We're now 4 episodes in, so we've reached a point where I feel I can rate this show. The fourth episode, where they crush a car with dominoes and try to pull the bottom Jenga block out of a stack, is what proved to me this show is going to succeed.
Previous episodes tended to touch on the novelty of the kids doing things above their age level - like a 12 year old driving a car on a closed course. That's fine, but not really what the show is about. Now that we're up to episode 4 we're finally getting past some of that novelty and getting into the core of what makes Mythbusters a great show to watch.
To illustrate I'll talk about episode 4 a bit more. This episode really played to the strengths of the various kids and the process of Mythbusters: Scaled down experiments to get data, doing the math and figuring out how to proceed (the smart kid), scaling things up through builders (the girl who fabricates and the guy who welds), right up to the actual test.
A number of methods of going about the Jenga blocks were devised by the kids and tested. Simple stuff like pulling the block with a bicycle, to a more complex bungee arrangement, up to a robotic pneumatic rig. The great thing with this is presents ideas and methodology across a spectrum that makes it accessible to everyone (I don't have a pneumatic actuator, but I do have bungee cords and a bicycle, and even if kids do not actually attempt these things, they at least can visualize themselves doing it and think about the process or how THEY would go about it).
If this show continues to produce episodes at the level of Episode 4 then it's going to do very well, en par with the original Mythbusters.
Previous episodes tended to touch on the novelty of the kids doing things above their age level - like a 12 year old driving a car on a closed course. That's fine, but not really what the show is about. Now that we're up to episode 4 we're finally getting past some of that novelty and getting into the core of what makes Mythbusters a great show to watch.
To illustrate I'll talk about episode 4 a bit more. This episode really played to the strengths of the various kids and the process of Mythbusters: Scaled down experiments to get data, doing the math and figuring out how to proceed (the smart kid), scaling things up through builders (the girl who fabricates and the guy who welds), right up to the actual test.
A number of methods of going about the Jenga blocks were devised by the kids and tested. Simple stuff like pulling the block with a bicycle, to a more complex bungee arrangement, up to a robotic pneumatic rig. The great thing with this is presents ideas and methodology across a spectrum that makes it accessible to everyone (I don't have a pneumatic actuator, but I do have bungee cords and a bicycle, and even if kids do not actually attempt these things, they at least can visualize themselves doing it and think about the process or how THEY would go about it).
If this show continues to produce episodes at the level of Episode 4 then it's going to do very well, en par with the original Mythbusters.