Episode 10 Richard Hammond's Blast Lab

So, does your foot now fill that boot?! It fits. So, you can feel

the end of your toes? Brilliant! It works! Been tinkering with my new

sizulating machine. It's fabulous. Now, I just have to

invent another machine to reverse the process. Anyway,

I'm Richard Hammond. Welcome to my Blast Lab!

APPLAUSE

This is the show that puts science and fun together,

to make...fience. In a few moments, we'll meet two teams

of young scientists, who will complete in scientific contests

to win prizes. Let's see what's in store.

Now, because this lab is rated super

secret, and a lot of the experiments I do in here are very, very

dangerous, it's usually guarded around the clock by a team of

SAS officers. Unfortunately, tonight it's the annual SAS jumble sale,

and they've all had to go get ready. You might want

to get down yourself later and pick up a second-hand balaclava.

But don't worry, because I have drafted in a replacement.

A woman who's no stranger to danger. Or, indeed, to jumble sales.

It is my Ninja Nan.

APPLAUSE

Ninja Nan, thanks for standing in.

I know she does look fragile, but she's actually a trained ninja.

See? Nan, if you'd like to take your place in

security, please. Nan, nan! If you'd like to take your place in security.

Away she goes. Look at her! At ninja speed.

There she goes. In her spare time, she likes to wrestle cheetahs.

Pinning them down isn't the hard bit, it's catching them.

But as you can see, for her, it's no problem at all.

She's still travelling. It's further than it looks!

Ninja Nan, are you there yet? There she is.

You see, that's her special ninja tartan shopping trolley

and her ninja chair. What's she got? It's a photograph.

Oh, look! That's her from wrestling. I think that's last week's fight.

She won. Right, let's meet the people trying to get into my lab.

APPLAUSE AND CHEERING

You get all excited.

We don't know - they could be anybody trying to get into my

lab. You say you're the yellow team?

-Identify yourselves by name, please. What are your names?

-Ruby.

-Leila.

-William.

-That checks out with the security file I have.

Hidden talent is the next thing on the security file.

ALL: We're all doing karate.

All doing karate? No, wait! Don't move a muscle. Hold still.

Lab rats, make Ninja Nan safe, please. Honestly,

if she'd picked up a thought about karate,

there would have been a terrible scene. Right, you're now safe.

Demonstrate your karate, please. ALL: 1, 2, 3. Hi-ya!

Wow! Synchronised karate.

OK. Well, I think that'll do. I think you're clear!

Come into the lab.

APPLAUSE AND CHEERING

That confirms it. William, Leila, Ruby. You are the Yellow Team.

Sorry about the security.

-Where are you from?

-ALL: Bournemouth and we are the Smarticles. Yo!

Yo? No, you're the Yellow Team. But it is lovely to have you here.

Now, we meet the people who claim to be your opponents.

APPLAUSE AND CHEERING

Let's just not get too excited until we're sure.

OK, you say you're the Red Team. Identify yourselves by name.

-Sam.

-Matt.

-Josh.

-Sam, Matt and Josh. Fair enough.

Hidden talent, Josh, I've got your name down here.

What are you going to do?

I'm going to fence.

That's not like build a fence, is it? That's with a sword.

Fortunately, Ninja Nan is restrained,

so you are safe to demonstrate what you can do. Show us.

All right. En garde! That's the salute.

Oh! Fantastic. As long as there wasn't a lab rat

standing on the other side there, I think you're cleared through.

APPLAUSE AND CHEERING

Well done, Josh. Hello, team. Where are you from?

ALL: Guildford. And we're the Combustibles!

You're not. You're the Red Team.

But welcome to Blast Lab. So, we've met both teams.

Now, we start round one.

You guys go get ready for round one.

Now, he knows every square root and has a spare tyre in his boot.

It is Oliver!

APPLAUSE AND CHEERING

I've fitted Oliver

with a Fact Nav system. It's very clever, but it's not one of those

fancy new ones where all the facts are correct. Oh no! Quite a lot of

the ones in this system are wrong. So I want the two teams to tell me

whether my facts are true or false. Oliver will then reveal the answer.

If it's true, he'll honk.

HONKING, ALARM TRILLS

If it's false, he'll let us know by doing this...

FOG HORN BLASTS

So, the rules are simple. Teams, this is your first chance

to earn points in Blast Lab. Are you all feeling settled?

Feeling clever? I do hope so. Right, here comes the first fact.

Reds, you go first here. Here is your science fact.

Tell me if it's true or false. If all the data on a CD was

stretched out in a single line, it would be 3.5 miles long. Have a

think. I'm going to ask the audience. What

do we think? Is that true or false? OK, I reckon mostly true there from

the audience. But, you know, you're the experts. I wouldn't just believe

them. They're bright, but what do you think?

