Do Frozen Chickens Really Hit Harder Than Thawed Ones? | MythBusters

MythBusters — S2 E2 “Chicken Gun” — Aired January 18, 2004 Gentlemen, grab your poultry, because Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman are about to turn one of the greatest urban legends in aviation history into a very loud, very feathery science experiment! The legend says that British engineers once fired birds at a high-speed train windshield, watched the chickens go straight through, and phoned NASA for help, only to be told to thaw their chickens. To find out if there is any truth to that story, the guys build a monstrous compressed-air chicken cannon from a pressure tank, a giant butterfly valve, and a ten-inch steel barrel, then load it with foam-cradled birds, frozen and thawed, and aim it at a plane they bought from a junkyard. Along the way, Pumpkin Chunkin champion Bruce Bradford stops by to inspect the hardware, and the team learns that a very important detail about their target was never checked. Then Adam and Jamie dive into the deep end at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, where a giant Pacific octopus takes a serious liking to Adam and a medieval-style tale about swallowing eggs gets the full laboratory treatment, with tadpoles, acid, body temperature water, and a saliva conductivity test that Adam volunteers for personally. Finally, the laundry gets deadly serious as the guys investigate a washing machine story involving 50 pounds of clothes, bleach, baking soda, and a dog. That means gutting a machine, stripping out every safety feature, strapping in Buster the crash test dummy, bolting on an electric car motor, and a very unscientific trip to the park to collect the key ingredient. Nobody leaves this episode with their dignity, their eyebrows, or their chicken intact. Hit play for chicken cannons, cephalopod romance, and one seriously overpowered spin cycle! Subscribe so you never miss an experiment:    / @mythbusterstvshow   Using science as their weapon and curiosity as their fuel, Hollywood special effects experts Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman spent 14 seasons and 296 episodes testing the world's most popular myths, urban legends, and movie moments. From the Diet Coke & Mentos explosion to surviving an underwater car escape — if it can be tested, they'll test it. #MythBusters #AdamSavage #ScienceExperiments