- This is a T-shirt cannon.
(T-shirt boinging)
And this is the cannon that just happens to shoot a T-shirt.
(cannon firing)
(Mark laughing)
(person cheering)
That went farther than anticipated.
But to understand the convoluted path
for how I ended up here and eventually right here,
and who the heck this kid is,
we've gotta first go back a few months,
'cause that's when I was hanging out with my friend,
who had an odd request.
Explain what it is you're looking for from me.
- Well my dream is the world's most powerful T-shirt cannon.
(Mark laughing)
A T-shirt cannon that could possibly kill.
- Now to be fair, his request sort of did make sense
given he had a college football bowl game named after him,
and he didn't wanna disappoint the fans.
And I didn't wanna disappoint a friend,
so my first thought
was to save myself a lot of time on the design
by just shooting a T-shirt from an actual cannon.
But to do that, I would need to answer one key question.
Just how powerful is a real cannon?
And we're about to find out.
(smooth music)
Six ounces of black powder behind a T-shirt
in an actual civil war cannon.
Let's see what the heck happens.
This is science.
And while we load that in,
let's review the simple mechanics of how a cannon works.
Basically, the gunpowder goes here, cannonball goes here.
Then you light the gunpowder,
and it turns into a gas and expands very quickly.
And then the gases are like, dude,
it's suddenly way too crowded in this small space for us.
We gotta get outta here.
And because all these walls are way too strong,
the best option is down the barrel.
And since the ball happens to be in the way,
it gets pushed along for the ride with all the escaping gas.
They just told me to keep my mouth open.
I don't know why.
- Fire!
- Oh!
Yeah!
(people laughing)
I'm not sure the Jimmy Kimmel Bowl
is gonna allow me to fire these into the crowd.
I might have to pivot.
So obviously an actual cannon was way too powerful.
But to understand by just how much,
it was time for the most on-brand measurement device I know.
(watermelons thudding)
The watermelo-meter.
It's watermelon time.
(cannon firing)
(smooth music)
(cannon whooshing)
Nice.
So while we enjoyed the fruits of our labors,
I was already thinking of a plan B,
and I knew just where to turn.
This is Anthony.
He was being interviewed by the local news,
'cause he invented a really cool ventilator
made out of Legos.
- Right here, there is area for a oxygen tube.
- [Mark] So after he explained how it works,
they asked about his future life plans.
- I wanna be a mechanical engineer,
and what would be amazing
is if I would be able to do a co-op or something
with the YouTuber, Mark Rober.
- [Newscaster] With who?
- The YouTuber, Mark Rober.
- [Newscaster] Oh.
- Oh, he's my favorite YouTube person.
Yeah, good luck.
- [Mark] Well, clearly only one of these three
was gonna be my future boss,
so I tracked him down,
and his parents told him one more local news station
wanted to talk about his build.
(electronic beeping)
- What's up, Anthony?
I have an engineering challenge that I need some help on.
Are you my guy?
- Yeah, sure, yeah.
- You know, have you ever seen in a game,
they have like T-shirt cannons?
- Yeah.
- I thought it would be cool
to make the world's largest, most powerful T-shirt cannon
for like a local high school game here.
And this was a bit of a white lie.
My real plan was to get Anthony to design it for me.
Then he would attend
what he thought was an ordinary football game.
Then I would surprise him by showing up,
and telling him it was time to fire his creation
in front of 50,000 people.
But first I needed his ideas.
So, we started riffing on how he could design this thing.
- Pull it together.
- This back section, we can kind of fill.
- And then you have a giant pressure tank back here.
It'd be funny if, I don't know,
there was like a chariot beside it,
that held like a giant air tank in it.
- [Mark] So that, maybe in like that,
we could hide it or something, right?
- Yeah.
- All right, pal.
It was really great to meet you.
I'll talk to you soon, okay?
- Okay.
- And now that I knew what Anthony had in mind,
all we needed was a 10 second build montage
to make the thing.
(smooth music)
Time to load the slug.
This is about a three pound ball of rags.
Let's see what happens.
This is the first test fire, here we go.
And there wasn't a lot of space at this location,
so this first shot was about one third full power.
(air hissing)
Three, two, one.
(cannon firing)
(Mark laughing)
Oh no, I think we killed the donkey.
(donkey braying)
Now it was up to me to go full sandlot,
and retrieve this thing.
Oh my gosh.
(donkey braying)
Oh, yeah.
So thankfully, both me and the donkey survived,
but it was time to head to a bigger field,
so we could really test the full capabilities of the cannon.
I dare anyone to get in my way.
(light upbeat music)
Now I quickly wanna mention,
to really appreciate the challenge ahead of us,
you have to appreciate that SoFi,
where the game was gonna be played,
is just a massive stadium.
So the goal of the game was for Jimmy's sidekick, Guillermo,
to be in the top row.
