Testing the US Military’s Worst Idea

Probably in the top half of ideas because at least with this, there isn't any chemicals or radioactive materials that can become uncontained when things inevitably go wrong.

Wasnt their idea to begin with

worst one was allowing females to have combat roles in the military.

Their worst idea was reducing the Jalapeno cheese spread to 1 ounce from 1.5

Worst in terms of costing

Honestly I wish they had just dropped one from the max height they wanted to do, just to demonstrate how big of a crater it would make. But also, even with the height they were dropping from, everyone needed to be a LOT FURTHER back. They took some really dumb risks.

@@hellomark1 The dumbest thing to me was that they saw how they weights were swinging around like crazy below the helicopter and NOBODY thought to shorten the tether, if that tether was 3ft long it would've been much more accurate. What they really should have done though is make a mount/drop system strapped tight to the bottom of the helicopter that would lock the weights in place before release. That, coupled with fins, would have made an enormous difference.

@@watermelonsavage2914 not as much of a difference as it would have made with the way the helicopter itself was fidgeting, but it'd still have been better.

@@watermelonsavage2914 Yeah that bothered me too. They could have made a solid mount, or stabilized the strap with a few more anchor points... or ANYTHING really. Like you said, I'm surprised at how little actual engineering went into this.

Haven't watched the entirety of this video since I've seen everything I need to know it's not worth finishing, but my impression is that they just tacked this on as something they thought could turn into a video while shooting footage for another video which came out just before this one (so they didn't blow all that money exclusively to film for this). Disappointing quality control to say the least

It's like testing the destructive power of a bullet by hiring a guy who can flick pennies really super hard.

@@travis6228A pretty accurate analogy in multiple ways. Bullets have rifling and can be precisely aimed by placing them in vices. Dude flicking a penny is 100% just "trust me bro I'll hit it" Which is an accurate summation of their "launch system" on this one. Rods from god have mathematicians calculating deorbiting trajectories, and precision burns to reach those trajectories. Not a piece of steel on the end of a towing strap, swinging in the wind while a pilot does micro adjustments on the launch vehicle. Which adjusts by tilting left/right/back/forth...

Yeah, it's even worse given how they say themselves that kinetic projectiles like those rods are explosive thanks to the energy generated by them being sufficient to ignite the target and the difference it makes can be seen on the surface of Moon.
Their kinetic projectiles have energy way below the threshold required to demonstrate that effect and its potential impact on the effectiveness of the weapon. By Veritassium's logic, this should be the main source of the destructive power, as suggested by the crates on Moon.

I was trying to figure out wtf they were testing for 8 min. Then realized there’s people like this and shut it off

yeah its really lame

OMG it can land sideways if you have no fins? How could we possibly know that before renting a helicopter?

The drop at 17:35 was ridiculous. If it was rigidly mounted to the base of the chopper and had fins it would've hit the middle of the city.

“As if”? :)

@@ericpmoss As if

@@ericpmoss As if

Derek probably did a couple of expensive videos with helicopters at once. In previous videos, Adam Savage was there as a guest. Here, I guess, he didn't have that much to add to the experiment so he just watched.

You mean they don't?

lmao yeah

I imagine like they run into Adam randomly, like he's taking a stroll in the desert and find these Veritasium guys testing stuff, sharing his wisdom along the way.

Adam's just busy on something in his workshop, when suddenly something twinges in the back of his mind. With a jerk, his head shoots up and he faintly cocks it, as if to listen for something in the distance. His eyes narrow and his brow furrows, and with a slightly defeated -- for the distraction -- but otherwise classically enthusiastic "It's time. I am needed!" he fades from the workshop and surprises Derek with a clap on the back and a "Hey there! So I heard you were doing some science experiments out here..?"

Funny. Had me laughing. Haha. And i actually needed to laugh with the night I'm having so thanks.

I mean I'm fairly sure anyone attempting an experiment like this is required to get permission and supervision from and by Adam by law in the United States lol 🤣 I Hope You Are All Doing Well And Having A Great Day/Night!!

Not just unprofessional, every single step was executed and/or planned sooooo badly if there was any planning involved at all beyond renting a heli. They rented a chopper but didn't even think about welding fins on their "darts"? They used extremely long rope in windy conditions and nobody said "maybe we should shorten the rope a bit or use another system"? They used GPS to hit targets less than 5 square meters big (civilian GPS is not that accurate) and were surprised when it wasn't accurate enough? Nobody thought of using a friggin laser pointer or something to aid the aiming?
Those are just the things that immediately came to mind, seriously did nobody involved in this video think for just one damn second?
I like veritasium but this is insultingly bad.

