Time Warp (2008) s01e14 Episode Script
Cheerleading
You won't hit that, right? Pull.
NARRATOR: What happens when a poor clay pigeon gets on the wrong end of a shotgun Bam! NARRATOR: when a baseball bat gets ambushed by a 90-mile-per-hour fastball That's way too fast to see.
NARRATOR: and a cheerleader [Whistle blows.]
gets tossed 10 feet in the air? What happens? Time warp.
KEARNEY: Uh-oh.
[Laughter.]
NARRATOR: Take two guys whose slo-mo cameras can stop the world in its tracks I'm gonna run down there and catch all the action.
-Good luck.
-All right.
Matt, you ready? 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.
- [Electricity crackling.]
-Aah! [Barking.]
What happens? Fire in the hole! [Gunshot.]
Something funny about the folks here at "Time Warp" -- We like to shoot things.
Bullets, arrows, fireworks, paintballs, and even 2x4s.
Just when we started feeling like maybe we'd shot near everything that could be shot MAN: Pull.
[Gunshot.]
NARRATOR: the skeet.
This genteel pastime achieved Olympic status in 1968.
"Time Warp" takes note, submitting our own typically sophisticated inquiry.
[Gunshot.]
So this is a skeet? Yes.
It's a clay pigeon.
I like to say "skeet.
" It's a clay pigeon.
What part of this looks like a pigeon? -It flies.
-Exactly.
All angles, wings.
Now, we'll shoot that so we can see how many pellets impact the target.
-Not now.
- [Laughs.]
NARRATOR: What really happens when a disk turns to dust? Pull.
MAN: Yeah, that's awesome.
NARRATOR: Olympic skeet shooter Sean McClelland helps us get a grip on the ultimate moving target, or skeet.
We like the sound of that, too.
Skeet! This is actually a biodegradable, And this is pretty standard.
-Okay.
For competitions? -Absolutely.
Yes.
NARRATOR: Anyway, no matter how you say it, "Time Warp's" high-speed cameras will capture the destruction of the disk and the delivery of the shot from the muzzle.
This is a bit tricky 'cause Sean not only has to hit the disk, he needs to hit it at the instant when it flies right by our camera.
You won't hit that, right? [Laughs.]
All right.
You tell me to pull.
Pull.
Pull.
NARRATOR: Practice, as they say, makes perfect.
Pull.
NARRATOR: Sean nails it.
KEARNEY: That one was really close to the camera.
That was great.
NARRATOR: Flying a distance of roughly 60 yards, the clay pigeon mimics the motion of a bird's flight from the brush.
Unlike rifles that shoot single bullets, shotguns, like those used for skeet, shoot cartridges of small pellets.
And there they go! LIEBERMAN: I had the idea that this thing just kind of peeled open right at the outside, it dragged against the metal.
But it's not like that at all.
It's almost like it's spring-loaded.
Takes it a couple thousandths of a second to pop open.
NARRATOR: Time-warping shows us just how effective these pellets are in punishing that errant skeet.
In all the competition shooting that I do, never get to see anything like this.
Just incredible, seeing each individual bead breaking the target and then flying right through.
NARRATOR: The wad flying through the cloud of debris is the actual inner casing of a shotgun shell.
Okay, now that we've seen how it's done, let's find out how to do it.
What do you need to know to successfully shoot skeet? Lesson number one -- Handle the recoil.
A 12-gauge shotgun packs a backward punch that has to be absorbed to allow for consistent aim just ahead of the moving target.
So how long does it take to learn to shoot one of these? Hopefully I can teach you right now.
Come around the table here, and let's give this a shot.
NARRATOR: Here you might get a better look at what we mean when Jeff takes his shot.
Put it firmly on your shoulder, take the safety off, lean a little bit forward, pull the trigger.
LIEBERMAN: Okay.
Safety's off.
-McCLELLAND: Ready to go.
-Good? NARRATOR: That's what we're talking about.
Second one looked like not fun.
The first one was medium fun.
-Whoa! -Hey! NARRATOR: Lesson number two -- There is a difference between a guy who competed in the Olympics and everyone else.