And then Anthony, Jimmy and I would be down on the field.
So this is the correctly scaled shot that we'd have to hit.
And since we know the horizontal
and vertical measurements to that seat,
we placed a drone in the sky at that exact location.
And our goal was basically to hit that drone.
That seems incredibly far away.
I've never built anything
that could remotely shoot that far.
Three, two, one, go.
(Mark laughing)
And that first shot was at about two thirds full power.
And you could see it was well short of the drone,
and had a trajectory sort of like this.
It also presented some other issues.
Look at that bag, dude.
Oh, did we bust?
Oh, we ripped a hole.
That's tapeable.
And after that,
we decided just to give it all the power she had,
and cross our fingers.
This is the big mama.
500 PSI, eight pounds.
This is like a real life cannon.
Here we go.
Three, two, one, go.
(cannon firing)
(Mark laughing)
Yeah, that tape, that tape didn't do so hot.
And considering our payload weighed eight pounds,
which is basically a gallon of milk,
this was a bomb of a shot.
But as you can see from the viewpoint of the top seat,
it wasn't far enough.
Now I just wanna remind you,
this is how far a normal wimpy T-shirt cannon
shoots one shirt,
whereas our cannon was shooting
the equivalent weight of 25 shirts at this trajectory,
and yet it still wasn't going to cut it.
And so we stayed there the whole day,
and there were a bunch more tests I won't bore you with,
but the punchline was that no matter what we tried,
we couldn't make it to Guillermo in the top row.
So I had to call Anthony to give him the bad news,
and try and figure out what to do next.
What's up, Anthony?
How's it going, buddy?
- It's been going really good
- [Mark] And lucky for me, he'd been hard at work.
- Yeah, I'm really busy.
- [Mark] So, we got right into it,
and for the first issue of the bag ripping,
he suggested we replace our canvas bag
with something stronger.
- Kevlar.
- [Mark Voiceover] He had another suggestion
to protect our bag, though.
- Something to produce drag, like a parachute.
- And then, he went on to tell me
how he'd anticipated this would be an issue,
which is why he'd spent the last two weeks
designing, building and testing a system
that could release a parachute
after a prescribed time delay.
And that's when I realized he would be my boss
sooner than I first anticipated.
Next, he told me three modifications
to make it shoot farther.
But before I tell you how he was exactly right,
we need to review how the T-shirt canon actually works.
So it's the exact same principle as the real canon,
but instead of using gunpowder to make an explosion
to make it all super crowded with gas,
you take a high pressure tank like this,
and put some of that high pressure air
into this accumulator tank.
And then once again, all the gas in that tank is like,
it's way too crowded, we gotta get outta here.
So when you open this valve,
it's a mad dash down the barrel,
and the T-shirt just happens to be in the way,
so it goes for the ride just like the cannonball.
And this is the same principle
as shooting a spitball with a straw.
It's the same principle that powered my Nerf gun,
my super soaker, and pretty much any system
that uses air to launch stuff.
So his first suggestion was a bigger tank.
And this makes sense,
'cause it would sustain the force on the T-shirt
instead of like with a small tank
where you just get a brief poof.
And he went on to mention his second idea.
- Or like a longer barrel so it can really get up to speed.
- [Mark Voiceover] And this is also true,
which is why rifles shoot faster bullets than handguns.
And his third suggestion was to increase the size
of the connecting tube here.
So, instead of necking down.
- You can just have it go straight to the final diameter.
- And that means there's no traffic jams
as the air rushes out, which means it can get out faster.
So after that call,
we went back and pretty much instituted
all of Anthony's suggestions in some form or another.
And I was feeling like we were back in the game.
And so after another full day of testing,
this is where we stood.
Eight inch cannon,
13 pound mortar with the parachute, 500 PSI,
roll the drone, here we go!
Fire!
(cannon firing)
(Mark laughing)
Parachute, yeah!
The big bomb.
We basically shot nearly two gallons of milk
over a 30 story building,
and it traveled for two and a half football fields,
which put us way beyond the Guillermo spot.
Plus, Anthony's parachute system
kicked in at just the right moment,
so his Kevlar bag landed in pristine shape.
And by the way,
you might be wondering what's in this massive bag.
Well, the world's largest T-shirt cannon
naturally should shoot the world's largest T-shirt.
Probably.
I haven't looked it up,
but this has gotta be the world's largest.
Look at this thing.
So the next step is actually head to SoFi,
and show this to the lawyers
and see if they'll let us shoot it.
And right off the bat, the lawyers were like,
yeah, you're gonna have to use
the smaller barrel and payload,
'cause of like safety or something.
I don't know.
The goal is to bomb a T-shirt from right here,
literally through the very last seat
in the nosebleed section of the stadium.
Thanks to Anthony's work,
never again will the fine folks in the nosebleed section
be robbed of an amazing T-shirt.