I refuse to believe no one thought about stabilization of a falling projectile before dropping one. It's like they were paid to convince us that it's not possible.

​@@ToBeIsWasWerebut but Adam savage!

What is more, when the idea was conceived, they would have known every single fact covered in this video. Therefore, resurrecting the project years later must mean they had other ideas. For example, I would be interested in many rods and seeing what it does in an area. I also would not have ANYONE NEAR the drop site and then go for much higher distances. I think they went low for fear of not getting their objects back ever, or there were other limitations. But then what are you actually testing?

I think this was an impromptu add-on to the penny drop video. You can see they are in the same location with the same helicopter. He probably just wanted to get in two videos for the price of one helo rental.

I mean, centerline support, you know, like a bomb mounted to a solid object, it seems like that would be pretty easy to setup, especially if they are paying to have pro sand castle people be there. Bad video, would not watch again.

I think this was an impromptu add-on to the penny drop video. You can see they are in the same location with the same helicopter. He probably just wanted to get in two videos for the price of one helo rental.

@@locomotive9000 Not really a good excuse as I see it. He took zero scientific steps during this shoot. He did not even have a simple range finder to aim that the helicopter... He instead just kept questioning it's height.

@Chpow01 Not a good excuse?? You want a refund for the $0.00 ticket price or something? lmao 🤣

@@locomotive9000 It was a crappy clickbait title from a "science channel". He should simply know better and do better.

Things like these in a video like this seems like it’s scripted

Sometimes a genius is so into the genius stuff, that he forgets about the basic stuff. Whenever I try to do something smart, a rookie mistake just screws it up.

@@AgeDrain What exactly should be scripted about this?

Also the weight was not pointed on one end. How much more could have cost them to weld some steel fins to it?

ikr, like they can make the rope shorter or something to increase precision.

They got scared. lol

@@BestCosmologist You can tell that by the final shot (the 500 m one) they were terrified lol. I would too, honestly.

Fan of mythbusters, I take? ;)

I suppose they could have dropped from higher while staying safe, by not dropping it anywhere close to people, and just using the handcam footage from the helicopter

Thought the same, fly the helicopter really far and drop it, would love to see it

they have a sword missile that can take out 1 person with no collateral damage. I would not be surprised if we already have a few of these up in space already and its above top secret

Not "dumb" bombs. In WW2 they were often 5 miles off target even with the "state of the art" Norden bomb sight.

@@tombombadil3185 exactly my point. Very dumb bombs. But we don't drop dumb bombs anymore we drop very smart ones . Meanwhile Derek is using World War I technology to try and see if this will work. It's like getting a Model T Ford and by it's performance assuming that we could never get a different vehicle to go 300 mph.

its not a matter of accuracy, its a matter of orbital energy the rod would conserve, you cannot just drop something from the iss and expect it to fall to earth...it has to lose its 17k miles per hour its going before it slowly falls into the atmosphere.

@@cruiserhog1 that may be the case but what does that have to do with the lack of accuracy that this particular test displayed?

they wouldnt last a day in ukraine

Yep. This is WW 1 tech at best. Seriously, even 19th century artillery would do a better job simulating a rod of god.

Yeah... Like I would have thought Derek would have welded some fins on or somthing to get it to fly true.

Physics vs engineering

If they would've dropped it out of a tube that would have in part cancel out the swaying. A lot more accurate.

@@piele1982 or just not let it swing from a copter. Anyone who's played a video game knows what would have happened.

They are playing about for Likes.
Sort of "Myth busters very lite for KRplus"..

I wouldn't attempt it without an arduino based targeting system tested in KSP. Since it's not meant for combat, image processing can be simplified a lot by placing a few bright lights around the target.

What do you do?

I'd drop it on a wire guide. A few hundred meters of 3mm steel wire and a set of roller guides could get it reliably on target

@@wyattroncin941 There is absolutely no point. You are needlessly increasing resistance and weight carried on the heli while the same could be achieved over radio. Wifi might lack the range. Idk, whatever drones are using would do.

@@aleksanderczajka6072 a rope rail system would certainly be heavy and expensive, but it would be simple to get opperational, and wouldn't be destroying $200+ in hardware per drop, and it's practically guaranteed to work.

Easy to mesure a crater indeed.

@@nicolaspeigne1429 I got the impression that the entire experiment was setup to purposefully demonstrate how silly the entire concept was. So they made sure to focus on the hardest parts of the problem rather than showing how effective it really could be. The guidance would be just like any of the current bombs out there. Just because it doesn't have propulsion or explosives doesn't mean it wouldn't have guidance and fins. They have bombs now that can glide down and using GPS hit the target exactly. Fins could be made to pop out once the missile gets slowed down enough. Things like that. But he seemed hell-bent on making it look like a lame idea.

