One of My Favorite Shows. Part I

The Mythbusters, Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman, are a couple of scientists who look for myths to prove legitimate or, in their words, “BUSTED.” This week, Jamie and Adam set out to prove if the “Antacid Jailbreak” myth is plausible or not.

            The “Antacid Jailbreak” myth is one Jamie found. The Mythbusters explain that a prisoner had escaped his jail cell with the use of 1/4^th of an inch plastic, a 10-year’s supply of antacid pills, and water. The inmate apparently lined the whole cell with the plastic (with him outside of it), and mixed the antacid pills with water to create enough carbon monoxide, or CO² gas, to expand the plastic, eventually breaking open the cell walls. But their big question is can a massive amount of carbon monoxide produced from a pile of bubbling tablets really budge bricks and medal?

            Jamie and Adam start by testing out the kinds of pressures the antacid tablets produce when exposed in water. Of course, they start out in small scale, to take caution. But before they test out the pressure, they build the 10 ft. long, by 7 ft. wide, by 6½ ft. high standard jail cell to test out in their final experiment.

            One of the Mythbusters’ first tests is a volumetric test to see how much gas is produced by the antacid tablets. They have a set of flasks connected by tubes to each other. The first beaker is filled with a fair amount of water; when Adam puts an antacid tablet in, the water and the tablet react, creating carbon monoxide. The gas expands through the tube leading it to the next flask measuring the amount of pressure, pushing the water to another set of tubes, into a beaker which measures how much gas is produced. Confusing, right? The whole point of this experiment is to simply test out how much volume is produced with multiple antacid tablets.

Adam and Jamie find out that one tablet produces 75 milliliters of gas. When they dropped two tablets in the water, the amount of gas more than doubles, past 160 milliliters, on to about 275 milliliters. They asked if they doubled that amount, the gas would more than double. Indeed, the amount of gas more than doubled by adding two more tablets to the equation.

           The next step was the pressure test. Using the same method as Jamie and Adam used with the volumetric test, they find that one antacid tablet produces 1.9 to 2 psi, or pounds per square inch. They asked if pressure, like volume, increases what would happen. They conclude that just like the volume test, the pressure test more than doubles the amount by adding one more tablet, as well. The overall conclusion with their small-scale testing is that they may be able to crack a jail cell with a few antacid tablets.