4 Real Science Experiments Clearly Designed by Michael Bay

4 Explosions: Nuclear Tanks Versus Every Other Vehicle

An international organization of engineers tried to destroy nuclear containment vessels by ramming trains and trucks into them. That's not an engineering test, that's an action movie plot escaped into the real world.

They forged 50 tons of solid steel indestructibility and then tried to destruct it, which is what happens when engineers get sick of philosophers wondering whether God could create something even he couldn't destroy and decide to do it themselves. Either that or it's a top-secret program to develop a taxi service for Jason Statham.

They start by dropping containers from a crane, which sounds boring until you realize that they've built the most impenetrable anything they can conceive of and are now playing conkers with the Earth's crust. Then they utterly destroy a locomotive by ramming it into the indestructo-box at 100 miles an hour, and the box is fine. If Hephaestus had been half the engineer these guys are, Pandora could never have caused any trouble.

It escalates like an engineer keeping promises to his 8-year-old self. When the train doesn't break the box, they try again with a bigger train ramming a truck. Then a rocket-propelled truck ramming a wall. Then a rocket-sled-train ramming a wall. These people use The Fast and the Furious to cure insomnia.

This video is everything the Transformers movies should have been. True, the vehicles don't transform, but they also don't hang around with Shia LeBoeuf, so that's a better than fair trade. These vehicles do nothing but kick ass, and then they explode so that they don't have to even look at anyone who wanted more than that.

This video is everything we know about gas-powered engines: stupid and awesome. It's not a recording, it's a never-ending series of Christmases for anyone who understands that petrol is made from living things and that burning it releases all their joy back into the world as velocity. Then they cut the middle man and dump a container in a pool of jet fuel and set it on fire, because a rocket-sled engineer's idea of "icing on the cake" can be seen from neighboring countries.

3 Unbelievable Explosions: Exploding Lakes

The second law of action movies* states that the more gently a car nudges the ground after meandering off a cliff, the more hilariously violently it explodes. This video does it for real.

*The first law of action movies is that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, the only physics law to apply to both forces and Arnold Schwarzenegger characters.

This was the disposal of war surplus material metallic sodium. Sodium is a highly reactive alkali, meaning it has only one electron in its outer shell, and not to simplify chemistry too much, but that electron is a suicidal bastard. It reacts (which often means explodes) as soon as it touches anything, especially water. After World War II, the U.S. Army found themselves stuck with nine tons of Instant Doom (just add water). After three years of winning "not getting blown to smithereens" roulette, they decided to cash out. But the sodium gods demanded that something be blown up, and the powers that be sacrificed Lake Lenore.

Those barrels roll gently into the lake, whistling casually, before suddenly remembering that they're portals to hell. Then they blow hell up. In movies, "detonation" is a transition, an instant of going from non-exploded to better than that. For sodium in water, detonation is a new state of being. Metallic sodium reacting with water releases hydrogen and heat, creating a continual Hindenburg at the water's surface. The stuff goes up like Guy Fawkes' wet dreams and just does not stop exploding. The Catholic church's greatest secret is that the U.S. Army killed Satan in 1947. After destroying Hitler, they figured it was only a short hop up, and since they had nine metric tons of constant boom lying around anyway ...

It's the pyrotechnic equivalent of syphilis: It only happens because of American soldiers having bad but fun ideas during the war. It resulted in miles of chemical plumes, which the chirpy newscaster relays in the same manner as someone who's just seen an interesting bird in the distance, despite being the exact opposite of that ever happening. This is the same newscaster who cheerfully praises the Army for choosing a lake without any fish in it, because back then "environment" was just a useful Scrabble word for men who'd failed the army physical.

2 Camera Effects: The Rise and Fall of a Space Shuttle Booster

This is a NASA highlight reel of every stupid fake camera effect Hollywood uses, and every single one is real.

You've got shaky-cam, but it's not because a cinematographer was replaced by his evil opposite and decided things would be cooler if you couldn't see what was going on. It's because the entire space booster is shaking. This is a space launch filmed from the point of view of 500 tons of solid explosive forming an orderly queue to detonate its way into space.

