Buster's Last Stand

By Dan O

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0AYTtDZcFU
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUNwha0UESU

It's a sad week for physics. After about 13 years of being on the air, MythBusters has finally ended. To honor the final episode, Wired decided to do a piece about the physics of Buster's last stand. In the video, buster is strapped to rocket powered device, with 10 seperate rockets, each creating 5,200 pounds of thrust.  This compounded amount of thrust pushes the rocket at a speed past the speed of sound into a brick wall, completely disintegrating Buster.

Source: Wired - http://www.wired.com/2016/03/physics-busters-epic-end-mythbusters-finale/

An article at Wired decided to calculate the acceleration of Buster during the whole experiment, by finding the final velocity, initial velocity, time traveled, and distance traveled, assuming acceleration was constant. Using these calculations, the author was able to 466 m/s^2 for the acceleration.

Source: Wired.com

Source: Wired.com

Afterwards, using this clip from the mythbusters episode, the author used a device called logger pro in order to find a better fit for the acceleration.

Using the calculated graph for the position vs. time, the author found the actual acceleartion by using the number for A in At^2 because if you take the derivative of the position equation twice, that gives acceleration. So the final result found for the acceleration was 389.2 m/s^2. Even though this is a different result than the one found, that can easily be explained by air resistance, resistance by the track, and a non-constant acceleration.

However, the point of this post is not to re-state the original findings of the author, but to show how, even the physics that you learn in your PHY 183 courses can still be used later in your life and for fun prospects, like the mythbusters do.