@@dougcox835 they probably got worked up and spent a bunch of money before considering the basic problems, after that they had ro make a video out of it somehow

@@nicolaspeigne1429 The funny thing is, the problems they had are not the problems that the real system would contend with. Satellites don't exactly need to deal with a pendulum swinging and even not the wind really. The projectile at those speeds won't be in the wind long enough to matter. And you can bet the military knows how to account for all the variables and make it land on target. The impact would be like a nuclear blast so exact aim wouldn't actually be much of a problem in the first place.

@@dougcox835 i was talking about the basic problems of testing an orbital weapon traveling at hypersonic speed a few hundred feet off the ground

Smart to reach out to him! He’s probably the global expert on these things!

@MrBeest is ruining the planet[recent vid explains] 100%

@@jordancarter8310 and yet he didnt reach out to him and missed out on the vital "you should put fins on it" that noone else involved seemed to think of

The man needs no introduction, hes that iconic lol.

"We should have had this conversation yesterday..."

Big little boys playing sand castles?... Why not!

Yeah, actually it really surprised me too, derek usually plans things really well, since Adam was there maybe this was at the same time they tested the pennies and the dropping of really big thing was just and afterthought?

I expected he would mention the "Iraqi bunker busters" the US used against Iraqi bunkers in the Kuwait invasion. They did contain explosives, but still used the kinetic energy to penetrate really deep, at least 15 meters (45 feet). Probably not feasible to be recreated by a youtuber tho.

@@iFix. This is what happened. They just decided to milk this and release this video, which is going to make insane money; this video got 200,000 in 1 hour. So they got two videos out of this 'project' they did. Easily making over $500,000 from both videos when you consider the sponsorship as well

So many of you really don't understand the point of this video, and it's sad because his audience is usually fairly educated.

I’m not sure that it’s alluding to lightning bolts at all, but rather to a really powerful hammer

Yeah I would've just gotten massive buckets to make a premoulded one and made 10x as much area.

As if professionally sand castle makers would allow a quantity first approach

Because it’s fun to have fun

because its fun

Quantity wouldn't need professionals, and that part of the video is gone, so thats why

Yea or rig up steerable fins with a live FPV camera so you can guide it.

I don't know how this guy has so many subs if this is how he operates...

Error margins on GPS being bigger than the target.

@@hunterahudsoninstall the GPS right into the body, and just launch it like an actual rocket. That’s how you’ll test it.

@Karl with a K just as competent as experts in any and every single field out there. no more, no less. regardless of how many we educate, truly intelligent people remain in short supply.

Someone promote Captain Obvious here to Major.

It doesn't matter. It got the views anyway.

I dont know this still probably got all of our views which is the real success

arrows work too.

This new format, focusing on hype and false drama like on Discovery Channel is really hurting Derek's videos, IMO. If the next video follows suit, I'll be unsubbing, and that's sad because I've followed him since he had less than 10k subscribers. I think it's probably due to the sheer size of the production team. IMO he needs to return to his roots. But that's just me. Also get off my lawn. Rawr.

Yup, no small scale test first.

@Adrian Molière Because then it would miss the point of this video (no pun intended). The video was trying to prove or disprove that the Rods from god was a feasible idea. And they disproved that. I mean, what's the point of having a missile when you would miss the target by a kilometre away?
Althougth I still think it was a bad idea he didn't do a small scale test first

This felt like a producer made video, with mr. Veritasium just hosting. Sub par quality for this channel

Very underwhelming.

A precision guidance system with accelerometers dropping longer thinner rods with fin stabilization from heavy lift drones on much, much bigger sandcastle city from much higher. That would have been cool to see.

Yeah, the producer not doing a good enough job

Big blimp tethered to the target, have the tether act as a zip line to target. Wait for a less windy day.

They messed around with a bit of sand and call it science, what happened to this channel?

Also, when they saw they were right above; they were not because of a phenomenon called 'Refraction of Light in Atmospehere' basically, you see everything 2.3 to 2.4 degree off, and at 500m that amounts to a deviation of about 20.082 m, so, updating the calculation, they deviation would be a little bit more than 75m.

for fuckin real

Almost like the govt was like hey bro, do this experiment so it'll discredit the rods of God idea and people will think we don't have them.

Exactly what I was thinking. Could’ve made the impact end a pointed end. Could’ve added wings. Added vents, more straps to stop the swinging. Just downright horrible execution

Author oversteps literary license with misleading statements many times.

