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Post by Antigone68104 on Jul 23, 2014 17:56:09 GMT
No, not by throwing a rock at it  . Every summer, you get the usual warnings on the news about not leaving kids/pets in a hot car, and unfortunately you also get the usual news stories about kids/pets dying because they were left in a hot car. The most recent warning I ran across said that cracking a window open doesn't help keep a car cool, but it's something a lot of people do automatically. Should either team have a myth coming up that involves getting several cars for the test, it might be worth their time to get those cars a day or two earlier and test whether there's any real temperature difference between a closed-up car and one with the windows cracked open. Needed for the test: - Two cars, same color, same number of windows
- Two temperature sensors
- One sunny day
Park the cars in direct sun. Car 1 has all its windows closed, Car 2 has all its windows opened one inch. Add the temperature sensors, and come back later. Ideally, it would be a breezy day and the cars would be parked at right angles to the prevailing wind direction. That would give the cracked-open windows the best chance to keep the car cool. Since they don't need running cars for this, it should be a cheap test. |
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Post by Cybermortis on Jul 23, 2014 18:57:31 GMT
MB really don't like to rely on the weather, remember that they plan what they will be filming weeks or months in advance so they have no idea or way of knowing what the weather is going to be doing.
That said they don't need to rely on the weather in this case, as they could use sunlamps and a large fan to simulate the conditions indoors. This would also give them more control, and hence more useful data by eliminating any variables.
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Post by the light works on Jul 24, 2014 3:10:39 GMT
its not so much that cracking a window does nothing - its that most people underestimate what constitutes an effective "crack"
and if they film in the summer, they have no worries about the weather. this is California we are talking about. they start getting daytime temperatures in excess of 80 degrees (F) in march.
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Post by OziRiS on Jul 24, 2014 12:46:29 GMT
I think there should be a third car. From what I've seen, what many people seem to do is just crack one window. I think there will be a noticable difference between cracking multiple windows and letting a draft through and cracking one to just let some of the heat seep out.
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Post by the light works on Jul 24, 2014 13:52:37 GMT
ideally, there would be a fourth car with a good solid 3-4 inch opening in all windows.
of course, the mythbusters do have a ready supply of cars to do long term testing with - and log results from each different scenario and compare inside temperature to ambient temperature. I forget - did they do minimyths of different ways to cool down an overhot interior rapidly?
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Post by Cybermortis on Jul 24, 2014 14:17:02 GMT
No, the closest I can think of were driving with the AC on or the windows open.
We don't need multiple cars for these tests, one would do although two would allow them to do more tests in a practical time frame. (Figure that they have maybe two or three days for location filming at best, and they don't really have the space to conduct tests like this in the shop).
Again, they dislike relying on the weather for tests - and I'm lead to believe from good sources that more than one idea has been dropped because it would rely on favorable weather conditions. Heck, even tests that don't rely on the weather have been affected. Remember driving in the rain? Where they had to stop testing because...it started to rain. Or two or so years ago when, in the middle of summer, they were at the bomb range intending to set fire to something to see if gas bottles could explode. Only for them to have to cancel the testing for 24 hours when it rained so heavily they couldn't start a fire and the bomb range turned into a swamp?
This is a situation where as many variables as possible need to be controlled, and doing indoor testing using sunlamps and fans would allow them to do this. It would also remove any problems caused by inclement weather - they can't afford to have a couple of overcast days during filming and they have no way of predicting if that is going to happen when the idea is scheduled for filming - which is several months in advance and often more.
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Post by the light works on Jul 24, 2014 14:51:45 GMT
No, the closest I can think of were driving with the AC on or the windows open. We don't need multiple cars for these tests, one would do although two would allow them to do more tests in a practical time frame. (Figure that they have maybe two or three days for location filming at best, and they don't really have the space to conduct tests like this in the shop). Again, they dislike relying on the weather for tests - and I'm lead to believe from good sources that more than one idea has been dropped because it would rely on favorable weather conditions. Heck, even tests that don't rely on the weather have been affected. Remember driving in the rain? Where they had to stop testing because...it started to rain. Or two or so years ago when, in the middle of summer, they were at the bomb range intending to set fire to something to see if gas bottles could explode. Only for them to have to cancel the testing for 24 hours when it rained so heavily they couldn't start a fire and the bomb range turned into a swamp? This is a situation where as many variables as possible need to be controlled, and doing indoor testing using sunlamps and fans would allow them to do this. It would also remove any problems caused by inclement weather - they can't afford to have a couple of overcast days during filming and they have no way of predicting if that is going to happen when the idea is scheduled for filming - which is several months in advance and often more. Hm. I have a vague memory of someone testing if opening and closing the car door a couple of times before you get in cools the interior more rapidly than not doing it. maybe it was on Top Gear UK. they could certainly use the car proving grounds facilities to do the on camera tests. I believe they have a special building specifically for heat testing cars. but I was thinking they could also do some charting using their own cars; so they could have a nice graph showing how each car heated during the day. - in various degrees of "windows cracked." as in "we monitored these tests for a month, and these are the results we got" |
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Post by the light works on Jul 24, 2014 15:10:58 GMT
Addendum: what I mean is; they do the hero shots for the show - but they also do a month of studying showing that the hero shot is representative.
