DUBLIN, Calif. — Zany experiments testing scientific theories in real world settings have earned the TV show “MythBusters” a devoted following, but a stunt gone wrong met with an unhappy audience when an errant cannonball went shooting through a California family’s bedroom.
Wednesday morning, sheriff’s deputies were still trying to measure how the cannonball traveled from a bomb range in the rolling hills flanking a suburban neighborhood and rocketed through the front door of a home, through its master bedroom, and landed in a neighbor’s parked minivan.
Producers for the Discovery Channel show fired the cannonball for an episode Tuesday as they attempted to test whether other types of projectiles shot from a cannon would pick up the same speed and have the same impact as the steel ball.
Instead of hitting a string of water-filled garbage cans, the cannonball passed over the barrels, went straight through a protective cinderblock wall and skipped off the hill behind it, said Alameda County Sheriff’s Department spokesman J.D. Nelson.
“It missed the target and took kind of an oddball bounce,” Nelson said. “It was almost like skipping a rock on a lake. Instead of burying it into the hill it just went skyward.”
No one was injured and the home’s residents didn’t even wake up until the broken drywall settled on top of them, he said.
Nelson, the department’s liaison to the show, said producers have used the cannon that they built at the county’s bomb range behind the Santa Rita Jail more than 50 times without incident.
Once it was launched, the cannonball traveled about 700 feet, bounced in front of the Dublin home, then tore through the front door and exited through a wall on the back of the house.
The projectile then bounced at least once more and crossed the road before smashing the window and dashboard of the minivan, where it came to rest.
Jasbir Gill, who owns the minivan, said he and his children had just gotten home.
“It’s scary,” Gill told the Contra Costa Times (http://bit.ly/umCZnD). “I was in the van five minutes before this happened.”
“Mythbusters,” which is produced for Discovery Channel by Beyond Productions, issued a statement through publicist Katherine Nelson Wednesday saying all proper safety protocol had been observed.
“Beyond Productions is currently assessing the situation and working with those whose property was affected,” she said.
The show, according to its website, mixes “scientific method with gleeful curiosity and plain old-fashioned ingenuity to create (its) own signature style of explosive experimentation.”
President Barack Obama announced he would appear on an upcoming segment during a White House science fair in October.