That is spectacular.
Can we see just that initial shot moment, too? NARRATOR: Let's review Sean's form from the start at warp speed.
By leaning into the shot, the recoil pushes him backwards into a stable position.
LIEBERMAN: The whole gun is moving.
Your shoulder hasn't even felt it at first.
Yeah, you can definitely see how much you leaning into it helps.
Here, for contrast [Laughter.]
my reaction.
NARRATOR: In contrast, Jeff doesn't lean forward, and the recoil pushes him into an unstable position and compromises his aim.
It actually kind of picked you up a little there.
LIEBERMAN: Play it faster.
A little more shocking.
NARRATOR: Lesson three -- Set the spread pattern of your shot.
You can determine how much spread you want from the gun? -Absolutely can.
-How do you do that? That's all to do with the end of the gun here, on the choke.
And the constriction here determines how small or large the pattern's gonna be out on whatever kind of target you want to shoot at.
NARRATOR: This choke manually allows the shooter to compress the barrel of his shotgun.
The smaller the width, the narrower the spread.
All right.
So now we got the balloons set up.
Hopefully, just be changing the choke, we'll see the tight and wide shots and how different they are.
-We're ready? -LIEBERMAN: Yeah, absolutely.
McCLELLAND: That was the tight one.
Now I'm gonna show you the more open here.
See if we can get all the balloons on this one.
[Gunshot.]
Hi.
Pretty clear.
[Laughs.]
That's pretty great.
This was a pretty good illustration.
This is the narrow beam? This is the narrow choke.
-Here it is.
-LIEBERMAN: There they are.
Wow.
KEARNEY: Pretty tight grouping.
Yes, and you can see with those B.
B.
s and just from that distance just how tight the pattern is.
They haven't even opened up, even flying through the balloons.
NARRATOR: Most skeet shooting is done with a narrow pattern, but if you want to take out a larger target, well you get the idea.
LIEBERMAN: Oh, you know what? There's an amazing little thing.
-If you go back -Sure.
LIEBERMAN: there's Okay, play real slow.
Right when they hit the pink one.
Because it actually -- You can see the shock waves before it peels at all.
You can see the shock waves ripple like little puddles on the surface.
KEARNEY: Oh, yeah.
Look at that.
That's pretty awesome.
NARRATOR: Enough with the party favors.
-Pull.
- [Gunshot.]
NARRATOR: Let's shoot us some fake birds.
All right.
Pull.
Hey, that's not so bad.
-KEARNEY: Very nice.
-Great shot.
-Hey, wait a second.
-KEARNEY: What? Oh, I'm never gonna hit it.
-I think you will.
-I doubt it very much.
This is TV -- We'll give you 20 tries, and we'll get the one that works.
-I won't hit it.
-I just want to pull it.
McCLELLAND: Watch it come over the gun.
Just go right to it.
Pull the trigger.
All right.
Pull.
That was a miss.
-That was way over there.
-It was my fault.
NARRATOR: A quick review of the high-speed reveals that Matt's form was not the reason for his miss.
In fact, he was much steadier than Jeff.
Let's give Matt another shot.
Pull.
There it is.
McCLELLAND: Nice shot.
KEARNEY: That was awesome.
Let's drink some strawberry milk.
Safety is off.
Eyes and ears.
Are you ready? I'm ready.
KEARNEY: Okay.
[Gunshot.]
Bam! Very nice.
- [Whistle blows.]
-1, 2, 3, 4.
NARRATOR: Cheerleading is as much a spectator sport as the sports they cheer for, for many reasons.
All of these stunts require strength, timing, and precision.
WOMAN: Ready? NARRATOR: Understanding the physical principles behind what they do can help cheerleaders visualize what they need to accomplish in motion.
Lauren Millette is the coach of the Boston College cheerleading team.
Well, I'm really looking forward to being able to clean up everything that we're doing.
If there's something where we can get extra height in something or have a better twist down, I think that being able to use film always helps you when evaluating what you're doing.
