Science of Stupid (2014) s08e10 Episode Script

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DALLAS (off-screen): This
is the Science of Stupid.
DALLAS (off-screen): Yes,
this is the show that extracts science from stupidity.
DALLAS (off-screen): Prepare
your eyeballs for acts of absurd risk taking
and toxic levels of
scientific ignorance.
We'll explore what went wrong.
DALLAS (off-screen): And why,
with the help of some curious scientific principles.
Such as angular momentum,
flexural strength,
and that sneaky critter,
wave speed.
Bend the laws of physics
(screams).
DALLAS (off-screen):
And they'll snap back in your face.
So watch out, it's
the Science of Stupid.
DALLAS (off-screen): In this
episode we'll be learning about bridge strength,
exploring the most effective
way to steer an air foil wing, not like that,
and we'll be examining
how towing induces torque, but first this.
DALLAS: There are three
kinds of doughnuts, sugary ring doughnuts,
sugary jam doughnuts, and then
there are the ones that are really bad for your health.
DALLAS (off-screen):
These ones.
Well I can see why people
pay money to watch this.
But take any friction fighting
high jinks to the roads and
it's a serious
hazard for motorists.
And for trees.
DALLAS: They were okay, but
extremely lucky, so you should never attempt this,
but off the road and in the
hands of an expert doughnuts are a masterclass in static
and kinetic friction.
DALLAS (off-screen):
Our driver hits the gas hard and turns sharply.
The excessive torque at the
rear wheels overcomes static friction between the tires and
the ground, so they become
subject to kinetic friction, which offers less resistance.
The reduced grip allows
centrifugal force to slide the wheels in a circular path like
the ring of a doughnut.
DALLAS: So not just risky,
but scientifically tricky to pull off,
although not
everyone seems to think so.
DALLAS (off-screen): I mean,
this guy reckons he's got the science nailed,
but in fact he hasn't
lost traction at his back tires at all,
he's just using rollers, see.
Which does reduce the
risk of kinetic friction burning up the tires
(scream).
DALLAS (off-screen):
But doesn't make it less dangerous.
MAN: Woah! Watch out, man!
DALLAS (off-screen):
It's a bit late for that.
Ah, the parking lot doughnut.
Using kinetic friction and
centrifugal force to drift into a space.
DALLAS (off-screen):
Like a glove.
Having successfully turned
static friction to kinetic at the rear wheels,
he then momentarily let up the
power on those wheels and went back to static.
So he stopped
circling and went straight.
There are better
ways to park a car.
DALLAS: And now we take a
break from the misadventures of the scientifically ignorant
to drop our jaws in awe at
one extraordinary act, one extraordinarily dangerous act.
DALLAS (off-screen):
The French Alps.
A cable car crosses
12,000 feet above sea level.
So far, so ordinary.
But nearby pro speed flyer,
Arnott Longabardi, takes off.
Approaching at almost 50 miles
an hour, he's aiming to land inside the moving cable car.
DALLAS: Now if you're under
any illusion that Arnott's feat was not incredibly risky,
consider he was travelling at
up to 50 miles per hour towards a moving doorway
roughly eight feet
wide, whereas
DALLAS (off-screen): This chap
is going a whole lot slower,
and aiming for the top
of a massive hill
MAN: Otherwise you're
gonna end up in the bushes.
Ah.
DALLAS (off-screen):
And yet he still missed.
MAN: Well
MAN: I don't think that
was supposed to happen.
DALLAS: Besides years
of training and meticulous planning,
the key to Arnott's success
comes down to three points.
Trajectory, acceleration,
and deceleration.
DALLAS (off-screen): To
achieve more lift he increases the wings angle of attack,
deflecting more air downwards.
To turn he pulls the break on
one side, pulling down its training edge,
increasing drag there.
As the wing recovers he
accelerates, increasing the airspeed over and under it,
generating more lift.
To decelerate he tugs on the
breaks, which pulls down the trailing edge of the wing,
thereby increasing drag.
But this can eventually stall
the wing, where he loses lift and plummets.
DALLAS: Arnott had to
deliberately induce a stall just a few feet before
reaching the cable car
so he didn't end up like a fly on a windscreen.
But any wannabe stunt flyer
hoping to top his feat would
first need to work on
their trajectories.
DALLAS (off-screen):
Here we are pulling one side of the wing,
using drag to sweep side
to side, increasing air speed as it recovers.
So in theory we could
line up with a cable car,
or a tree.
Remember, increasing
airspeed over and under the wing increases lift,
but he could've
done with a bit more.
This handglider's
trajectory is inline with our paragliders,
but fortunately he spotted
this and is tilting his wing to increase lift.
It was just a little too late.
Luckily he did have
a reserve parachute.
DALLAS (off-screen):
Okay, let's look at breaking.
