News Release

Heard on campus – Mythbuster Grant Imahara

February 4, 2008

Mythbuster Grant Imahara didn’t blow anything up during his visit to campus Saturday, Feb. 2. But he certainly swept the large audience away with his inside look at the popular Discovery Channel TV show.

A crowd estimated at more than 500 crammed into the Capital Union Building gym’s bleachers for Imahara’s “inside the Scientist Studio” program – a lively presentation profiling his experiences with George Lucas’ Industrial Light and Magic, TV programs “Junkyard Wars” and “BattleBots,” along with “Mythbusters.

Explaining that most of the experiments and demonstrations done on “Mythbusters” would violate fire and safety codes, Imahara stepped the audience of all ages through some of the more memorable episodes in the program he has been associated with since 2005 as part of the build team.

“You know the more dangerous experiments when you see us step back before the test,” he said with a grin.
He profiled the test to see if a 747 jetliner could flip a car. He added that it tore up the asphalt. And there was the popular one to determine if a person’s stomach would explode after too much soda and Pop Rocks. It won’t, but Imahara explained the difficulties connected with using a pig’s stomach for the experiment.

And the team tackled a question baffling people from bloggers to pilots. If a plane is traveling at takeoff speed on a conveyor belt, and that conveyor belt is matching the speed in reverse, can the plane take off?

He related his experiences as a two-time winner on “BattleBots,” the program which actually paid him not to compete because his robot was simply too overwhelming for the competition and there was the appearance on “Junkyard Wars” when he and his team created a 12-foot, fire-breathing R2D2.

With Lucas, he worked on Episodes 1, 2, and 3 of Star Wars as the operator of R2-D2, which he updated to be more in line with modern technology by replacing the wiring and lighting. Before joining “Mythbusters,” he also developed a custom circuit to cycle the Energizer Bunny’s arm beats and ears at a constant rate. In fact, he added, he’s responsible for all the electronics installation and radio programming on the current generation of bunnies, even serving as the bunny’s driver and crew supervisor on numerous commercials.

One of the highlights of the presentation was “special blooper footage” from Mythbusters. “The show’s a lot of fun, but also really hard work,” he said.

And his words of caution to the children in the audience: “Don’t do what you see us do on the show.”