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Brainiac: Science Abuse is a British scientific entertainment TV show. It shows in the UK on Sky One (and repeated on Sky Two and Sky Three), and is made by Granada Productions. It is also shown in the US on the cable network G4 and in other European countries on Discovery Channel. The presenters are Richard Hammond (from Top Gear) and Jon Tickle (formerly of Big Brother). In season 2 Charlotte Hudson came in and joined the other two hosts.
The show refers to people who examine and test the experiments as Brainiacs. The show is partly played more for comic effect than strict scientific accuracy. The programme is familiar to that each episode would finish with the team blowing up a caravan. This could be related to Richard Hammond's Top Gear heritage, on which caravans have regularly been destroyed - used as a target for a compressed air powered car-catapault, being dropped on a Toyota HiLux to test its strength (the caravan was worse off) and conkers being played with two caravans held up by cranes.
Show Ratings
The programme has been a huge ratings and creative success for Sky and is now one of their flagship programmes and regular recommissions. Due to the success of the original programme, a sister programme, History Abuse, presented by Charlotte Hudson, began on Sky One on 1 June 2005.
History
First Series
Series 1 of Brainiac hit the British small screen in 2003 on Sky One, a UK subscription-based television channel from the digital satellite broadcaster BSkyB. It featured a wide variety of experiments including testing to see whether a mobile phone would ignite petrol vapours, walking on custard and testing the effects of electric shocks on various Brainiacs.
Second Series
The second series also included "Brainiac Snooker", where a snooker table had each pocket wired to one of six caravans, each filled with a different gas mix, such as acetylene and oxygen. Quinten Hann was brought in to pot the last six balls, with one shot shown each episode. The third series has continued the tradition with "Brainiac Golf". The European Tour professional Jamie Spence would putt a ball into the hole causing the caravan rigged with a different explosive to explode producing a differently-coloured flame each episode. It premiered in the US on G4 on August 29, 2005 as part of the Midnight Spank programming block; and is also shown on VIVA in Germany, JIMtv in Belgium, Veronica and Discovery Channel in the Netherlands, Network Ten in Australia and Arts Central in Singapore, Discovery Channel in Scandinavia and Discovery Channel in Romania.
Third Series
The third series premiered on Sky One on August 25, 2005. It featured Caravan Golf (much like Caravan Snooker, only this time with different salts to colour the explosions), Lad v. Lass, Thermite, Does being electrocuted affect your ability at work (human statue, flair bartending, darts player), Things the instruction manuals don't warn you about, 47 Second Science, Diana Ross and her Chain Reaction, testing which things break and which things bounce after a ten foot drop, and mixing chemicals to see whether they Fizz or Bang. The third series premiered on G4 as part of the Midnight Spank block in Spring of 2006.
Fourth Series
The fourth series premiered on Sky One on July 16th, 2006.
Experiments
The presenters perform unusual or interesting experiments "so you don't have to". The destruction of caravans seems to be a recurring theme in many of the episodes. These experiments are often non-scientific and are undertaken in the interests of entertainment (many involving large explosions) rather than pure science. These activities include:
- Safe-cracking (involving methods such as acid, explosives, and a Challenger 2 Tank)
- Things NOT to do with a microwave (Remember, they do these experiments so you don't have to, so don't even think about trying this at home. No, really, don't.)
- Attempting to destroy a black box, which is in fact yellow. A follow-up to Safe-cracking, a flight data recorder is subjected to various abuses attempting to destroy it, such as having a group of American Civil War reenactors open fire with rifles and cannons, dunking it in a vat of acid, and spraying it with napalm and finally being subject to a garbage dump compacter used to crush cars. Needless to say, the "yellow" black box flight recorder never stood a chance.
- Walking across (and standing in) a swimming-pool full of custard to demonstrate the properties of a non-Newtonian fluid.
- Does being happy enhance your (mental) performance?
- The Lazy Man's Guide to...
