No Pressure: President Obama Tasks Mythbusters With Brightening America's Future

"And occasionally you blow things up, which is always cool," the commander in chief jokes to hosts Jamie and Adam

By Natalie Finn Dec 09, 2010 3:00 AMTags

Barack Obama didn't appear on Mythbusters just for his own jollies.

No, the president of the United States had an agenda, besides hoping to see something blow up, "which is always cool," he said.

"Nothing's more important to our country's future than getting young people engaged in math and science," Obama explained to Mythbusters hosts Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman, who met with the commander in chief in the White House library.

"A lot of the challenges we face as a country are going to depend on how engaged young people are with science, and so I'm just thrilled that you guys do such a great job making it fun."

"Now, I do know this," Obama continued. "Science requires a lot of trial and error. Part of what Mythbusters is about is testing out various hypotheses, and I think we've got a big one that hasn't been thoroughly tested."

And with that, the president ordered Savage and Hyneman to reinvestigate the myth of Archimedes' solar ray, inspired by the Greek mathematician's idea that angling heat from the sun in just the right way would set the attacking Romans' fleet on fire.

"There's one thing you didn't do," and that was engage more manpower, Obama informed the guys when they asked where they went wrong when testing it the first time.

So, in keeping with Obama's wish to get kids excited by science, Mythbusters recruited "a scrappy band of Greek soldiers"—or, 500 high school students—to aim their mirrors at a teeny-weeny focal spot painted on a boat sitting 400 feet from shore in San Francisco Bay.

In hopes of getting something to blow up, of course.