NARRATOR: But before we turn our high-speed cameras on all this high-flying action, let's learn the language of the field.
[Whistle blows.]
A stunt is any maneuver involving a tumble, a pyramid or a toss.
[Whistle blows.]
A base is any and all cheerleaders in a stunt with their feet planted on the ground.
[Whistle blows.]
A flier is the cheerleader launched into the air.
A cradle is the term used for catching said flier.
[Whistle blows.]
And finally, a basket toss is a stunt utilizing three or more bases which toss a flier into the air.
[Bell rings.]
Class dismissed.
Okay, guys, I'd like you to set up your scorpion right there.
Ready? NARRATOR: Now let's get to the high-speed action.
First up LIEBERMAN: The scorpion.
MILLETTE: This is the scorpion.
LIEBERMAN: It looks like she, without even grabbing, had to be able to bring her leg all the way up there.
Yeah.
You really need to be flexible.
NARRATOR: Our cameras highlight some key challenges.
They tend to cross their legs like that? She shouldn't be crossing her legs, but her legs should be very, very close together.
LIEBERMAN: And it's normal to bend the knees through that? MILLETTE: We would want to see a straight leg as much as possible.
But it's just natural that that's gonna have a little bit of a bend in there.
From watching this, I'll be able to say to her, "Look, you have a significant bend there.
We really need to avoid that.
" NARRATOR: Next, we look at some basket tosses.
WOMAN: 1, 2, 3, 4.
LIEBERMAN: Awesome.
So it seems like if any one of them is not ready, they got to call the whole thing off because every one of them is crucial to the thing working.
Absolutely.
So usually the back spot would say, "Okay, we're gonna stop.
Come down," if the timing was off.
NARRATOR: In slow motion, the difficulty is obvious.
If anyone involved in the stunt hesitates, even for a second, it would throw the precise routine off and might cause serious injury.
To us, this all looks really good.
So you got to tell us if something's not the way you think it is or anything like that.
All your smiles disappear for that last instant.
[Laughter.]
What would you change? McGRATH: Maybe if the flier's legs were together in the twist, that would probably look cleaner.
And coming into the cradle to catch instead of going out looks a lot cleaner.
LIEBERMAN: This is great.
When you launch her, you guys all leave the ground.
I was surprised.
I didn't see that at all.
You're actually all jumping.
McGRATH: Yeah, we give a little jump just to give her that extra up sometimes.
This one looks good when it's high.
KEARNEY: Man, you guys launch her.
LIEBERMAN: Even if you have a 100-pound person, when they fall from that height and you stop them, that's several hundred pounds of force that you have to cull back.
NARRATOR: Now for the grand finale WOMAN: Whenever you're ready.
NARRATOR: one of the team's double-secret competitive moves.
This is referred to as "the chopper.
" -Cue that clip.
-KEARNEY: Here we go.
This looks like totally fun.
LIEBERMAN: Except for the guy.
WOMAN: Yeah.
LIEBERMAN: Two of the three of you are having a lot of fun.
[Laughter.]
Yeah, this is something that really -- If you're not spinning, it's completely impossible.
You have to use all that outward momentum to keep you guys up.
MILLETTE: They get a good sense of, "Okay, we need to slow it down, get the bottom girl to put her foot on the ground so that it stabilizes everything.
" So really it's all up to the bottom girl to decide when it's done.
NARRATOR: Well, we are suitably inspired, if not quite as embarrassed as perhaps we should be.
[Cheers and applause.]
[Crowd cheering.]
In our "Time Warp" lab, we conduct many experiments to illuminate our natural world.
And sometimes Yeah! NARRATOR: we just like to mess around.
A baseball bat is one tough item.
But how tough? What really happens when bat meets ball, and why does the bat sometimes break? Even the "Time Warp" lab has its limitations, so we decided to pay a house call to another lab.
This is the only place in the country where you certify the bats and the baseballs in the major leagues.
NARRATOR: Welcome to the University of Massachusetts Lowell Baseball Research Center.
Here, Patrick Drane will show Jeff and Matt the scientific reason for broken bats.