So we decided to start at one third power
in an attempt to shoot a shot like this,
and then we could work our way up.
- [Person Off Camera] In three, two, one!
- But that is not what happened.
(cannon firing)
Oh my gosh.
(Mark laughing)
Oh my gosh.
Anthony, what have you done?
Out of the park, baby.
And not being sure if that was a fluke or not,
we tried the same power level again,
and this time we dude perfected the crud out of it.
Oh, oh, oh!
Yeah!
With a bank shot off the roof.
The bank shot, baby!
And after that,
we decided it was prudent to reduce the power further
to one fourth full pressure, which was killin' me,
'cause if they would've let us open that to full,
based off our previous test,
we could have Uncle Rico'd it from this end zone
out the stadium and well into the parking lot.
But you know, lawyers.
Let's have it.
And so this was our third and final shot
at that reduced 25% full pressure.
(cannon firing)
(smooth music)
Oh, yeah!
We literally just hit the back of the seat
of the very top row in the entire arena.
And that perfectly accomplished our objective
down to a few inches,
which was a huge weight off my shoulders,
because I felt like we were locked on Anthony's design.
And I remember my first experiences with engineering,
and I really wanted this to be a grand slam for him.
And so after a few last minute cosmetic modifications,
game day had arrived,
and as the team started warming up,
the stands started filling up.
Okay, we just received word.
Anthony is on the premises, but he's not in his seat yet.
So, it's time for me to go incognito.
And to do that,
I needed a prop borrowed from my buddy Adam Savage.
It's a beard, but it's like glasses.
Friggin' beard glasses.
Pretty cool, mm?
Stealin' my cameraman's hat.
I look like an ice road trucker.
Oh, yeah.
You can't even tell that's me.
I'm more nervous I think about the surprise
than I am about actually firing the cannon.
(light upbeat music)
There they are.
They just sat down.
All right, let's do this.
We're sneakin' up behind Anthony.
He's in his seats right now.
He has no idea what's goin' on.
This is hands down my favorite part of this job.
I love a freaking good surprise.
Here we go.
(announcer chattering)
Do you like football?
Okay.
What's up, buddy?
You like my beard disguise?
I heard you were here,
so I decided to come down and say hi.
- I am shaking.
(Mark laughing)
- Look, I'm shaking just as much.
So, I gotta be honest.
You know that cannon we've been designing?
We designed it for this game, and at halftime,
you're gonna go out with me and Jimmy Kimmel,
and we're gonna fire it in front of 50,000 people.
And then the teams came back out on the field,
and the game began.
And as the quarter progressed,
the anticipation was building.
- [Interviewer] You got anything else planned for us
that we should know about?
- I do.
We built the world's most powerful T-shirt canon.
It is an enormous, very, very powerful projectile device,
and we're gonna do that at halftime.
- [Mark] And so with halftime
just around the corner,
we went to check out his creation.
What do you think, buddy?
- That looks amazing.
- And I had to explain
that because of his help,
we couldn't go more than 25% pull power.
We could crank it all the way up to 550,
but that's how you bomb it outta the stadium.
- That's how you break a window.
- Yeah, that'll break a window.
- [Anthony] I'm really excited.
- [Mark] You excited?
Me too.
Are you nervous?
- [Anthony] Yeah, definitely.
(smooth music)
(audience cheering)
- All right, buddy.
Two minutes left.
You ready?
- All right.
- Don't think about the 50,000 people watching you, okay?
Just don't think about that part.
And then it was go time.
- Mark Rober, who is a former NASA engineer,
they built a very powerful T-shirt cannon.
You want to show it to us, Mark?
- Yeah, yeah, that's right.
With my buddy, Anthony.
He did all the hard work and designed it.
I just built the thing.
- You think this is gonna work, Anthony?
- Yeah, I definitely think so, but maybe not.
- And there's Anthony
already qualifying his statements like a true engineer.
We do not wanna fire it directly into this section.
- Do not kill anyone, Mark.
We are gonna be the first ball game
to put a T-shirt on the moon.
- Okay, here we go.
Three,
two,
it's gonna be loud, cover your ears,
one!
(audience cheering)
- [Jimmy Kimmel] Wow!
(Mark laughing)
Incredible!
- Through the roof.
I've been told we've been out of the stadium.
We went out of the stadium.
- Well, that was very exciting.
Thank you, Mark.
- Yeah, you're welcome.
Good job, buddy.
We did it.
What'd you think?
- That was insane.
- That was all you, pal.
Good job.
Thanks, Jimmy.
- Thank you.
- [Mark Voiceover] And so even after doing our best
to appease the lawyers at one fourth power,
Anthony just noped it right out of the park.
So after that we went back and enjoyed the second half
as I just hoped he would remember this experience
for a really long time,
so that I could at least have a leg up one day
when I apply to work for his company.
(light upbeat music)