- Which fruit floats?
- What's this? A sample from an object has been magnified 25-450 times under a microscope and you have to guess what the object is.
- Comparing the effects of what would happen to a fat guy and a thin guy (the advantages and disadvantages) in a given life threatening situation.
- Comparing the advantages of being tall or short.
- Situations in which it's better to be either tired or wired.
- Investigating the propulsive possibilities of CO2 Fire extinguishers.
- Office Buoyancy Aids - which items in an office work best as flotation aids in the event of a sudden flood due to global warming?
- Things Jon Tickle's body can't do.
- Things Jon Tickle's body can do.
- "Tickle's Teasers" - questions to which there isn't really a right answer...(although some people have noted that many of the questions do have an answer)
- Things you can't do while being electrocuted.
- Things you can do with Thermite.
- 47 second science: Tackling life's big questions in bite sized chunks
- Mixing alkaline metals with water. WARNING! Contents are extremely explosive.
- Dropping things from a height and seeing if they will break or bounce.
- Testing chemical reactions to see if a given chemical reaction will fizz or bang.
- Pub Science - performing experiments in a pub with ordinary items. Invariably this results in the experimenter (Dr. Bunhead) being theatrically ejected by security staff and banned.
- At Home with Dr. Bunhead - household mayhem usually involving some explosive chemical reaction.
- You Can't Stop Rock 'n' Roll - a ghettoblaster is subjected to various forms of violence (such as having a caravan dropped on it and being burned with a flamethrower) until it ceases to play a tape of the Twisted Sister song of the same name. The tape never survives.
- Domestic Disasters: Things they don't say in the instruction manual - e.g., they don't tell you not to put dangerous chemicals in an appliance, but Brainiac shows you why they should. E.g.: Plastic explosives in a toaster, Potassium in a washing machine.
- Blowing up pretty much anything - but preferably caravans.
- 101 Uses for a Wee - practical applications for urine. Not for the weak-stomached, It's nasty.
- Tina Turner and her Bunsen Burner - A rather obvious impersonator of pop star Tina Turner "takes a break" from show business to do explosive science with her bunsen burner, and with any type of explosives such as gunpowder that she needs to destroy her choice of a coloured car; she lights it up with her burner and waits until it becomes a metal burning fireball.
- Producing improvised "armour" using ordinary household items (such as pillows, toilet seats and woks) and testing their durability against weapons such as the slingshot, longbow and crossbow in the event that your house is under siege by "nutters".
- Explosive of the Week - Brainiac beauties use different types of explosives on different objects and have three of their friends rate the blast on a scale of 1 to 10.
- Diana Ross and her Chain Reaction- Yet another rather obvious impersonator, as "Diana Ross" finds joy in starting off chain reactions which result in the explosive destruction of a car.
- Does eating only fish for a month make you clever?
- Brainiac Snooker - A Brainiac goes head to head against snooker player Quinten Hann. Every time a ball is pocketed, it sets off a fuse, which detonates a caravan filled with a unique gas, such as propane, butane, or pure oxygen.
- Peter Logan's Exploding Paste, where one of the Braniac staff, Peter Logan, plays pranks on co-workers using a very mildly explosive material, made from iodine crystals and "one other secret ingredient" according to the show. The "secret ingredient" is really household ammonia. The resulting combination is nitrogen triiodide.
- Which Household oil is the slipperiest - the battle between cod liver oil, baby oil and sunflower oil to see which oil really is the slipperiest down a 25ft slope
- Does looking at the breasts of an attractive girl for 30 minutes work out your heart as much as 30 minutes of exercise?
- What Happens When you Put Rubidium and Caesium in a bath tub full of Water? *
- Will it Fizz or Bang? - Mixing two substances together to see if it will fizz or explode. The most recent series has seen this replaced by "Glow or Blow?", which is much the same principle, with two substances mixed together to see if they will glow or blow (explode).
See also
External link
"Brainiac: Science Abuse"