-We think true.

-Our red team thinks true. Oliver, is it true or false?

HONKING, ALARM TRILLS

It's indeed true. That's a point to the Reds!

CHEERING

It's because CDs work by storing the date on a spiral.

It starts in the centre of the CD and then spirals its way out

counter-clockwise, so that's that... wait - no, THAT way to the edge. And

it's just 0.5 of a micron wide. That's really small. And if you

stretch it out, it would be 5.6 kilometres, which is 3.5 miles.

I worked that out in my head. Honest. Yellow Team, your fact.

True or false? Oil is made from the remains

of plants and animals that lived millions of years ago.

Talk it through. Audience, what do you think? Oil is made from the

remains of plants and animals that lived thousands of years ago.

SHOUTING

-Most of the audience going for true there.

-True.

-You think it's true.

Oliver, is it true or false?

HONKING, ALARM TRILLS

It's true!

CHEERING

Well done. Crude oil, coal, gas - they're all fossil fuels

and they're all formed millions of years ago from the remains of dead

organisms. Right, third question. This one isn't true or false,

I need an actual answer. So, get ready for some thinking.

Write your answers down on your boards. They're

not always easy, so I will give the points

to the team that gets closest to the answer. OK.

How many minutes does it take light to get from the Sun to Earth?

How many minutes does it take light to get from the Sun to the Earth?

I'll give you time to think. I'll ask the audience. Anybody?

Right. I'm going to talk to you with this invention I made.

It's a boot, but it's actually a microphone.

It's a boot-microphone combination. Are you impressed?

-Yes.

-You aren't really, do you?

-No!

-How many minutes does it take light to reach us?

-Eight minutes.

Audience? Anybody else? Any other views? Let's ask.

-What do we think?

-Eight minutes.

-Eight minutes.

-That seems to be the general answer.

-Eight minutes!

-OK, now we're all

saying eight minutes. Anybody got a different answer? Let's see.

-Six minutes.

-Six minutes, OK.

-I don't know the minutes,

-but I think it's eight days.

-Eight days. My microphone boot -

you're amazed, aren't you? If that was in the shops, you'd want one.

Well, I think about three to four minutes.

Three to four minutes? Anybody got any different answers?

-What do you say?

-Five minutes and six milliseconds.

I like that sort of precision in Blast Lab.

We like that sort of precision.

Quite a range of answers from the audience.

Let's find out what our teams think. They're competing for points.

Have both teams written down announce run your boards?

Yellows? Take your time, have a good chat.

Eight minutes from the Yellows. Reds, turn your board round, please.

Three minutes. The real answer is

8.3 minutes.

The point goes to the Yellows.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

The Sun, of course, is enormous.

if you think of the Sun as a basketball, next to that,

the Earth would only be the size of a pinhead. Makes you feel small.

Here are the scores:

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

That's all to come. Now, it's time for Mini Science.

This is the round where our teams use household objects to conduct

incredible experiments.

For this round, we need some expertise.

I made a time machine to bring my 65-year-old science teacher

here to Blast Lab and help.

But the time machine turned out to be as reliable as my lab rats

and she stepped out of it as a ten-year-old.

I'm talking about Mini Miss!

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

-So, what are we doing today?

-We're looking at convection.

-Yes, of course.

Hot air is more spread out than cold air so that makes it lighter.

If you blew hot air into a bag,

it would inflate and lift it up into the air.

-Hold here.

-Yes, Miss.

HAIRDRYER WHIRS

That's hot air going in and that makes the bag rise up because

the hot air is more spread out and the cold air is lighter.

OK. I get that.

-When you turn the hot air off, the air then cools and it deflates.

-OK.

The name of the game today is Balloon Limbo.

The aim of the game is to get those bags over an obstacle

by guiding them with hot air.

This is what you've got to do. Each of you has one of these bags.

Two team players will move this along these wires.

The third one will provide the heat with the hairdryer.

You inflate the bag. That makes the bag rise up.

Hot air, remember, more spread out and cold, so it rises up.

Then, you come to the next obstacle so you stop putting hot air in.

It cools and it'll drop down and youcan get under the next one.

Do not touch these obstacles. If you do, you'll incur a time penalty.

Inflate the bag again to get over the obstacle and you get to the end.

Then, it's the return leg. Over this obstacle here.

Real hot air balloons work the same way.

You put the hot air in. They use big burners, not hairdryers.

The hot air then is more spread out than cold air so it rises up.

We do the same.

You come to the next obstacle, let it cool, let it go underneath.

Not touching them, you'll get a time penalty.

Over the last one and hit the barrier at the end.

Right, this is a straight race.

May the best team win, without time penalties.

Five, four, three, two, one. Go!