Considering that shortly before this video was published, Mark Rober put up a video where he was well on his way to designing a system to do exactly this kind of guidance dropping an egg FROM SPACE (way higher than shown here), and he was already dropping from 10k feet (3048 meters) with an accuracy in a reasonable ballpark of what was achieved here, in scale, I'd say that with the technical resources of the US military contracting industry, this definitely COULD be done. It would be fairly costly, but uh... if Mark Rober with a few engineer friends and something like a Raspberry Pi or Arduino and a not absurd amount of code can get that far, that relatively fast, I'm sure it wouldn't take too long or too much money to develop a working system. Deploying the rapid response coverage is the issue, NOT making the projectile control be precise enough. Communicating a target would be trivial, and once loaded, no actual guidance from the ground would be needed - as demonstrated by how well Rober did so quickly. They only stopped from developing their system because of the snares of legality and ethics, when they realized they were developing a guided missile.
Yes, this concept is functionally possible and on a smaller scale with less time response definitely feasible.

At one point we also thought that re-usable rockets are far-fetched.

KEW on that scale essentially fall under the nuclear disarmament treaties. They’re not mentioned explicitly, but any nation developing them would find itself negotiating soon.

The engineering problems have been worked out. We have tables based on windage for dropping troops out planes been doing it since nam.
We know exactly how far a t10 or t11 chute will fly given altitude and windage. Its not that hard to calculate the same for a rod. just add stabilizing fins. and walla

@@chiefgully9353 pretty much but there have been artillery charts for much longer than nam.

Well the video explains pretty clearly that the issue isn't launching a projectile and hitting a target. The issue is maintaining accuracy as weight, distance, and velocity increase exponentially. Launching a howitzer round 2 miles past the horizon is nowhere comparable to dropping a 10-tonne rod from 22,000 miles altitude, accounting for the change from a vacuum to entering the atmosphere and still trying to maintain enough accuracy to cripple installations. Artillery actually requires less accuracy than kinetic weapons, and it's cheaper and more accurate.

It was all planned just for the punchline at the end.
"I would say it is my biggest failure of all time, which as it turns out, is also something you could say about the actual weapon Rods from God."
The whole setup is so crappy it's obvious he never intended for it to succeed.

Did you see all the producers that were involved? lol, so embarrassing.

@UCiUl8dZIzCkGUyB6nrTpOTg Ye, or instead of having the weight tied outside the coptor, have the guy chuck it. So, you don't waste so much fuel to reload.

@@L1ft0ff They're all 20 somethings from prestigious universities. You can't expect them to do anything except hate everyone beneath them.

@@BestCosmologist calm down, edgelord

Gee who would have thought? Apparently them.

I know! I'm surprised how much money was spent with so little care as to why.

Agreed, I thought the purpose was to find out the destructive force of the rods and scale it up, not find the most inefficient way to destroy a sand castle.

My opinion they should try to make it work and less on accuracy bc the accuracy can always come after you figure out how to drop the rod straight

At least do a test drop before making a video😅

so accurate

Meh: rods from god were a piss poor idea from the get go: the fact that you can deliver a bunch of energy without it being nuclear was about the only thing they had going for them, the fastest weapon ever devised was constrained by the slowest kill chain conceivable!

Pencils would be better since it’s more rod-like

I would watch that.

@@wilfdarr Don't under estimate the Rod from God concept. The original idea was rods the size of telephone poles made of 100% tungsten 20 ft long by 1ft diameter. These would hit a city with the impact force of a ground penetrating nuclear weapon and destroy any underground facility hundreds of feet underground. When dropped from orbit it would reach up to 10x the speed of sound without violation of the 1967 outer space weapons treaty which prohibits nuclear, biological and chemical weapons attacks from space signed by 107 countries. These rods would destroy an entire city just like a nuke and any bunker, base or silo under it for hundreds of feet with none of the nuclear fallout. While the targeting system and cost for something like this was near impossible at the height of the cold war its much more feasible now. Especially with advanced AI and the cost of moving things into space diminished It is more possible than ever before ! Unfortunately some weights would have to be dropped from space to gather data for the AI and I would not want to be the country those tests are landing on lol.

😆👌

Price. Lol

mate they got a helicopter, how's price an issue?@@marvinkweyu5206

Yeah well you’re a doo doo head military bad derrrr

Priorities.

Can't it be dropped at the height of the swing when it has 0 velocity? Correct me if I'm wrong but don't pendulums work based off turning gravitational potential energy (GPE) to kinetic energy (KE) and at the top of the swing it has no KE and thus no velocity?

I'm trying to find a part of this was WASN'T a problem.