Pulling down the trailing edge
of the wing increases drag, which can lead to a stall,
which does slow you down,
but can also
cause a sudden drop.
All of our flyers were okay,
but it seems none of them has quite the mastery of
trajectory to nail the
target, or have they.
MAN: Cheers!
DALLAS (off-screen): And to
you sir, but I'm not sure we're quite ready for
cable cars just yet.
DALLAS (off-screen): We're
abut to see a scientific principle in action at this
drive-through, but can
you work out which one?
DALLAS (off-screen):
Did you guess the science that's about to liven
up this drive-through?
It's parabolic trajectory.
This is dictated by take
off velocity and launch act.
So when our driver
inadvertently hits the gas, accelerates to a high velocity
and launches up a slope, he
would've followed a complete parabolic trajectory over the
other car if he hadn't
caught it with its wheels.
People train for years
to be able to do that.
DALLAS: Sometimes the
coming together of two different activities
brings inspired results.
Water pole,
equestrian vaulting, chess boxing, joggling.
Other times less
inspired, more, hmm, insane.
DALLAS (off-screen):
This is Jamie, he's a snowboarder, and this chap,
he's a pilot of an airplane.
Mix them up and you get
up to 77.7 miles per hour.
I'm glad he didn't take off,
because you don't have to be towed by a plane for the
landing to hurt.
MAN: Yeah, that felt.
DALLAS: Yep, some snowboarders
and skiers are shunning the traditional gravity assisted
method of building and
turning instead to snow mobiles, ATVs and even cars,
and that is a terrible and
dangerous idea, as you may
notice from the
following physics.
DALLAS (off-screen): As our
snowboarder is towed the rope exerts a pulling force,
whilst friction at the
ground acts to slow him down.
The distance between them
produces a torque or turning effect on his body.
By leaning back he produces
torque in the opposite
direction and maintains balance.
But as he swings out on a
turn he experiences torque rotating him sideways,
so he must lean
in to counter it.
Get the balance right and he
can build plenty of velocity to go airborne.
Not that it's recommended.
DALLAS: Let's
consider that velocity.
A skier on a twenty degree
slope can be accelerated by gravity to 60 miles an hour
in around eight seconds.
An ATV can accelerate to 60
miles an hour in five seconds.
DALLAS (off-screen): All
the more reason to lean back.
DALLAS (off-screen): Okay,
not exactly 0-60 in five, but combine a lack of backwards
lean with a big pulling
force and big friction and you get big torque.
So what if we try this
on a surface with a lower coefficient
friction, like a frozen lake.
See how just a little
backwards lean produces the counter-torque needed
to keep him perfectly balanced.
Until he caught the
front of his ski.
Actually I'd forget about
the skis and just get a boat.
Snow, solid ground, much
better, and look at this, crouching low brings the
pulling force and frictional
force closer, reducing torque, and leaning back easily
produces enough
torque to counter this.
But will he remember
to lean in as he turns?
Yes he will, but
only for a little bit.
Don't worry, he was fine.
And now we've got torque
under control, ish, let's try a jump.
We just need plenty of
velocity and a clear landing area.
DALLAS: Surviving evidence of
bridge building dates back at least 3,000 years,
and in that time we've gone
from piles of stones to the 102.4 mile Danyang-Kunshan
bridge in China, and yet some
of us still don't seem to get how to use them.
DALLAS (off-screen):
Bridges are for walking along, not climbing down.
Bridges are not practical
launches for kayaks,
and you're supposed to
cross the wide bit in the middle, not that bit.
It's okay, he made it to the
other side, but don't ever try anything like that,
or that.
DALLAS: Yep, a bridge is more
in the realm of common sense, but how they're made is
without doubt a science.
DALLAS (off-screen): A beam
bridge consists of a rigid horizontal structure anchored
at either end, often
supported by piers.
In these bridges the beam
experiences both tension and compression,
making them the
weakest design.
Truss bridges and suspension
bridges solve this by separating compressive
and tensile forces.
Material choice is
also significant.
While concrete has high
compressive strength,
steel is flexible
with high tensile and compressive strength.
DALLAS: In Neolithic times
our primitive ancestors are believed to have built simple
beam bridges out of
anything they could find.
DALLAS (off-screen): Luckily
Aluminum ladders
hadn't been invented.
Anyway, early engineers
would've concluded that an unsupported
twelve-foot-ish long hollow
beam of aluminum construction
is incapable of bearing
a roughly 200 pound load.
They were Neolithic,
not nincompoops.
Some of the earliest known
timber bridges date back to the Roman empire
and had supporting piers
like this one.
The pier easily bears
the force of his weight pushing down,
but not the force as
he pushes sideways.
Oh, we've got a lot to
thank the Romans for.
Much later the ability of
trusses to separate compressive
and tensile forces enable
engineers to build bridges with
wider unsupported spans
and long moveable bridges.