And to do so, Patrick uses this crazy machine.
DRANE: What we basically have here is we have a bat hanging here vertically.
We're gonna fire, with an air cannon, a ball at 160, and see what the collision looks like and go from there.
NARRATOR: We're loading the machine with a regulation wooden bat made of ash -- a longtime favorite in the big leagues.
That's way too fast to see.
Now to whip some ash, "Time Warp"-style.
KEARNEY: Okay.
That's good for focus.
DRANE: We're all set to fire.
-You ready? -KEARNEY: I'm all set up.
Okay.
NARRATOR: At 10,000 frames per second, we can see that regulation hardballs turn into squash balls when they hit the bat.
DRANE: And right here you can see the ball is actually starting to wrinkle.
LIEBERMAN: Right.
It has to go somewhere.
That, to me, looks like a fake baseball.
Yeah.
That's a real major league baseball.
LIEBERMAN: If I just saw a frozen frame of that, I would think that you really destroyed this ball.
This is about a third of the ball compressing almost flat.
That would take, you know, standing on top of one of these to make it compress like that.
Or a couple cars.
NARRATOR: Or, we hasten to add, a professional ballplayer.
So the ball's not even as tough as we thought.
But that just makes the sight of a splintered bat all the more mysterious.
What gives? Clearly the ball, but what else? So in this shot we see the full bat.
NARRATOR: And the bat bends, too? LIEBERMAN: This makes me feel like every single piece of equipment in baseball is made out of rubber.
It's totally unexpected, We look at a bat like this, and it feels totally solid.
Yeah, when you have a long object like a bat, it is going to have the ability to bend.
We're seeing some vibrations that extend all the way into the hands.
LIEBERMAN: So every time I hit a ball, I feel this sting going through my arms.
I think it's hard for people to understand what that sting is, but it's really these vibrations that are going back and forth really, really fast.
NARRATOR: What happens if these vibrations get too much for the bat to bear? It all happens in an instant.
A good bat goes bad and reaches the breaking point.
These frames capture what happens when a bat shatters.
It all happens so fast, it's hard to know what's going on The ball is actually starting to wrinkle.
NARRATOR: which is why we're testing this bat until destruction.
We'll move the bat a couple inches and hit there and see what the vibrations look like.
NARRATOR: At the University of Massachusetts Lowell Baseball Research Center, we can duplicate a fastball over and over and over again.
That's way too fast to see.
DRANE: Now we're moving an inch and a half, two inches further out.
We're gonna fire it at about 150 miles per hour.
But that's actually replicating a 90-mile-per-hour pitch and a 60-mile-per-hour swing.
NARRATOR: Now we're going to move away from the proverbial sweet spot that lies about five to seven inches from the end of the bat.
Load the next one in.
NARRATOR: There you go.
When the ball hits outside the sweet spot, the bat vibrates even more.
You only changed where we impacted by what, three or four inches? And the bat is almost in an "s" shape at certain points.
That's an amazing amount of vibration.
NARRATOR: And what if we move it just a bit further? Can we create that bat-breaking surprise? Okay.
It's firing.
-Ah.
-It broke.
NARRATOR: Say it ain't so, uh, Jeff.
LIEBERMAN: You can really see when the bat starts to break, all of the energy of the ball has gone into breaking this bat.
It's much more common that the bat splinters a little bit than to actually split apart.
NARRATOR: Well, we all know by now that here at "Time Warp," the uncommon is commonplace.
Well, okay, we got lucky.
Just as the ball is making full contact, we're seeing the bat is starting to break.
NARRATOR: It's not that the ball is harder than the bat.
Far from it.
But when a batter misses the sweet spot, the force of the ball makes the bat vibrate and bend so violently that it splits at the weakest point, often along the grain.
Snap, crackle, pop.
Now, what new research challenges lie ahead for our intrepid crew? Believe me, you don't want to know.
But we think it might be something to do with building a better piña colada.
Something you want to see warped? Check us out on the Discovery Channel Website -- discovery.
com/timewarp -- and the warp you see just might be your own.
[Crowd cheers.]
