I've never seen this with my stuff.
This is great.
LIEBERMAN: So we can see the whole process.
Let's just put that right back to the beginning and check it out again.
NARRATOR: The droplet digs out a crater, which forms a crown, or coronet.
The crater acts like a spring, stretching out.
The surface tension of the water pulls it back and upwards into a column or jet.
Now, Jeff and Martin prepare a pan with water only 1/16 of an inch deep.
You would expect the crater and jet to be smaller because the water is shallow.
WAUGH: Got a little bit of a jet coming up, but not near so much as in the deep pool.
Right, because it really has to dig out a crater to build up the momentum to carry it back up.
NARRATOR: Now let's look at the two droplets side by side.
The energy stored when the droplet falls into the deep pan results in a higher column.
WAUGH: My supposition has been that it's that the energy of the explosion is going outward, but the surface tension is stopping it, and so it's sort of running into this rim that's holding it in place or lunging up into waves.
LIEBERMAN: It's worth saying that that's why these coronets happen.
NARRATOR: [Laughing.]
Could two adults have more fun with a drop of water? How about more color? So we have blue on the back side, and the red will be above.
Any light or any flat surface, horizontal surface of the water, will see the blue, and the front side of the waves will be seeing the red.
NARRATOR: Clearly, Jeff has met his soul mate.
I am launching said droplet.
WAUGH: Let her flow.
Oh, look at that red stand out! That helps so much.
Yes! LIEBERMAN: Oh, man, that's amazing.
WAUGH: Beautiful.
LIEBERMAN: It's a flower pattern.
WAUGH: Yeah, and the red is standing out so well.
It really helps you get a sense of depth that we didn't have on the first shot.
WAUGH: But this makes it really stand out.
LIEBERMAN: That is one drop of water.
And it all pulls back up.
WAUGH: Right into the center.
Kaboom.
LIEBERMAN: And the huge tower.
WAUGH: Equal and opposite reactions.
LIEBERMAN: Yeah, right, Newton's laws never looked this good.
If there was no surface tension, everything would just go infinitely outward.
You can write out the equations, but you're never gonna expect that it's this beautiful.
NARRATOR: Now, say what you will.
This is more aesthetically pleasing than Jeff and Matt dancing around in a vat of corn starch.
Whoo-hoo! NARRATOR: More pleasing, but the same Newtonian science.
As we've seen, the laws of physics can be written up in some pretty unusual ways.
From the sublime.
LOPEZ: I'm flying through the air with the greatest of ease.
NARRATOR: To the ridiculous.
I'm gone! I'm gone! NARRATOR: To the very sublime.
LIEBERMAN: We tend to take these things for granted.
This is the simplest thing on Earth that we interact with.
NARRATOR: Everyone has their holy grail, and Mark Waugh, choreographer of the dancing water droplet, is no different.
I want to do the thing I've been looking at for seven years, which is a collision of the splash with another drop.
I've never seen it in video.
This is why I came here.
NARRATOR: And we are determined not to let him walk away disappointed.
We have a very constant rate 'cause we need about -About that? -About exactly.
NARRATOR: Now, here is the tricky bit.
These two geniuses have to time not only the high-speed camera, but stage a three-part droplet.
LIEBERMAN: Whole new tank.
-Right? -Yep.
NARRATOR: First, a droplet that hits the water.
Then, the droplet bouncing up.
And then, another drop timed to hit the bouncing one.
Part of the trick is I want to get a steady stream of drops about 1/10 of a second apart, and take a picture of just the first two.
NARRATOR: Yeah, this seems like an awful lot of work for not very much, but if you're okay with this, let's, uh, humor these guys.
Boy, it doesn't take much.
I raised it up just ever so slightly.
LIEBERMAN: It's way too fast.
Okay, ready? Go.
WAUGH: Okay, first drop.
Coronet.
LIEBERMAN: Takes a while.
WAUGH: Falls back.
Up the spike comes.
NARRATOR: Wow, they did it! Every day, billions of people depend on water to live.
They interact with it.
It rains outside, and there's millions of drops hitting the ground.
Every single one of them is doing this.
And I think no one really gives that the attention that it deserves.
That is unreal.
NARRATOR: Okay, we're idiots.
We thought this would be boring.
It is not.
It is art.
It is science.
It is amazing.
Now, this is tough to top, but we're here to serve.
So if you've got something you'd like to see warped, check us out on the Discovery Channel Website, discovery.
com, and the warp you see just might be your own.