WOMAN: What are you doing?
WOMAN: Stop!
DALLAS (off-screen):
Not quite movable enough.
WOMAN: Oh my God, oh my God.
DALLAS (off-screen):
Doll, I know what you're thinking, but don't worry.
We haven't forgotten about
the mighty suspension bridge.
WOMAN: Holy cow, look at that!
DALLAS (off-screen): Well I
did say steel was flexible,
but I think I'd rather take my
chances on a pile of stones.
DALLAS: And now, gentle
viewers, we explore the science behind a truly
underappreciated
life skill, pouring.
DALLAS (off-screen): It can
be key to a future career.
Sommelier.
It can be critical for
surviving natures torment.
Well in his mind at least.
MAN: Shhh.
DALLAS (off-screen): Okay,
and it can be brilliant for pulling pranks
on your friends.
MAN: Oh.
DALLAS (off-screen):
See, everyone loved that.
DALLAS: People are really
struggling with the fundamentals of pouring.
Maybe they underestimate the
complex chemistry and physics at play as a liquid flows.
DALLAS (off-screen): Waters
density makes it heavy and its center of mass can slosh
around, making it
difficult to carry.
This is because liquids
are made up of loosely bonded molecules,
strong enough to keep the
molecules close together, but weak enough to let
them move around each other.
With one hand at the bottom
and the other at the top you can easily apply torque to
safely tip the bucket and
control the flow, ideally.
DALLAS: Now as an parent will
testify, that sloshing center of mass can take time for
young hands to
get to grips with.
BOY: Grab those.
BOY: This one is for me.
BOY: Uh oh!
DALLAS (off-screen):
Don't worry, little clean up, and let's try a pour.
Good control of that
moving center of mass.
It's precocious start.
BOY: Uh oh, I spilled!
DALLAS (off-screen): Never
mind little man, those naughty loosely bonded molecules are
hard to handle.
Not to mention
BOY: Slippery!
DALLAS (off-screen):
You got it.
Some pourers are so highly
skilled they can do it in near total darkness.
(screams)
DALLAS (off-screen): Bravo.
Even in the dark she performed
a precision pour by sticking to the classic technique,
one hand at the bottom,
one at the top, allowing her to easily generate
the torque needed to
safely tip the bucket.
DALLAS (off-screen):
Okay, so that's close range.
Let's make this a
little harder and go higher.
MAN: When I say OK, alright.
DALLAS (off-screen):
Yeah, not perfect.
The evidence points to a
poorly managed flow, and underestimation of weight,
and terrible balance.
DALLAS: You may have seen
acrobats elevating their handstands using specialized
stilts to make an
extraordinary feat of muscular control more precarious and
more impressive, but some
people don't have the stilts.
They have other things
which makes the results mixed.
A set of dumbbells, yes.
Basketballs on
dumbbells, double yes.
A tower of dumbbell
weights, it's a no.
DALLAS: In a handstand you are
effectively standing up using muscles like the triceps,
deltoids, which weren't
designed to do the job.
Add another object between
you and the ground and you're adding more places
where it can go wrong.
Here's your science.
First he kicks up,
giving himself just enough angular momentum to rotate
into the handstand.
He must ensure his center
of mass is over his base
of support and his
hands for stability.
And if the object he's on
isn't fixed down his hands must be positioned well within
its base of support to avoid
a turning effect causing the object to pivot.
DALLAS: As you can see,
an elevated handstand should only ever be performed by
a trained expert using
a good solid platform.
DALLAS (off-screen):
Here we have a picnicker and a cooler box.
It does have a large
base, but it also has wheels.
What if we try something fixed
to the ground, like this bin, but without the hinges.
If he'd been directly
over the pivot here it might've been possible,
but he wasn't, so
it wasn't possible.
How about
something less pivoty.
Well actually Sugarlump has
twelve potential pivot points, but those muscular legs
are forming a solid base.
Shame about him.
Sugarlump's sturdy work was
ruined by the excessive angular momentum of his human.
And besides, it's kinder to
stick to inanimate objects,
but maybe not your
mum's kitchen sides.
They might form
a sturdy base
DALLAS (off-screen):
But you might not.
WOMAN: What was that?
DALLAS (off-screen): Uh oh.
Quick analysis.
Moving one hand
reduces his base of support,
meaning he
couldn't counter the turning
effect, so it's a no
for kitchen sides too.
They're simply too
expensive to replace.
WOMAN: What have you done now?
DALLAS (off-screen):
And keep replacing.
DALLAS: The American
poet and philosopher, Ralph Waldo Emerson,
once remarked, 'Bad
times have scientific value.
These are occasions a
good learner would not miss.' It makes sense.
I mean, who'd want
to miss this lot.
(music plays through credits)
♪
BOY: Slippery.
Captioned by Cotter
Captioning Services.