Both teams bursting into life.

One thought in their minds - ending up on the winning side.

Amazing control on display here.

Absolute concentration on the faces of all concerned.

No-one wants to be responsible for incurring any time penalties.

They know that one slip could cost them the game.

SHOUTING

Up, Up, Up!

Reds look like they're in the driving seat

with Yellows operating a safety-first technique.

Who will come out on top?

The Reds start their return journey but the Yellows have closed the gap.

It's impossible to separate them now.

This is probably the most tense game of using a hairdryer to

fill a bag with hot air and race over an obstacle course

I've seen all day! Great stuff!

CHEERING

Keep going, yellows! It's not over yet.

Yellows! Yellows! Yellows!

OK, that's it.

CHEERING

Right. Both team join me and Mini Miss.

We need to work out the scores. Reds, you did finish first.

Yellows, you finished second.

The difference was nine seconds.

But this is before we work out the time penalty.

Yellows, you finished second by nine seconds.

What we have to do now is add on to that time your time penalties.

How many time penalties? Two time penalties, five seconds each.

That takes you to 19 in total.

Reds, you were first to finish, so no penalties.

If they've got four time penalties, they've lost, so 19 to beat.

Lab rat, how many time penalties? One.

That's five. The Red Team wins!

Our teams were using the heat from a hairdryer

to make the air hotter and make it rise up.

What if we used something else for the heat? What about using the sun?

Making a hot air balloon may sound tricky.

But if you're one of my lab rats, you can cobble one together

using sticky tape and bin liners. Lots of them.

Ah, yes. No-one should ever play with plastic bags.

But these are highly trained lab rats and are responsible.

For lab rats, anyway.

A solar balloon is only filled with ordinary air

but takes a lot of puff to inflate.

To hold the air in, we'll need a vacuum seal.

Or a bit of string.

Our balloon is a solar balloon and

relies solely on the sun to help it rise into the air.

The dark colour of the bin liners helps absorb the sun's energy

and heat up the air inside the balloon. As this air heats up,

it expands and becomes more spread out than the surrounding cold air.

As it's more spread out, it becomes lighter and so the balloon floats.

It takes a bit of time for the sun's rays to work their magic.

Especially when you pick a cloudy day.

But will you look at that?! It's actually working!

# Would you like to ride in my beautiful balloon?

# Would you like to ride in my... #

It's not very balloon-shaped but it sort of floats,

with a bit of loving encouragement from our lab rats.

# ..You and I

# For we can fly... #

Look at them run and play! Sweet!

# Up and away in my beautiful, my beautiful balloon... #

We've tested the theory but what if we made the balloon bigger?

Ten times bigger.

We've cleaned a shop out of bin bags but to inflate this monster,

we'll need serious blowing.

Hmm. Hairdryers weren't what I had in mind.

Remember, these are highly-trained lab rats.

Never cover yourself with a bin bag like they're doing here.

A quick check for holes and we're ready for takeoff.

Hold the experiment there. There's an extra point in this.

We need it because it's 2-2. This could make all the difference.

You'll get that point if you can tell me correctly,

does the big balloon fly or not?

Have a talk, have a think. I'll ask the audience as well.

Any theories?

I'll come and talk to you using my amazing microphone boot.

You are impressed? Come on, you are!

-What's your theory?

-No.

-You think not? Anybody disagree?

-I think it will.

-What do we think down here?

-I think it does.

-Why? Because it's lab rats and they're brilliant?

Or because there'll be enough heat?

-There'll be enough heat and the lab rats are good.

-Are you sure?

-Have you met a lab rat recently?

-I've seen them. They don't talk.

They're not allowed. But what will they say?

They just want to do experiments. A mixed bag over here.

-What do we think?

-I don't think it will.

-No, I don't think it will.

Who over here thinks it will? A few. Do you think it will or it won't?

I think it will. I reckon we're about split 50-50.

Teams, don't listen to the audience on this one.

Use your own scientific brains. Have you come up with an answer?

Reds, have you done the same?

Will it or won't it?

-It will.

-Reds.

-It won't.

-Yellows think it will, Reds think it won't.

Let's look at the rest of the experiment.

Here it comes, our giant solar balloon.

It's massive but it will need a lot more air before it will fly.

Oh, no, not the hairdryers again!

Haven't you got anything better?

My lab rats can barely hold on. Time for the launch.

# ..To the sky

# It's very high

# I want to... #

There it goes, up, up and...along the ground.

# ..Fly away... #

Come back, balloon, come back!

# Yeah, yeah, yeah

# I want to get away

# I want to fly away

# Yeah, yeah, yeah...#

It kind of wanted to, but struggling to get enough warm air in there,

which means it didn't work.

Reds, the point goes to you. It's 3-2 to the Reds.