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Post by Antigone68104 on Jul 24, 2014 22:42:01 GMT
That said they don't need to rely on the weather in this case, as they could use sunlamps and a large fan to simulate the conditions indoors. This would also give them more control, and hence more useful data by eliminating any variables. If they can rent a large warehouse for a few days, that should be enough time to test several variants -- I was just thinking the sun and a parking lot would be easier to arrange. |
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Post by kharnynb on Aug 6, 2014 19:13:26 GMT
Here is a vet that shows what happens even if you DO have windows cracked on a hot day...
Moral of the story, don't leave your pet/child in the car, either leave them at home or have someone stay with them.
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Post by Cybermortis on Aug 6, 2014 22:04:33 GMT
That said they don't need to rely on the weather in this case, as they could use sunlamps and a large fan to simulate the conditions indoors. This would also give them more control, and hence more useful data by eliminating any variables. If they can rent a large warehouse for a few days, that should be enough time to test several variants -- I was just thinking the sun and a parking lot would be easier to arrange. Here is a tip that come from my Bothan; Mythbusters HATE myths that reply on the weather doing what they want/need it to do. In fact I've been lead to believe that they have turned down a couple of otherwise good ideas purely because testing them would require certain conditions on that day. Hence trying to think of a valid way to test things without weather being involved. |
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Post by Antigone68104 on Aug 7, 2014 22:35:04 GMT
Fair enough. OK, new set of testing supplies: - One large enclosed space -- warehouse, hangar, parking garage ... whatever the researchers can find.
- At least one car. The testing would go faster with multiple cars, but in a regulated environment they could run all the tests with a single car and get valid results.
- Lots of temperature sensors, to go both inside the car(s) and outside.
- Sunlamps or other bright light source. Maybe stage/movie lighting? I'd bet they know just where to go to get those.
- One or two large fans to provide controlled wind conditions.
They'd still be able to run the test with nonrunning junker cars, as long as the place they ran this test was close to where the junkers were going to be towed into obstacles/crashed into/otherwise wrecked. Or if they can get a discount rate for towing said junkers to two different test areas . |
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Post by the light works on Aug 8, 2014 0:31:18 GMT
as I already said, vehicle proving grounds have those facilities.
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Post by wvengineer on Aug 8, 2014 2:19:27 GMT
About a week ago, I got involved looking for a vehicle where the owners admitted to leaving their dog in the car while they took a 4+ hour excursion train ride. We found the dog in the cab of a Ford F-150 extended cab with all 4 windows rolled down about and inch and the sunroof open. Once we found that, we contacted the police. They were very happy to come out and take care of the animal.
The officer estimated that even with the windows open, it was over 100F inside the cab. The police took care of opening the truck and removing the dog which was turned over to animal control for treatment of heat related injuries. The dog was not doing well. The animal control officer who took possession of the dog said that the dog would not have survived another hour. There was no way it would have survived until the owners returned. I do know that the owners eventually returned to claim their dog.
This is one that there is more than enough evidence to confirms the deadly effects, even with windows open. This would be more of a PSA type of segment.
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Post by the light works on Aug 8, 2014 14:31:28 GMT
I believe if I'm sitting in my truck eating lunch and I want to cool the interior off, I open the windows at least two inches, before I get any difference at all.
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Post by ironhold on Aug 8, 2014 21:28:09 GMT
They'd still be able to run the test with nonrunning junker cars, as long as the place they ran this test was close to where the junkers were going to be towed into obstacles/crashed into/otherwise wrecked. Or if they can get a discount rate for towing said junkers to two different test areas . What about one of the old military bases the team uses? |
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Post by the light works on Aug 9, 2014 0:29:11 GMT
all they need is a couple months to log data, about 5 cars, a bunch of thermometers that record peak temperature, and a parking lot where they can safely leave the windows open.
they have the cars, they can get the thermometers pretty cheap, and hopefully the M5 parking lot is secure.
as I said before, do the hero shots, and then say that they have charted 2 months of data to confirm that their indoor tests are valid.
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Post by Antigone68104 on Aug 9, 2014 20:10:11 GMT
What about one of the old military bases the team uses? I'm pretty sure one of those bases has a hangar they've used before. Plenty of room for the cars, it can be locked overnight -- if they have any trouble getting to use a vehicle testing ground (and I have no idea how busy those places are), going on-base would be a good alternative. TLW has a point with running additional tests in the M5 or M7 parking lot, though I'd add in tracking each day's high temperature. |
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Post by the light works on Aug 10, 2014 0:00:48 GMT
What about one of the old military bases the team uses? I'm pretty sure one of those bases has a hangar they've used before. Plenty of room for the cars, it can be locked overnight -- if they have any trouble getting to use a vehicle testing ground (and I have no idea how busy those places are), going on-base would be a good alternative. TLW has a point with running additional tests in the M5 or M7 parking lot, though I'd add in tracking each day's high temperature. you would track the outside temperature, inside temperature, and sky conditions (I.E. cloudy or sunny) if you had it available, you could also park in morning or afternoon shade. |
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Post by Cybermortis on Aug 10, 2014 12:08:18 GMT
M5 and M7 are both located on side streets surrounded by other businesses. Parking in both locations is either in front of the respective businesses or towards the end of the road. There simply isn't anywhere they could park two, let along five, cars for any length of time without it affecting parking for the staff and customers of everyone at both locations.
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