President Obama Puts 'Mythbusters' to the Test

What do President Obama, Greek mathematician Archimedes and 500 "soldiers" have in common? They'll all be part of a special episode of the popular TV show "Mythbusters" airing December 8th on the Discovery Channel.

After appearing with the president at the White House Science Fair, hosts Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman stopped by the set of Washington Unplugged for an exclusive interview.

President Obama has challenged the "Mythbusters" team to tackle the 'Archimedes death ray' in which, as legend has it, Archimedes set fire to an invading Roman fleet using only mirrors and the reflected rays of the sun.

Hyneman told CBS News senior White House correspondent Bill Plante that the hosts "went to the White House Library and the president explained that he wasn't quite satisfied with our earlier experiments and so we need to take things full scale."

Hopefully third time's the charm, since the first two attempts to explore the death ray "busted." This time may be different.

"We've never tried this myth in the exact way that Archimedes supposedly had done it, which was 500 soldiers on the shore with polished shields directing the sun's rays at an enemy boat," Savage told Plante.

Unfortunately, ancient Grecian soldiers weren't readily available, so Savage and Hyneman had to adjust.

"Instead of using 500 soldiers," Hyneman said, "We used 500 school kids, high school and middle school students from my wife's high school where she teaches science in Alameda, California."

Hyneman also joked that standing on a boat about to be set on fire for the new show, which is being filmed now, does have its own perks.

"We decked out an abandoned life boat from a cruise ship... I got to stand on the bow of this while this was happening in a fire suit but, among other things, holding a broiler rack full of weenies to roast," he said.

Plante asked Savage and Hyneman what kind of impact "Mythbusters" has on kids. According to the White House, the show has 13 million viewers each week and is popular among 9-14 year olds. Hyneman told Plante it's about having fun with science.

"Neither Adam or I are scientists, we're not engineers or anything of the sort," he said. "We just have a lot of fun and the thing is, fun for us happens to involve science and satisfying our curiosity."

Hyneman added: "I think if we had gone about this by trying to do science, it wouldn't appeal to them at all. As it is, we're just screwing around and it seems to work." Savage agreed. "We never set out to start trying to teach kids about science and we try and remain ignorant of that as a mission because we feel like kids can smell that from a mile away," he said.

Catch Mythbusters with President Obama and the 'Archimedes death ray' on December 8th.

And watch Tuesday's Washington Unplugged above, also featuring New York Times' Jeff Zeleny on the endangered species that are Southern Democrats and this week's "Plugged In" with Politico's Kiki Ryan.

"Washington Unplugged," CBSNews.com's exclusive daily politics Webshow, appears live on CBSNews.com each weekday at 12:30 p.m. ET. Click here to check out previous episodes.

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Lauren Seifert is an associate producer for CBSNews.com. You can read more of her posts here. For more Washington Unplugged, follow us on Facebook and Twitter.

[tdnorco]

I didn't read the article, but what Myth will those rascals be trying to bust? The Myth that Obama had any qualifications to be president?

[cjgermany]

No that the birthers actually exist in reality.

[samael2014]

It's pretty clear that Obama thinks his re-election will be more secure by losing more of the Democrat presence in the House -- that he has routinely undermined. This ******* can't be allowed to get away with being the piece of self-serving $hit he is any longer.

For instance, health care legislation -- which is REVENUE GENERATING legislation, was REQUIRED BY LAW to be authored in the House of Representatives. The Senate's only function in that case was to PROPOSE AMENDMENT to and vote on the legislation. Is that what happened? Why was Obama in league with Senator Reid to do this -- they compromised EVERYTHING to create health care legislation that offered no universal or public option to it's citizens, and placed a revenue/fee demand on them in the process. Because THEY ARE THE GARBAGE that this nation is already dying from. The right wing parasite collective that is eating us alive like the later stages of malignant cancer.

Obama is nothing but more of Bush -- in no way disparaging the phenomenal impact of the Bush Administration, the entire Reagan-Bush dynasty actually, on America. This nation was never designed to sustain so much upper class welfare and right wing cancer. The world itself is recoiling as the United States implodes.

[samael2014]

The capacity for ignorance in this nation is apparently HUGE. The primary role of President is to carry out the law created by Congress -- as a government BODY -- and that's essentially it as far as representing the will of "all the people" in the United States.

What President elected by a majority -- and in fact, not even that is required, as demonstrated in the 2000 Presidential election -- AND VERY PARTICULARLY, REPUBLICAN PRESIDENT, has acted on the interests of all the people and worked with "all of our senators, congress and representatives"? WhereTF would anybody get that expectation from -- any actual historical figures in American history?

I can't even begin to BELIEVE that a RIGHT WING PARASITE COLLECTIVE -- that is IN FACT, very ISOLATED idealogically from a global perspective -- can even assume anything like this, one that has wielded so much U.S. taxpayer money and minority interest as to dominate a later administration's entire agenda with TWO decade long occupations in foriegn countries and a financial collapse that spurred world-wide economic downturn that the entire world has yet to recover? Not to mention an enormous anti-American resentment that has carved entire new alliances and ways of thinking about the United States that have forever changed our influence.

What cognitive dissonant cranium could even lose track of the first eight years of the 21st century?

I wholly agree, Obama HAS TO GO. This nation is at a CRITICAL POINT where it needs DESPERATELY a rule of law administrator who will carry out this nations laws and the world's laws with RETROACTIVE ZEAL. We cannot let the crimes of past administrations and law-breakers go unchecked, and we certainly can't continue those policies. And anybody who voted for change with OBAMA has had their representation BETRAYED BEYOND BELIEF. As a progressive Democrat, if my party doesn't give us another candidate during the 2011 Democratic Primary, then they will be in for a massive rude awakening -- again.

[breto62]

Obama does anything he can to distract the idiots who elected him from seeing that he is as incompetent and f***ed up as his predecessor. Hell, Obama is just G. W. Bush in a different skin tone.

[retm-w]

Wonder if they can bust the myth of the stimulas creating non government jobs.

[RobAla]

How about a little recession busting, instead?