Brainiac: a bathtub of lies

It's a cool video.

In fact, it's the dog's nuts of alkali metal videos.

Heck, I've shown the video in class for a number of years.  It's an awesome demonstration of the increasing reactivity of alkali metals.

Sadly, it appears that it's a lie.

The Guardian, a pretty decently respected UK newspaper, reported a while back that Brainiac faked the cesium explosion.  To quote, here's what they report really happened when the cesium hit the water...

"Absolutely bloody nothing. The density of caesium ensured it hit the bottom of the bath like a lead weight. The sheer volume of water then drowned out the thermal shock-wave I was expecting to shatter the bath. They could not go home empty handed. So they rigged a bomb in the bottom of the bath and then blew the s*** out of it. I must say it did look cool ... [It] ate away at my conscience. But I couldn't do anything about it."

Geek Challenge reports that since Brainiac was effectively outed online, the producers don't fake things any more.  The blog post compares the willingness of Brainiac to secretly fake their demonstrations where Mythbusters presents their non-successes warts and all - after which they typically say something to the effect of  "but we wanted to see things blow up anyway, so here we go."  Th article's point being that on Mythbusters "it’s always clear that results are being deliberately pushed over the top."

I'm sad to hear that Brainaic has been faking, but at least there are always great videos of the alkali metals actually exploding out there.



Some of which come from Theodore Grey, so they're awesome almost by default.