Didn't Mark Rober just do a video of trying to make an egg survive a fall from space. Think they could've collaborated

@@kilansgames556 Mark Rober and Adam Savage casually testing failed doomsday devices for KRplus.

I think the (incredibly flawed) reasoning was that since the rods from god weren't meant to have them, these ones didn't need it either. Completely forgetting that launching something from space has way more variables that could allow for such a thing:
-little to no air resistance from orbit (no duh)
-no swinging motion from a satellite moving at orbital speeds
-once in the atmosphere, the speed would be so high that the air resistance would be more than enough to cause the rod to fall vertically (at so relatively low speeds from the helicopter, the density of the metal is more than enough to overcome the wind resistance)

I would have to agree. Equating a weight swinging from a helicopter with all the pendulum swinging and zero guidance to a space-launched kinetic strike weapon with computer guidance and fins is ludicrous. A massive false equivalency.

Where are the MythBusters when you need them?

this, and the selfdrving cars is some of the worst videos they have ever produced

@@Shotakovicz "As you can see, by throwing this lump of lead at a tree from a distance of 100 feet, I have proven that firearms are a gimick weapon that will never work."

​@@Shotakoviczone of them was present tbf

TRUE

not a wall but a pile of sand could give a good idea about a bazooka impact on broken particles probably

The difference being that a bazooka exists. How seriously do you want a KRplusr to take a subject this silly?

The point is that this isn’t a efficient way to distribute energy as the force is to focused to effect a large area . I’m sure it would do great work in the case of a giant kaiju or robot though

@@ashscott6068 by saying "this has nothing to do with rods of god, we just wanted to drop stuff from a helicoptor, they explain the rods work by hitting hard enough to create actual explosions, whis would be like testing grenades by throwing rocks at a wall, you are skipping the whole bit that makes it effective, the explosion

Don't forget about the drag that was caused by the massive strap that was trailing behind it.

@@Bimmer_MD negligible at that velocity and mass, esp given that straps 'drag" didn't prevent the posts from falling sideways.

Needs fins as well to keep the center of drag begin the center of mass, so it stays straight rather than drifting off to the side. Realistically it needs GPS guiding with fins as well because there will always be wind hitting the rods broadside. imo this video was really poorly done, many of these issues could have been mitigated with just an hour or reviewing potential issues and small scale tests, and a week of implementing the fixes full scale.

@@InfernoViperz123 at the speeds they are testing at, the fins would need to be large, and the larger they are, the more wind will blow them off course as well. Now they are realizing why bomb zones in WW2 were often miles wide from a single wave of bombers. yes, GPS or laser buiding would be necessary. A real THOR warhead would have GPS and inertial guidance, as well as active radio guidance from a spotter either on the ground or in space, particularly for hitting moving targets like aircraft carriers.

The problem with a hard mount, is that the object would _still_ be affected by the turbulence caused by the heli rotor the moment it was released. That turbulence extends downwards for a fair distance beneath the chopper before it even starts to ease away. And then once it does you have the general motion of the atmosphere to deal with - which in a hot desert area is probably a fair amount at that height. Only fins can counter this issue - especially adjustable fins whos angle can be adjusted to counter any spin/lateral movement.

LOL yeah he says its a bad idea but i dont think he really understands what the concept is, Fins as well as a design to make it accelerate even faster on the way down seem pretty simple

USA BS, or Hollywood?

I‘m a Industrial Design and Informatics Student and this was also my first thought + maybe a arduino with a gyroscope that controlls the rod to point straight down… what would that‘ve cost? 50-100$ and a few hours of testing? Definitely nothing compared to chartering a Helicopter for a day

@@Simoxs7 and a small rocket engine to increase acceleration. There's no way the real thing wouldn't have had some sort of initial acceleration.

No comparison since one is the speed of a meteor the other is just a plop

I'm flabbergasted by how dumb this entire test was.

@@fluffylittlebear Same. I mean this is the worst Veritasium video by far. A city built of sand? What?

Honestly thought this was some sort of spoof after the first few minutes

Yeah this looks like it cost a ton of money for basically nothing. Why not build a little 25% scale house or something and do all the drops on that. Wtf was the point of the pool?

@@Mutantcy1992The point of the pool was probably just what you saw: If there was a hit, it would make a splash. Remember, this is video, and you have to have an interesting image.

I think the two videos were filmed at the same time. Therefore, the "lesson learned" from the first project did not improve the second project.

I'm very confused too. I mean it's stupid fun, but thats not what this channel is about, totally off brand

They probably filmed both on the same day.

"What the heck even was this video"
click bait.