Sorry, yellows. It wanted to.

We could see it trying.

Both teams, I need you to get ready for the Messy Messy Mess Test.

You'll need those protective suits.

Those solar balloons are great. I've got one. It's just a bin bag.

If it's one of these fancy ones that ties off at the end.

You could maybe tie the ends together or just tape it up.

Leave it in the sun. Get air in it before you do it.

Leave it in the sun and you'll have an air balloon.

That's because the black of the bag is absorbing heat from the sun,

that's heating the air, that air

spaces itself inside the bag and it's then full of air

that's lighter than the air outside and it'll float up.

It's time for us to get on with the Messy Messy Mess Test.

Which today is in my septic tank. You all right, teams? Good.

Don't ask me what's in because you don't want to know what's in there.

Just watch it because it's watching you.

Hidden in the septic tank are a number of discs.

Some are like this, duds, but the ones you're after are like these,

as modelled by my lab rat.

They feature your team colour and the names of prizes.

Radio-controlled Mosquito,

an MP3 player or a set of Robo-Bugs.

Lab rat, hide those and then get out.

Your job is to get as many of those prize discs into these baskets here.

We've got one for the Yellows and one for the Red team.

The winning team gets the most prize discs into their basket.

At the end of the game, you take home all of those prizes, one each.

The losing team has to blow their prizes up.

You have some time to do this.

Reds, you're ahead right now and your points have earned you

a five-second advantage.

When you hear the first siren, you start looking for those discs.

Yellows, once you hear the second one, that's your cue to search.

So you have time to get

as many prize discs as you can into your baskets.

And that some time starts...now!

The Reds are first off the mark.

It's an intimidating sight for the Yellows. How will they respond?

The Yellows begin the hunt for the elusive prize discs.

Everyone seems to be moving in slow motion today.

They're unable to spot the prize discs through the brown goo.

They must need glasses!

The sirens have sounded. The challenge has begun.

Would you believe it?! I forgot to warn the teams

that every now and again more sludge makes its way into the tank.

They've probably discovered that now but it does bring with it

prize discs.

Sometimes. It's a compensation.

More goo, more prize discs, more wannabe scientists covered in muck.

The Reds' basket looks more healthy than the Yellows',

who seem to be losing more than just their helmets in this sea of brown.

I don't know what it is, but it's not pretty. And the smell...ugh!

A score for the Yellows. Have they left it too late?

There's only a random amount of time left.

Both teams look more like they're visiting the swimming baths

than competing in serious scientific endeavour.

A siren and more disgustingness for them to deal with.

It is raining prize discs but which team will

take best advantage of this goody-laden downpour?

END-OF-GAME SIREN

That is it. Your time is up. Stop looking for the prize discs.

It's nice in there, isn't it? No, it's not!

I have lab rats counting them up. Let's find out the scores.

How many have the Yellow Team got? Four prize discs.

Lab rat over here, for the Reds. An amazing eight for the Reds!

The Reds are the winners.

CHEERING

Reds, you'll take home all the prizes you found on those discs.

Ready, Nan? Each of you get

an electromagnetic kit, a Magic Professor Kit,

Horrible Science books, an Explosive Experiments kit,

test-tube sea horses, Robo-Bugs, a transforming robot,

and a remote controlled Mosquito. Well done, Reds.

Yellows, um, slightly trickier, because this is a list of what

you would have won, but you haven't. You would have won, each of you,

-an electromagnetic kit...

-Ahh!

-Horrible Science books...

-Ahh!

-A transforming robot each...

-Ahh!

-And Hulk Smash Hands...

-Ahh!

Instead of winning them, though, you're gonna blow them up.

It is now time for Bidet Goes Bang.

This is it. Red Team, I'm trying to look sombre because Yellow Team

are about to blow up their prizes. That's difficult

when you're standing behind a wheelbarrow full of stuff.

Yellows, how are you feeling?

-Disappointed.

-What went wrong? Why didn't you win the game?

They won the hot air balloon race.

If you'd won and taken the points, you'd have got a head start.

It is difficult in that septic tank. Who's going to push the plunger?

-All of us.

-Share the blame.

If you're feeling down, my exploding bidet will lift you up.

Sometimes, through the ceiling and into the room above.

Your prizes have been placed in there.

Let's do the exploding. Step forwards and lift the plunger.

Let's count them down. Five, four, three, two, one.

There you go, Yellows.

When your mum asks what you learnt, say

Richard Hammond taught you that hot air rises.

Probably best not to tell her that we learnt this by

mucking about with hot air balloons and then blowing bin bags.

See you next time.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Blast Lab was recorded before a live studio audience.

No lab rat was harmed during the filming.

One might have been, but I won't be able to tell until he comes round.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd

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