Kari Byron, everyone’s favorite woman on a show dedicated to blowing things up, is getting her own show dedicated to science on, well, the Science Channel. It will run every day from 4-5pm (!!) with no commercials and feature Kari talking about fun science stuff like spiders, egg shells, and how to be cool and into science when your central pop role models are Lady Gaga and the cast of Jersey Shore. Good on Kari.

In related news, we at CrunchGear are praying to the gods of explosivity that she will still appear on Mythbusters.

via GeeksareSexy

We’ve all seen MythBusters when there’s nothing else on TV, right? Right. Well here’s a video showing a Modern Warfare 2 several game myths either busted or confirmed. Well, mainly confirmed. Sorta reminds me of that Halo Warthog video.

Fresh from the Twitter feed of Grant Imahara we see Kari from Mythbusters going nuts with a sniper rifle taller than her. I hope it’s for an experiment and not a Discovery-channel sponsored “Deadliest Game” reality show where the prey will be hosts of various Food Network programs.

You can watch the video and find out, or just scroll past the picture of the lovely Kari Byron. The car part is about 40 minutes in.

Yes. Apparently, covering your car in clay and dimpling it like a golf ball will result in a significant increase in gas mileage. Who would of thunk it? The real trick it to make sure the dimples are scaled up to the proper size. I could get into the science, but it’s easier to let Jamie and Adam tell you all about it.

PopMech just interviewed the Mythbusters in their M5 headquarters in some strange corner of San Francisco where robots run wild and men have effusive, untamed facial hair.

Except for spooky robots guarding the stairs, M5’s second-floor offices could be those of any small company, with cluttered desks, a computer room and a small kitchen. Whiteboards are everywhere, crammed with top-of-the-brain doodles, rough technical drawings and the complex logistics of planning the MythBusters shooting schedule. In recent years, special-effects work has taken a back seat to the relentless demands of the show, and M5 today functions primarily as home base for the MythBusters production team. (The show’s secondary segments, involving the team of Kari Byron, Grant Imahara and Tory Belleci, are produced at a different location.)

The Mythbusters have truly redefined what it means to be an engineering geek for me and, I suspect, countless others. The guys are a little weird, a little funny, and they solve problems with aplomb and, most importantly, explosions. Good, good stuff.

Incidentally this reminds me of a great pick-up line: “Hey, ladies, which of the Mythbusters do I most resemble.” Great way to break the ice.

In this clip, the MBusters try to “fuse” a car first by crushing it with two trucks and then with a rocket sled. The result? Powdered car. Watch and learn.

Residents of Esparto, California had their windows shattered by an explosion created as part of a Mythbusters segment designed to see whether or not it was truly possible to knock someone’s socks off. According to KCRA news, the Mythbusters crew ignited 500 pounds of ammonium nitrate about a mile outside of Esparto that resulted in an explosion that “was a lot bigger than they expected.”

Nobody in the town had been notified that Mythbusters would be filming nearby, a decision that Esparto Fire Chief Barry Burns claimed was made in the name of safety:

“Mythbusters is supposed to be a really popular show. Everybody would have been out there. We would have had to cancel it because it would have been too dangerous.”

One resident was knocked off of her couch, while a teacher at one of the local schools said, “It felt like a house blew up, straight up… We were just scrambling to find out what was going on because we got kids out on the playground.”

Mythbusters replaced the broken windows in the town the same day and, while some residents thought that either a house had exploded or a plane had crashed, the lady who got knocked off her couch said “It was fun, really fun” and that she can’t wait to see the show. Wow.

KCRA [via Slashdot]

There isn’t another website out there that serves up more modern day myths than YouTube and so MythBusters is reaching out to the YouTube community for their ideas. Adam and Jamie are asking that ideas are submitted either by replying to the video above or posting it in the MythBusters forum. I vote for the cell phone popcorn thing. My mom stopped using her cell phone ’cause of that video. Me? I love popcorn.

Adam Savage of Mythbusters basically busted the myth of RFID security – and the Discovery Channel wouldn’t air the segment. Here he talks at the HOPE conference about the experience.

Forget hot-wiring cars. Peeps with real skill go for safes. You see, every safe has a weekness because someone, like a locksmith or you, might need to sneak in through a backdoor. This is what the safecracker are trying to exploit. It happens to be a rare skill that a person might never need, but then again, you never know when a priceless artifact is about to be stolen by baddies and the only hope is for you to crack a large 1915 bank vault.

Grab your lock pick and follow the rabbit through the link for a some safe-breaking resources.

How Stuff Works

In this article, we’ll examine the fundamentals of this rare skill and show you the ins and outs of safecracking.

Safecracking for the Computer Scientist [34-page illustrated PDF] – a must read

We examine security against forced, covert and surreptitious safe opening, focusing on the mechanical combination locks most commonly used on commercial safes in the US.

History of safes and safe breaking

In the last twenty years, the craft of safe cracking has tragically declined. It is no longer the glamorous activity featured in every other detective film, and the number of real criminal attacks on safes has fallen dramatically. 

Pro safe cracker

http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docid=-6219048398291830957&hl=en&fs=true

How to crack a safe on YouTube

Mythbusters on safe cracking

image source: SFhistory