​@@AccAkut1987 Yeah exactly. So they dropped weights from 100m. Wow. Who could have thought how that will turn out. Still fun I guess. But nothing learned.

This would not have made Mythbusters...

@@kkrauter1 Ghostbusters? I'm dying now! 🤣 Whoopsie!

@@grinandferret Yikes!!! My bad...MYTHBusters!!!

​@@kkrauter1well, it probably wouldn't have made Ghostbusters, either.

Too true...I got my "busters" mixed up!

I think they didn't go to 3000 meters because their accuracy was so bad that they feared hitting something they didn't want to hit.

@@Entroper Hitting something they didn’t want to hit in a completely empty and flat desert? They could have easily dropped it far enough away from people so that there was 0 chance anybody would get it.

And he also keeps saying about the wind when it has nothing about the wind but about inertia instead. Very disappointing tbh.

@@Entroper yes , a very poor experiment. The real thing would be semi-guided

@@romanuskov9670 No doubt. Something like that gets swinging it take an hour to stop even if the helicopter was dead still. Quite a headscratcher. He's better than this. I'd say he has a good answer for both but I think he would have included that in the video.

Well, that's my headcanon now too

Are they so firearm averse they couldnt have spent a few grand to get a 20mm single shot gun and 4 or five rounds and made it a real experiment? Jeez.. Adam Savage probably suggested this...

Derek needs to speak with Darrel Barnette who worked for several years on projects like this for DOD.
The videos that are public from the railgun and gravity weapons for DOD were taken by or with Darrel.

@@JonMahn You can buy a 20mm for a lot less than a grand, also, pretty sure Derek lives in Cali so...... no. Lol.

@@JonMahn Using a gun doesn't demonstrate the basic principle of "just dropping a big weight from high up is powerful". It would kinda defeat the point of the video.

What irks me about the whole thing is it demonstrates an extremely shallow understanding of the topic at hand while oozing “self-satisfactory professionalism”, my next thought then is the question “On how many other topics that are less obvious did they do similar mistakes?”

It's to try to get more youth interested in the USA military. I hope it's not working!

Ir tie a crash Cam tied to a long rope to the weight with a small stabilizer parachute so you can record it no matter where it goes

@@MichaelButlerC so it's just propaganda then? If so then wow boy is the FCC going to have a field day

@@MichaelButlerCyou say that till you need them

You’re a blessing, thank you for saving me 24 minutes of my life

I read this at 18 minutes in when i saw where it was going. They chose not to speak to any experts. smh. Thanks for trying to save us

15m in shoulda read the comments 😅

thank u bro I knew this was lame when dude tried to explain what was happening. “I’m a professional” “we were right on! “it didn’t hit” “thats weird” PFFFFFFFFFFFFFT -______-Then I read the comments. Your service is appreciated!

Thank you ❤

They mentioned that at the end.

I put this knife to my skin and now I'm bleeding. Purely amazing and mind blowing. So happy we have science channels like this to show us that plastic pools will in fact rip when dropping a 150 pound piece of metal from thousands of feet in the air.

@@musstakrakish Who'd a thunk it?

Indeed, talk about a face palming "Well DUH" type of moment...

They have to over-act everything.

🤣🤣🤣😂

I think their concern was about the accuracy

Yeah, that comment got me too. Clutching at straws for this car crash of a video.

my thought exactly lol

why are these people acting smart when they cant even understand what people are tryna say

The original business model of KRplus stank, but at least the ads were reasonable.
New flood of invasive, repetitive, and offensive ads are EVIL.
Google is now fully dedicated to doing any evil that seems profitable.
And censoring complaints, too.

@@ShannonJacobs0 loser

@@ShannonJacobs0 what

Personally, I'd like to see Laser guided rods

@@ShannonJacobs0 I agree with you, but that literally has nothing to do with the OP

They could have created a larger impact but they were so inaccurate they would not have been able to position a camera to film it without endangering the people operating the camera

Mate the fact they used SAND to showcase destruction of KE weapons might be the most moronic thing in this video. The substance that is LITERALLY known for its ability to do a good job stopping bullets because of it.

Yeah, it seems like an 8th grader did the math and planned this out. It’s hilarious that physicists didn’t think about physics 😂

To be fair he does admit it's his biggest failure, but yes you'd need a very thin, very long rope to not have to deal with wind from the helicopter blades, in turn the helicopter is buffeted by winds, it can't be steady either meaning that the projectile is always moving in a vaguely circular motion modified by the difference between where the helicopter was at this point in the last rotation and the current location.
Setting the rod spinning with impeller-like fins would steady the trajectory of the rod but wouldn't help with getting it pointed at the right target and not imparting some spurious steering input as it's dropped.
Probably the logical thing to do would be to put a "tungsten warhead" on a conventional missile and fire it on a "kinetic trajectory" (ie: straight down) from a great height (orbit, hopefully). Normal missiles have already solved all the problems rods would face, and could impart more energy as well as actively steering towards the target.