[Cheering.]
Go, "Time Warp"!
NARRATOR: What happens when a poor clay pigeon gets on the wrong end of a shotgun Bam! NARRATOR: when a baseball bat gets ambushed by a 90-mile-per-hour fastball That's way too fast to see.
NARRATOR: and a cheerleader [Whistle blows.]
gets tossed 10 feet in the air? What happens? Time warp.
KEARNEY: Uh-oh.
[Laughter.]
NARRATOR: Take two guys whose slo-mo cameras can stop the world in its tracks I'm gonna run down there and catch all the action.
-Good luck.
-All right.
Matt, you ready? 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.
- [Electricity crackling.]
-Aah! [Barking.]
What happens? Fire in the hole! [Gunshot.]
Something funny about the folks here at "Time Warp" -- We like to shoot things.
Bullets, arrows, fireworks, paintballs, and even 2x4s.
Just when we started feeling like maybe we'd shot near everything that could be shot MAN: Pull.
[Gunshot.]
NARRATOR: the skeet.
This genteel pastime achieved Olympic status in 1968.
"Time Warp" takes note, submitting our own typically sophisticated inquiry.
[Gunshot.]
So this is a skeet? Yes.
It's a clay pigeon.
I like to say "skeet.
" It's a clay pigeon.
What part of this looks like a pigeon? -It flies.
-Exactly.
All angles, wings.
Now, we'll shoot that so we can see how many pellets impact the target.
-Not now.
- [Laughs.]
NARRATOR: What really happens when a disk turns to dust? Pull.
MAN: Yeah, that's awesome.
NARRATOR: Olympic skeet shooter Sean McClelland helps us get a grip on the ultimate moving target, or skeet.
We like the sound of that, too.
Skeet! This is actually a biodegradable, And this is pretty standard.
-Okay.
For competitions? -Absolutely.
Yes.
NARRATOR: Anyway, no matter how you say it, "Time Warp's" high-speed cameras will capture the destruction of the disk and the delivery of the shot from the muzzle.
This is a bit tricky 'cause Sean not only has to hit the disk, he needs to hit it at the instant when it flies right by our camera.
You won't hit that, right? [Laughs.]
All right.
You tell me to pull.
Pull.
Pull.
NARRATOR: Practice, as they say, makes perfect.
Pull.
NARRATOR: Sean nails it.
KEARNEY: That one was really close to the camera.
That was great.
NARRATOR: Flying a distance of roughly 60 yards, the clay pigeon mimics the motion of a bird's flight from the brush.
Unlike rifles that shoot single bullets, shotguns, like those used for skeet, shoot cartridges of small pellets.
And there they go! LIEBERMAN: I had the idea that this thing just kind of peeled open right at the outside, it dragged against the metal.
But it's not like that at all.
It's almost like it's spring-loaded.
Takes it a couple thousandths of a second to pop open.
NARRATOR: Time-warping shows us just how effective these pellets are in punishing that errant skeet.
In all the competition shooting that I do, never get to see anything like this.
Just incredible, seeing each individual bead breaking the target and then flying right through.
NARRATOR: The wad flying through the cloud of debris is the actual inner casing of a shotgun shell.
Okay, now that we've seen how it's done, let's find out how to do it.
What do you need to know to successfully shoot skeet? Lesson number one -- Handle the recoil.
A 12-gauge shotgun packs a backward punch that has to be absorbed to allow for consistent aim just ahead of the moving target.
So how long does it take to learn to shoot one of these? Hopefully I can teach you right now.
Come around the table here, and let's give this a shot.
NARRATOR: Here you might get a better look at what we mean when Jeff takes his shot.
Put it firmly on your shoulder, take the safety off, lean a little bit forward, pull the trigger.
LIEBERMAN: Okay.
Safety's off.
-McCLELLAND: Ready to go.
-Good? NARRATOR: That's what we're talking about.
Second one looked like not fun.
The first one was medium fun.
-Whoa! -Hey! NARRATOR: Lesson number two -- There is a difference between a guy who competed in the Olympics and everyone else.