Then there's the rainy-cam, and again, it's not an annoying extra from a filmmaker making you wear glasses and then dripping on you. This is breaking through everything the sky itself can do because it will soon be literally beneath us. The whole time the speedometer is rocketing up like a high score of human achievement. Which is exactly what it is.

We watch a sonic boom build and break around the ship as we punch through the sky, and that's an effect even Hollywood hasn't thought of yet. In a minute we've beaten the sky. The shuttle nose is poking into the infinite black, and looking down you can see the curve of everything. No scene changes, no montage; we were on the pad and then lit a flame so fierce that the Earth itself ran away.

Then there's white-out, but it's not caused by someone turning up the saturation; it's caused by humanity burning bits of the world so hard that it decides to let us go.

Watch the video. There is nothing better you could do with nine minutes. Not even sex, because either you won't be finished in nine minutes, or your sex is insufficiently out-of-this-world to compete with this glory. The only reason it won't win Oscars is because we have to let people who only pretend to be awesome have their little prizes.

In fact, this isn't just special effects, this is an entire action movie. You've got the amazing kick-off scene, the unbelievable escalation of literally everything, the moment of crisis as the boosters break away from the shuttle (the heartbreaking sight of the shining Orbiter continuing on without you as you tumble through space kicks the emotional hell out of every romance, drama, and tragedy ever made), before the terminal action of plummeting through flames back to Earth and the classic, unbelievable, actually-happened-for-real last-minute save. Which is also an explosion. The boosters slam into the sea after proving that the puny atmospheric terminal velocity is nothing compared to the speed of space.

And if no one's using that space soundtrack of fuel tank creaks and moans for hauntological or house chillout, get on with that.

1 Real-Life Computer Graphics

Terminator 2 is one of the best movies ever made. Part of the original appeal was incredible computer graphics that pushed the boundaries of cinema, then doused them in liquid nitrogen, ran them over with a truck, shot them infinity squillion times, and exploded them into a furnace. The liquid metal T-1000 remains one of the greatest villains in movie history (try to name another villain he couldn't beat). One man achieved the same level of special effect with a towel.

We should probably mention that he went into space first.

Commander Chris Hadfield has just finished his shift as the Mister Rogers of space. He swung by every day (15.7 times) to tell us that everything is great. And when he looked out the window, he really could see everyone, why they should get along, and just how beautiful the world is.

On Twitter and in space, he's the embodiment of Canada, quietly getting things right while everyone else gets upset about nonsense. PR is obviously part of the job, but he isn't up there chilling and advertising. All of every day is space work, and when he gets a few moments to himself, Commander Hadfield's idea of R&R is thinking "This is awesome, I should show more people." Given a choice between "educate the world through the Internet" and "get some sleep," he chose the former. Most of us choose the exact opposite. (Not getting sleep, but making ourselves dumber with the Internet.)

This is a man who can post mind-expanding images every time he looks out the window, and when he noticed that didn't do anything for blind fans, he started posted audio recordings of the space station, too. He is the ultimate considerate gentleman. So when a school competition had kids asking him what happens when you wring out a towel in space, he did it. The result is three minutes of reminding yourself there are no special effects.

His mic and props keep trying to float off, and you have to keep reminding yourself that this is really happening. This guy is in space, and is so good at being in space that he's just chilling to tell you about it. What's happened is that wringing it still forces the water out of the towel, but without gravity to drag it down, the defining force on the fluid is surface tension. So it creeps along the surface, which, in this case, is the astronaut, giving him a liquid coating.

He's sharing amazing things we would never have seen otherwise. He shows us what technology and humanity are really for. Just like the rest of the space program.

UPDATE: He continues to be the best person ever. He's already personally made Twitter worth all the bullshit, and now he's saved YouTube as well:

Luke also looks at StarForce, the stupidest DRM company ever, and uses the Viking approach to destroying hangovers. Luke has a website, tumbles, and responds to every single tweet.

For more space awesomeness, check out The 5 Most Badass Things Ever Done in Space and 6 Badass Space Landings Humanity Totally Nailed.