This whole documentary is an embarrassment.

Adam Savage mentioned that to derek when they were doing the bullet/ penny drop episode.

@@quertbarbie62 I'm pretty sure that was this exact conversation, from the same shoot. They tried to make two videos at the same time, only got one good one, and then posted the bad one too, just for kicks.

​@@MobiusPeverell surely you aren't calling the penny one good.

@@Cssfiend False.
NOW they posted both so your presumltion has now been invalidated.

not surprising since this show has turned into click bait and tv type videos.

Hydrogen bomb vs Coughing baby

@@ashutoshkumar3864 Hydrophobic acid vs cancer patient

Christ…this sums the video up wholly.

im convinced veritasium is specially educated

It could have been a magic pool? Mb with magic water?

*tub of lard

Yes, there's always time for lube.

Quack, damn you.

I was thinking the same thing as soon as I saw it??? everything that's a tube and is sent to fly has wings, except for bullets but they usually don't go that far

@@colenewton5183 Bullets are spin stabilized.

Yeah if it were the wind it wouldn't swing with an even periodicity, it would be biased to one side.

The wind could start off the pendulum action and keep it going longer. Theoretically it could also stop the action.

Yes!!! Thank you Raven! I almost stopped the video purely due to his statement of it being the wind. I typically enjoy his videos, this was terrible and for such an individual to have a fair level of intellect to miss so many key points was very frustrating to watch. Possibly his worst video yet.

Curious…have you studied physics and what degree did you obtain?

or just use a plane and some rudimentary ww2 era bombing targeting system. if you lob it, not drop it, it's much more accurate, as long as it's fin stabilised.

Yeah I get why this video was released considering the cost but...
The high cost could've been reduced AND you could've better tested kinetic energy. Makes the video quite pointless. Also really not a fan of this editing/production.

My thoughts exactly, though it would be hard to catch on camera!

Exactly. If the point was to demonstrate the release of the maximum possible kinetic energy, there was no need to do the whole targeting thing. Just take the rod really high and drop it. Film the results. One other issue is the effect the lift strap had on the aerodynamics of the object. Maybe rethink this a bit?

Yeah, I think the best drop was when the rod just completely buried itself, I think that showed a lot of power on it's own

The other problem is knowing where it might hit. It's clear there's going to be some drift as the object falls so you need more safe zone space the higher you go. At 3 kilometers I would want a safe space of at least a kilometer. Finding that sort of space where the land is flat enough that you can see the object hit and catch it on film is going to be tough. Plus actually having a camera close enough to the spot it hits to catch the impact point close up is going to be nearly impossible with a helicopter.
What you need is something that can go up and drop the object over the target with no wind blowing the object around like some sort of UFO. Maybe on of those drone platforms designed to carry people might work. Only with the fans extended out another ten to twenty feet so that their downward force is far enough from the object that it isn't impacted by that turbulence. Which requires someone like Bezos to fund the development.

I mean shoot Adam Savage magically appeared and within a few minutes of the helicopter lifting up thought to ask if it had fins on it lmao.

@@hereandnow3156 Right? He had THE professional right there the whole time!

i mean he had adam savage there.. he could have spent 10 minutes with him and solved a lot of pain..

@@bconnler yeah, and Adam almost looked in pain when he asked if it had fins on it.

Just releasing the weights when it reached to the apex of the swing would have made all the drops a lot more accurate. Just like when you jump off a swing on a swingset at the apex you go straight down rather then jumping off in the middle of the swing.

I’ve watched enough mythbusters to know that you always attach radio controlled aerodynamic surfaces to hunks of metal whenever your dropping them from a helicopter.

@@the_regulator1145 I'd've thought at least a rigid "launch tube" or guide rail fixed to the side of the helicopter. Something other than a bloody-great pendulum

Shorten the strap up you don't need 50 feet of strap. Gees

@@williamkowalchik572 That'd just make it oscillate faster 😁

@@wolf1066 even just having a shorter pundulum arm.. Take out the 15ft of strap and put it right against the copter. Problem solved.

The veritasium method: 1. Skip the first 25% of video. 2: watch the rest at 1.25x speed.

@@moonriseproductions I just skipped the whole thing.