That is spectacular.
Can we see just that initial shot moment, too? NARRATOR: Let's review Sean's form from the start at warp speed.
By leaning into the shot, the recoil pushes him backwards into a stable position.
LIEBERMAN: The whole gun is moving.
Your shoulder hasn't even felt it at first.
Yeah, you can definitely see how much you leaning into it helps.
Here, for contrast [Laughter.]
my reaction.
NARRATOR: In contrast, Jeff doesn't lean forward, and the recoil pushes him into an unstable position and compromises his aim.
It actually kind of picked you up a little there.
LIEBERMAN: Play it faster.
A little more shocking.
NARRATOR: Lesson three -- Set the spread pattern of your shot.
You can determine how much spread you want from the gun? -Absolutely can.
-How do you do that? That's all to do with the end of the gun here, on the choke.
And the constriction here determines how small or large the pattern's gonna be out on whatever kind of target you want to shoot at.
NARRATOR: This choke manually allows the shooter to compress the barrel of his shotgun.
The smaller the width, the narrower the spread.
All right.
So now we got the balloons set up.
Hopefully, just be changing the choke, we'll see the tight and wide shots and how different they are.
-We're ready? -LIEBERMAN: Yeah, absolutely.
McCLELLAND: That was the tight one.
Now I'm gonna show you the more open here.
See if we can get all the balloons on this one.
[Gunshot.]
Hi.
Pretty clear.
[Laughs.]
That's pretty great.
This was a pretty good illustration.
This is the narrow beam? This is the narrow choke.
-Here it is.
-LIEBERMAN: There they are.
Wow.
KEARNEY: Pretty tight grouping.
Yes, and you can see with those B.
B.
s and just from that distance just how tight the pattern is.
They haven't even opened up, even flying through the balloons.
NARRATOR: Most skeet shooting is done with a narrow pattern, but if you want to take out a larger target, well you get the idea.
LIEBERMAN: Oh, you know what? There's an amazing little thing.
-If you go back -Sure.
LIEBERMAN: there's Okay, play real slow.
Right when they hit the pink one.
Because it actually -- You can see the shock waves before it peels at all.
You can see the shock waves ripple like little puddles on the surface.
KEARNEY: Oh, yeah.
Look at that.
That's pretty awesome.
NARRATOR: Enough with the party favors.
-Pull.
- [Gunshot.]
NARRATOR: Let's shoot us some fake birds.
All right.
Pull.
Hey, that's not so bad.
-KEARNEY: Very nice.
-Great shot.
-Hey, wait a second.
-KEARNEY: What? Oh, I'm never gonna hit it.
-I think you will.
-I doubt it very much.
This is TV -- We'll give you 20 tries, and we'll get the one that works.
-I won't hit it.
-I just want to pull it.
McCLELLAND: Watch it come over the gun.
Just go right to it.
Pull the trigger.
All right.
Pull.
That was a miss.
-That was way over there.
-It was my fault.
NARRATOR: A quick review of the high-speed reveals that Matt's form was not the reason for his miss.
In fact, he was much steadier than Jeff.
Let's give Matt another shot.
Pull.
There it is.
McCLELLAND: Nice shot.
KEARNEY: That was awesome.
Let's drink some strawberry milk.
Safety is off.
Eyes and ears.
Are you ready? I'm ready.
KEARNEY: Okay.
[Gunshot.]
Bam! Very nice.
- [Whistle blows.]
-1, 2, 3, 4.
NARRATOR: Cheerleading is as much a spectator sport as the sports they cheer for, for many reasons.
All of these stunts require strength, timing, and precision.
WOMAN: Ready? NARRATOR: Understanding the physical principles behind what they do can help cheerleaders visualize what they need to accomplish in motion.
Lauren Millette is the coach of the Boston College cheerleading team.
Well, I'm really looking forward to being able to clean up everything that we're doing.
If there's something where we can get extra height in something or have a better twist down, I think that being able to use film always helps you when evaluating what you're doing.
NARRATOR: But before we turn our high-speed cameras on all this high-flying action, let's learn the language of the field.
