Busting the Mythbusters? A Man Built a Working Water Stun Gun

Growing up, we all enjoyed watching Mythbusters. But while the iconic team was busting myths left and right, it seems like a few fell through the cracks. In this video, the Youtube channel Sufficiently Advanced's Allen Pan, who actually was on the show Mythbusters: The Search but got eliminated despite some saying he had the most potential to be the next Mythbuster, takes the duty of fixing one of those errors.

The myth in question is the water stun gun, which consists of two streams of water flowing from a gun with an electric potential difference between them. In the original show, Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman declare the myth debunked after many attempts at increasing voltages fail to produce positive results. Our self-proclaimed "Failed Mythbuster" thinks the problem was not of power, but of disconnectivity.

He connects the terminals of a handheld taser to the water streams and adds xanthan gum to the water to make the flow laminar, because otherwise, the streams would separate into droplets in mid-air, causing the circuit to be disconnected. With the addition of xanthan gum, two water streams behave much more like electrical wires, and the stun gun works. If you'd like to learn more, make sure you watch the video embedded above, and as always, enjoy!