Mythbusters this week and Carl Barks

[seank]

On the Discovery channel show Mythbusters they are going to try to raise a sunken ship with ping-pong balls. If I remember correctly, this was first suggested by Carl Barks in a DD or US story. (Citation from one of the experts?) If I also remember correctly, it was actually done by some engineers in Norway in the 1970s. It should be interesting to see if the Mythbusters cite Unca Carl in the show.

 

http://dsc.discovery.com/schedule/episode.jsp?episode=21&cpi=24704&gid=11489&channel=DSC

[garthgantu]

Heh - having recently read the original of the Barks story to which you refer, I can say this without going and grabbing the book:

The story appeared in a Dell Giant - I believe it's specifically the "Uncle Scrooge Disneyland Vacation #1" issue.

 

In the story, Scrooge shoots his mouth off (surprise!) and agrees to a race between old paddle-wheel steamboats - on the Mississippi, I think, tho maybe they don't specify. What Scrooge doesn't realize until too late is that the contract for the race stipulates that the original paddle-wheelers must be used, and they're both sitting on the bottom of the river.

 

They try a number of tactics to raise Scrooge's boat, and ultimately the nephews step in, with their wealth of Junior Woodchucks knowledge, to save the day. I believe ping-pong balls are the solution, though I don't have the comic handy to confirm.

 

Of course, ultimately Archimedes deserves the credit for this sort of "anti-displacement" trick...but Barks was only a few years behind him!

[Arty]

They are referring to a different story published in wdcs 104 in 1949.

 

In fact similar method has been succesfully tested before ...

 

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[Arty]

Did they succeed in "Mythbusters" ...click here if you wan't to know... LINK

[deathlok]

Mythbusters is a great show to watch.

 

For those that have seen the show, did you see the episode where they buried 2 dead pigs in the ground and then cemented them over? The experiment was to be able to tell if they could scan the ground in order to find bodies (i.e. Jimmy Hoffa).

 

The other good episode was where they had 3 dead pigs simmer inside a car inside a trailer. Then they tried to get the smell out of the car.

 

great watching.

[Tango 'n Cash]

I am noticing a decidedly anti-pig slant to this show.

[OldGuy]

It's the "other" white meat.

[seank]

Unca Carl got a nod at the end of the show. They showed pages from the story and mentioned that Donald Duck and family did the same thing, with the same kind of equipment used by the Mythbusters, about 70 years ago. Very nice.

 

Raising the boat was deemed to be "plausible, but impractical."

 

So which Barks story should the Mythbusters tackle next? Omelet?

[sellinMyYouth]

Did they.... GASP cut those pages from a book, or make some high quality scans???

 

However, Great show.... I Not gonna give it a spoiler, but it was a good one... And how about floating that kid under a gillion Balloons??

That was a cool trick

[1962]

Excellent Show! My kids laughed themselves silly when they realized that Donald and his nephews had done the same thing long ago.

[Mushroom]

They should do a whole series on Gyro's inventions.............