[Whistle blows.]
A stunt is any maneuver involving a tumble, a pyramid or a toss.
[Whistle blows.]
A base is any and all cheerleaders in a stunt with their feet planted on the ground.
[Whistle blows.]
A flier is the cheerleader launched into the air.
A cradle is the term used for catching said flier.
[Whistle blows.]
And finally, a basket toss is a stunt utilizing three or more bases which toss a flier into the air.
[Bell rings.]
Class dismissed.
Okay, guys, I'd like you to set up your scorpion right there.
Ready? NARRATOR: Now let's get to the high-speed action.
First up LIEBERMAN: The scorpion.
MILLETTE: This is the scorpion.
LIEBERMAN: It looks like she, without even grabbing, had to be able to bring her leg all the way up there.
Yeah.
You really need to be flexible.
NARRATOR: Our cameras highlight some key challenges.
They tend to cross their legs like that? She shouldn't be crossing her legs, but her legs should be very, very close together.
LIEBERMAN: And it's normal to bend the knees through that? MILLETTE: We would want to see a straight leg as much as possible.
But it's just natural that that's gonna have a little bit of a bend in there.
From watching this, I'll be able to say to her, "Look, you have a significant bend there.
We really need to avoid that.
" NARRATOR: Next, we look at some basket tosses.
WOMAN: 1, 2, 3, 4.
LIEBERMAN: Awesome.
So it seems like if any one of them is not ready, they got to call the whole thing off because every one of them is crucial to the thing working.
Absolutely.
So usually the back spot would say, "Okay, we're gonna stop.
Come down," if the timing was off.
NARRATOR: In slow motion, the difficulty is obvious.
If anyone involved in the stunt hesitates, even for a second, it would throw the precise routine off and might cause serious injury.
To us, this all looks really good.
So you got to tell us if something's not the way you think it is or anything like that.
All your smiles disappear for that last instant.
[Laughter.]
What would you change? McGRATH: Maybe if the flier's legs were together in the twist, that would probably look cleaner.
And coming into the cradle to catch instead of going out looks a lot cleaner.
LIEBERMAN: This is great.
When you launch her, you guys all leave the ground.
I was surprised.
I didn't see that at all.
You're actually all jumping.
McGRATH: Yeah, we give a little jump just to give her that extra up sometimes.
This one looks good when it's high.
KEARNEY: Man, you guys launch her.
LIEBERMAN: Even if you have a 100-pound person, when they fall from that height and you stop them, that's several hundred pounds of force that you have to cull back.
NARRATOR: Now for the grand finale WOMAN: Whenever you're ready.
NARRATOR: one of the team's double-secret competitive moves.
This is referred to as "the chopper.
" -Cue that clip.
-KEARNEY: Here we go.
This looks like totally fun.
LIEBERMAN: Except for the guy.
WOMAN: Yeah.
LIEBERMAN: Two of the three of you are having a lot of fun.
[Laughter.]
Yeah, this is something that really -- If you're not spinning, it's completely impossible.
You have to use all that outward momentum to keep you guys up.
MILLETTE: They get a good sense of, "Okay, we need to slow it down, get the bottom girl to put her foot on the ground so that it stabilizes everything.
" So really it's all up to the bottom girl to decide when it's done.
NARRATOR: Well, we are suitably inspired, if not quite as embarrassed as perhaps we should be.
[Cheers and applause.]
[Crowd cheering.]
In our "Time Warp" lab, we conduct many experiments to illuminate our natural world.
And sometimes Yeah! NARRATOR: we just like to mess around.
A baseball bat is one tough item.
But how tough? What really happens when bat meets ball, and why does the bat sometimes break? Even the "Time Warp" lab has its limitations, so we decided to pay a house call to another lab.
This is the only place in the country where you certify the bats and the baseballs in the major leagues.
NARRATOR: Welcome to the University of Massachusetts Lowell Baseball Research Center.
Here, Patrick Drane will show Jeff and Matt the scientific reason for broken bats.
And to do so, Patrick uses this crazy machine.
