The Mythbusters Episode That Happened To Me!

When mythbusters was still a young show and Adam and Jamie were still doing their own myths there came an episode that made me love this show.

It was an episode that involved CDs in a computer suddenly exploding sending shrapnel around the room. When I saw this I instantly had to watch it because the very same scenario happened when I was around seven. I would have been furious if this myth had not been confirmed.

Here is my story.

We had an old windows 95 computer back when I was younger , one with those horizontal computer towers with the display set on top of it. The computer at the time was just at shoulder height, placing me right into its crosshairs.

I was playing "Titanic: Sands of time" the first game I ever fell in love with. By the time of seven I beat it about 30 times. To this day that game is still marvelous.

As I was playing the game the drive would rev up as usual making that loud hum when reading the disk. But this time it went into overdrive spinning outrageously inside that tower.

I unknowingly kept playing the game as usual sitting there eyes glued to the screen.

Then out of nowhere the drive cover blew off the frame following with thousands of projectiles into my neck and face cutting me horribly with superficial wounds. It was terrifying it made me think the computer tried to kill me.

To this day when a computer revs up I lean out of the way from it. I still used that computer after cleaning it out but I would always grab a VHS tape and place it in front so it would take the blast. But the traumatic nature made me never trust a cd rom again.

So you can see why I would have been infuriated by the failure of this episode and would have resulted in me sending them some pretty nasty letters.

Thank you for taking your time to read my experience.

Best to you all.

Lizard

This is kinda cool:



Then there is this one from about 10 years ago - some guy playing in his dorm room. Check out the video (quicktime) in the results section - there's a couple of cool 'experiments' shown there.

PowerLabs High Speed CD-Rom Experiments

reply to post by rnaa


Just imagine that happening about a foot away from your face ha scary thought.

reply to post by TheLotLizard

Awful! I'm glad you didn't get any damage to your eyes! (great episode though)

It will be a while yet. But dvd's and cd's are on their way out as a medium. There's too much up and coming technology. Their days are numbered.

First off, I'm glad you weren't seriously hurt... Although it sounds like it was bad enough...

Secondly, THAT WAS AN AWESOME GAME... I wish they would make more games like that now-a-days... I played it again last year... Good memories...

I don't know of any commercial CD drives that would spin at 23,000 RPM.

A modern CD rom, 8× speed spins the disc at 1600 to 4000 rpm.
As noted by the video posted above they had to spin it up to 23000 rpm!!! before it broke.

In your OP you state yours was a win95 machine, that means it probably had a max spin speed of at most 1000rpm.
If your CD rom exploded on such an old slow machine as that then you should suspect fowl play!

reply to post by VoidHawk


Well whatever happened happened there could have been a crack in it for all I know.

What I do know is that there was enough force to rip the cd door off and bits stick into my neck.

But it does happen. Just like exploding jawbreakers.

reply to post by 001ggg100


Probably one of thee best games of all time. And for the graphics of the generation it was very well made. Great storyline too with lots of history as well.

Too bad that one disk had to break. I did find another disk at a store one time. I was so excited!

TheLotLizard
reply to post by VoidHawk

 

Well whatever happened happened there could have been a crack in it for all I know.

What I do know is that there was enough force to rip the cd door off and bits stick into my neck.

But it does happen. Just like exploding jawbreakers.

Even with a crack that would not have happened.
I have old cd's running in a new drive that runs many many times faster than the drive you say you had, and they do not explode. Also, a cd that is in the drive would not shatter into pieces, If it did somehow manage to break it would simply jam the drive.
May I suggest you try breaking one!

reply to post by VoidHawk

I have been in the computer industry a long time. This can, and does happen occasionally. I have seen it with my own eyes, more than once. No foul play. Not a defective drive, etc. I attribute it to occasional defects in manufacturing and pressing. I'm sure there are other causes as well.

reply to post by VoidHawk


Are you calling me a liar? I know what happened I was there and the pieces were as breaking tempered glass.

Klassified
reply to post by VoidHawk

 

I have been in the computer industry a long time. This can, and does happen occasionally. I have seen it with my own eyes, more than once. No foul play. Not a defective drive, etc. I attribute it to occasional defects in manufacturing and pressing. I'm sure there are other causes as well.

edit on 9/11/2013 by Klassified because: (no reason given)

But as op stated, this was a very old drive, running probably a a few hundred rpm, and for a cd/dvd that really is well within safe limits.
If a disc were to break due to centrifugal forces, it would break at the weakest point, and the moment that happened the drive would simply jam. For a disc to shatter and spray particles with a force strong enough to smash the door off is rather unlikely.
I've been in the computer game since 1981, and I've never ever seen anything like that happen. And as I mentioned above, they had to spin a drive up to 23000 rpm!! before it would shatter. Now compare that with a few hundred rpm from a win 95 machine!
Sorry, but the motto here is deny ignorance, and I do. There is no way a win95 machine could EVER shatter a cd, unless as i stated in my earlier post, there was fowl play.

TheLotLizard
reply to post by VoidHawk

 

Are you calling me a liar? I know what happened I was there and the pieces were as breaking tempered glass.

You see, that right there shows you dont know what your talking about. They are polymers/Plastic! They do NOT behave like glass!
As i suggested earlier, try breaking one.

reply to post by VoidHawk


I'm just going to say your being pretty arrogant and are just plain wrong I can plainly remember buying a win 95 computer with a 52x cd rom, right now I have a 48x DVD Rom. If you are honestly claiming 8x is the most from modern machines I just don't know where that is coming from I seriously doubt you could even buy a drive that slow if you wanted to.

It may be that you are confusing the max speed of blue rays or something but most of those drives work a lot faster with CD's.

reply to post by VoidHawk

I'll give you props for being in the industry a few years longer than I have. But I HAVE seen pieces of the cd come out the front of a 12x drive. However, not shattered like glass, admittedly. I was very surprised to say the least. I didn't think it was possible. But as I said, I attribute it to the occasional defective cd.

Sometimes weird and unlikely things happen. I'm willing to give the OP the benefit of the doubt. Denying ignorance is about more than tearing someones story apart. It's also about looking beyond what confirms our own bias.

reply to post by VoidHawk


I have heard of it happening as well.. Someone comes in here and tells you that something happened and you have to be so conceited..

This is from 2002:
THis is from 2002:

Stadje found that today's high-speed 52x CD-ROM and 16x DVD drives stress the delicate plastic-and-metal disks they read. In lab tests at Atlas Copco Controls, spinning optical disks at top speeds - up to 30,000 revolutions per minute (rpm) - resulted in severe damage to the ceiling and the protective metal sleeve that encased the test spindle. At 52x CD-ROM speeds (27,500rpm) disks shatter in a "rain of plastic particles", shooting out long, sharp, knife-like shrapnel at half the speed of sound: "The result was a pile of shimmering plastic chips," he says.

reply to post by Teknikal


As I recall it was a windows 98 not 95 my mistake we had two at the time.

But believe me or don't believe me but unbelievable things will happen.

The computer might have just gone haywire, or that the cd rom may have been just unbalanced.

Its just a series if unfortunate events.