Well, when most of a physicist's calculations are done in a vacuum and a frictionless space, real life things like air and momentum get in the way lol

@@Mr.LaughingDuck No. A physicist can easily calculate those. It's literally the job of a physicist to be able to calculate them properly. I would know, I'm a physics engineer.

It takes an engineer to figure out how to make it work. Different thinking. But around the coffeemaker we play junior physicist of course :D

@@OsedayCan i think they were joking and mocking high school physics, which all start with "neglecting air resistence" "assuming this to be frictionless"

It's an educational channel. You still learnt a ton don't worry. ahah.

That's a pretty lousy thing to say about middle schoolers

That's a self report.

​@@uncoiledfish2561 I learned that poorly planned, poorly executed experiments prove nothing.

At least they hired the best sand castle builders. Also I suspect the guy was right when he said nothing much would happen upon impact.

lol this video is one of his worst

I’d say it is his worst, by a long way too

Pathetic video.

Water is really heavy and good at providing resistance, so it's not that shocking an observation. In particular, the more powerful a bullet you shoot into a pool the slower it travels.

@@midn8588 I know what you meant to say, but using "powerful" and "slower" is a bad description of the situation. Faster and/or bigger bullets decelerate quicker in water would be more appropriate. If I wanted to destroy the pool I would use a more "powerful" bullet.

He was in on the planning as he said to adam why didnt you say that a week ago. Either Adam is getting old or this bs is scripted.

@@mikaellindqvist5599 thats not what happened. 8:12
veritasium was saying that he wished that they had had that conversation a week ago, which they wouldve IF adam had been involved in the prep.
adam has dropped things from altitude several times. why would he forget things that even i would know having never done it?

@@mikaellindqvist5599 Derek DREAMS he had have spoken to Adam earlier, but he didn't... because Adam wasn't in on the planning at all. Hence Derek saying he wishes they had have spoken about this project sooner than on the day. Adam would have totally caught this early and saved them a lot of time/effort.

@@sunnymon1436 Holy crap thatbmakes this awful channel even more useless. A freaking daydreamer....

Guess he didn't at any point think of an arrow? 🏹 😅 like ya need some fletching bruv

It's almost like literally every dumb bomb is shaped the same for a reason or something lmao

@@Acidburn1155 Every bomb has fins

Im guessing they wanted the shape to be closely associated to the orig project.
ofcourse, a blunt object gets rounded after atmosphere entry, and wind/air is not a factor after gaining it's velocity, so yeah, to emulate those conditions, they would have to emulate completely opposite conditions in this context, iycmd
guess they should have gone to space.

The effort was wasted on a perfect sand city and not put in considering how to hit a target by dropping a not-aerodynamic rod swinging (!) under a helicopter.

Seems only Adam Savage did lol

i am SHOCKED they didnt think of that. I mean this in the most respectful way possible. I think hes a smart dude. how was anyone surprised that "its really swinging"?? even the trick shot youtube channels (like HowRidiculous, DudePerfect, etc) hit small targets from very high up. Im really amazed that stuff wasnt thought about
Really, the thing im amazed by is that they underestimated this. Dropping stuff from high up is something people have done for a long time lol. we know its hard. the fact they were like "we're above it" and didnt even mention that wind could push it to the side as like whugt. All this said, smart people make mistakes all the time. so im not hating. im just surprised

@@pvic6959 Yup, pretty poorly researched.

Sometimes incredibly smart people don’t always succeed at applying relevant knowledge. Saw it all the time in school. Classmates that could solve differential equations would struggle to apply concepts from physics 1.

They could just use a rope or something with one end on the ground and the other on the helicopter, and use that to guide the rod to the target.

@@shenjingbing2293 500m of rope seems like a lot of rope though

At a minimum, they could have made the straps much shorter. Less swing that way.

@@MatthiasGorgens I can't believe they didn't talk about the swinging and the potential for harminic motion due to the helicopter pilot's compensation. He kept saying the "wind was blowing it all over the place" - something tells me the wind didn't have nearly as big an impact on that 450lb cubic foot of metal as the helicopter did.
I was bothered by some of the other commentary as well. The cube punching straight through the bottom of the intex pool was "unbelievable"? Really??
For me this video was just a miss all around, pun intended.

I feel like this was one of Derek's absolute worst vids for all these reasons. It was just dumb, unscientific, hype.

@@MatthiasGorgens You read my mind!!!! Shorten the straps, have a 4 or 6 point harness to hold whatever they were going to drop which would exponentially minimize the swinging!!! They spent a ton of money prior to thinking everything through. Oh well........ next time (maybe.....)

I don't like when they are all for example doubtful if the helicopter is actually at the right altitude. At the beginning of the vid. I mean, a pilot probably would know...