I've never heard of this myth, but pretty cool proof nonetheless.

Award winning sift too

I'll upvote even though they didnt explain why it happens.

I'm not sure I understand, the ropes passed through the pages on both sides of both books?

Apparently the friction between each page amounts to a whole lot of friction. The ropes are in the side of the books to give them something to pull on. They don't manage to pull the books from each other, only to tear the back off of the books.

Excellent cautionary tale. Never intertwine your phone books!

I would never have thought that to be true, but there you go... yeah, you're talking one whole lot of surface friction there, each page, front and back pulling against the pages next to it, multiplied by the number of pages and I guess you can see why it sticks so well.

But certainly not intuitive.

The editing, graphics etc. of this were really well done. Fine work to those guys... high marks indeed!

But yeah, a bit of 'Warning Science Content' wouldn't have gone astray.

well damn, now i have two phone books i can't use. crap. NOW WHAT?

Never really liked Mythbusters. They just come up with random 'myths' because that was the original concept of the show. Sorta like how Top Gears tests random theories on the show, but mythbusters has a hot chick

I can hardly believe this clip got this many votes while other real Mythbusters myths usually get much less. Hooray

*science

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Upvote for using a classic Ford as scientific equipment!

Very cool (and unexpected - gets a vote), but not really up to mythbusting standards, and not confirmed. First of all, they should avoid the word "impossible" because that requires proving a negative ("this can't be done"), and if N amount of force didn't work, perhaps N*10 will, or maybe N^1000; there's no upper limit to reach at which they can say, "can't." On the other side of it though, they also weakened the integrity of the paper by drilling holes through it. Perhaps if they used a clamping device to hold the ends, then they could've arrived at a less glorious, but much more defensible position of "they can't be pulled apart before the pages themselves rip."

Chinese finger trap, like, thing.

I was waiting for the rope to break and the metal ring on the end to come flying through the back window of the thunderbird!!!

Chinese finger trap is correct.

All they needed to do was introduce the shop compressed air into the side of the phone book. Or even a push-pull approach might work if you can unbind the pages and warp them up long enough.

you can still manually disentangle the pages...

If only I knew the song that was in the beginning...

*win

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