DRANE: What we basically have here is we have a bat hanging here vertically.
We're gonna fire, with an air cannon, a ball at 160, and see what the collision looks like and go from there.
NARRATOR: We're loading the machine with a regulation wooden bat made of ash -- a longtime favorite in the big leagues.
That's way too fast to see.
Now to whip some ash, "Time Warp"-style.
KEARNEY: Okay.
That's good for focus.
DRANE: We're all set to fire.
-You ready? -KEARNEY: I'm all set up.
Okay.
NARRATOR: At 10,000 frames per second, we can see that regulation hardballs turn into squash balls when they hit the bat.
DRANE: And right here you can see the ball is actually starting to wrinkle.
LIEBERMAN: Right.
It has to go somewhere.
That, to me, looks like a fake baseball.
Yeah.
That's a real major league baseball.
LIEBERMAN: If I just saw a frozen frame of that, I would think that you really destroyed this ball.
This is about a third of the ball compressing almost flat.
That would take, you know, standing on top of one of these to make it compress like that.
Or a couple cars.
NARRATOR: Or, we hasten to add, a professional ballplayer.
So the ball's not even as tough as we thought.
But that just makes the sight of a splintered bat all the more mysterious.
What gives? Clearly the ball, but what else? So in this shot we see the full bat.
NARRATOR: And the bat bends, too? LIEBERMAN: This makes me feel like every single piece of equipment in baseball is made out of rubber.
It's totally unexpected, We look at a bat like this, and it feels totally solid.
Yeah, when you have a long object like a bat, it is going to have the ability to bend.
We're seeing some vibrations that extend all the way into the hands.
LIEBERMAN: So every time I hit a ball, I feel this sting going through my arms.
I think it's hard for people to understand what that sting is, but it's really these vibrations that are going back and forth really, really fast.
NARRATOR: What happens if these vibrations get too much for the bat to bear? It all happens in an instant.
A good bat goes bad and reaches the breaking point.
These frames capture what happens when a bat shatters.
It all happens so fast, it's hard to know what's going on The ball is actually starting to wrinkle.
NARRATOR: which is why we're testing this bat until destruction.
We'll move the bat a couple inches and hit there and see what the vibrations look like.
NARRATOR: At the University of Massachusetts Lowell Baseball Research Center, we can duplicate a fastball over and over and over again.
That's way too fast to see.
DRANE: Now we're moving an inch and a half, two inches further out.
We're gonna fire it at about 150 miles per hour.
But that's actually replicating a 90-mile-per-hour pitch and a 60-mile-per-hour swing.
NARRATOR: Now we're going to move away from the proverbial sweet spot that lies about five to seven inches from the end of the bat.
Load the next one in.
NARRATOR: There you go.
When the ball hits outside the sweet spot, the bat vibrates even more.
You only changed where we impacted by what, three or four inches? And the bat is almost in an "s" shape at certain points.
That's an amazing amount of vibration.
NARRATOR: And what if we move it just a bit further? Can we create that bat-breaking surprise? Okay.
It's firing.
-Ah.
-It broke.
NARRATOR: Say it ain't so, uh, Jeff.
LIEBERMAN: You can really see when the bat starts to break, all of the energy of the ball has gone into breaking this bat.
It's much more common that the bat splinters a little bit than to actually split apart.
NARRATOR: Well, we all know by now that here at "Time Warp," the uncommon is commonplace.
Well, okay, we got lucky.
Just as the ball is making full contact, we're seeing the bat is starting to break.
NARRATOR: It's not that the ball is harder than the bat.
Far from it.
But when a batter misses the sweet spot, the force of the ball makes the bat vibrate and bend so violently that it splits at the weakest point, often along the grain.
Snap, crackle, pop.
Now, what new research challenges lie ahead for our intrepid crew? Believe me, you don't want to know.
But we think it might be something to do with building a better piña colada.
Something you want to see warped? Check us out on the Discovery Channel Website -- discovery.
com/timewarp -- and the warp you see just might be your own.
[Crowd cheers.]
[Cheering.]
Go, "Time Warp"!