Mythbusters Fire Cannonball into Suburban Home

[Jaeke]

Lol did anyone else read this in the narrator's voice from the show?

 

[Valanthe]

pictures of the house and car please

If you follow the source link in the OP, there's about ten pictures, several of the "exit wound" the ball made on the second floor, one where you can see the passenger window of the van blasted in, with a bomb squad technician standing by.

 

[Jaeke]

Myth: If you fire a cannonball, it will wreck s**t up.

 

[Prince Regent]

I saw something about this on tv and I just knew that an article about it would pop up here sooner or later.

But yeah it's uncontrolled awesomeness.

 

[Fasckira]

It failed to wake the family.... two points. Just how heavily does that family sleep, and just what time of night were the crew firing off cannons (and possibly a third point - why so close to houses?)

 

[LeQuack_Is_Back]

"Oh mah god! Mah house! Who did this?!"
"Have you seen a stray cannonball anywhere?"
"Adam? Jamie? All is forgiven."

And it'd make a great story.

 

[AbstractStream]

pictures of the house and car please

Here, take a video instead.
CBS: http://www.kmjnow.com/pages/landing_localnews_2011?MythBusters-Sorry-for-Cannonball-Strike=1&blockID=572332&feedID=806
Washington post: http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/mythbusters-cannonball-hits-family-home-van/2011/12/07/gIQARJ5jcO_video.html

The cbs link shows just the house. Washington post shows both.

 

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

This is actually a pretty stupid show. From the moment they say what they're gonna test you can use your common sense to come to a correct conclusion if the myth will be busted or confirmed. Because their experiments are that dumb. And now look what they've done. Maybe it's a show for people who don't know anything about science.

I don't mind the criticism, but try not to act like you are some scholar with insight into science. That just makes it obnoxious.

He could be. I'm a scholar, I consider myself to have insights into science, and I have certainly been an obnoxious dick on these very forums when people were Failing Physics/Astronomy/Geology/Biology Forever. I'm sure I'm not the only one.

That said, I don't think he's watched enough of the show to know that some of the tests have truly surprising outcomes. Also, if he relies on common sense to make his conclusions, then the Mythbusters are better scientists than he is.

Or maybe I just know too much about science (mostly physics) to be surprised by the results they get.

 

[The Great JT]

Well look at it this way, if the show goes off the air, they can always open a cannonball-based demolition business.

 

[F'Angus]

So...uh...was the myth busted or confirmed?

 

[songnar]

I used to blow up houses with cannons. Then I took an arrow to the knee.

Wouldn't mind seeing the dent in that van, though.

 

[LazyAza]

"The cannonball failed to wake the three people sleeping in the house"
Must have been a household of deaf people.

 

[ElNeroDiablo]

The BUILD TEAM was testing on the Bomb Range about if stone cannonballs could have worked in breaching a castle's walls (check the related stories on the homepage from the SF Chronicle page). This is the same bomb range they launched a 16lbs (iirc) BOWLING BALL out of a cannon which went UP a hillside, proved both the Sawdust Cannon and POWDERED CREAMER Cannon worked (burying one of their cameras in burnt creamer in the process), tested 5lbs blocks of C4 against wood walls with and without tray liner (for pickups) and 10lbs C4 charges against cinder block walls (again with and without the liner) in testing what the stuff could protect against (making walls blast-resistant: Check. Making jackets that can stop a German Shepard from biting through: check. Preventing major damage in a car crash: Fail)...

And then there's the decades of the bomb range's use as *shock* A BOMB RANGE! Y'kno, a place out in the middle of nowhere where you blow items up to test what they do and how powerful they are?

So it's not Buster's fault some idiots decided to build a suburb in the nearby area around a place which was set up where it wouldn't hurt people in the nearby town, just bad luck one of their tests acted up as it did with such results.

 

[iniudan]

Living next to a bomb range is probably the reason no one noticed it. Though really, if you voluntarily move next door to a place like that, you should expect a wayward bomb once in a while.

Actually, why did they build homes that close to a bomb range in the first place?

For about the same reason that people around where I live move next to a racing track, that was build way before there was any residential development around it, then start to complain about the racing car noise. A cheap terrain or a nice house with an offer that seemed too good to pass, cause you were visiting the day that wouldn't show why it was so cheap and/or because they didn't bother to look at what was around.

There is also a chocolate factory close to where I live so tend to have a strong odor in the air from time to time, but to me that an advantage (except when hungry =p).

 

[Zeraki]

One day these guys are going to accidentally blow up the planet... and it will be awesome.

 

[weirdee]

Considering that they've managed to clear an entire range with that cannon before (only a few hundred feet away from the residential area), it was inevitable that they would some day outstrip that limit.

 

[aashell13]

What the hell were they doing with a loaded cannon in the middle of some suburbs? They must have been pretty close to the house if it managed to go up some stairs and still have enough momentum to smash through the wall and fly in to a car park!

It's worth remembering that the old smoothbore muzzle-loaders had effective ranges of a mile or more; and even that limit had more to do with accuracy than anything else.

 

[maddog015]

http://cnettv.cnet.com/mythbusters-misfires-cannonball-neighborhood/9742-1_53-50116153.html

Video for it if you want to see the damage to the house.

 

[Abedeus]

Don't they usually test their cannon shenanigans out in the middle of the desert? Where were they when they tested this.

They missed the water barrels and instead hit a concrete wall above them, in the distance.


...It bounced back..

In before "Whoops."