What happens to a watermelon when it’s sprayed with a protective coating meant for pickup trucks and then dropped 150 feet off a tower? The Australian trio behind YouTube channel How Ridiculous decided to find out. Here’s what happened:
How Ridiculous coated a watermelon with Line-X. While the spray is commonly used for truck beds, the How Ridiculous amateur scientists decided to get creative with the protective spray and test it on a squishy food we wouldn’t necessarily think of as resilient. In the video, the watermelon sprayed with Line-X not only remained intact, but it even bounced.
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Meanwhile, a watermelon dropped without the coating wasn’t so lucky: it exploded, with pieces flying everywhere. Clearly the protective coating succeeded at keeping the outside of the watermelon undamaged, but when the team opened up the coated watermelon later with a saw, inside the fruit had turned to slush.
How Ridiculous has run silly science experiments in the past, like trying to catch a fish with an iPhone, and also perform stunts and tricks like making a basketball shot off a 415-foot-tall dam in Tasmania. The team holds Guinness World Records for the “highest basketball shot” off the dam, a tower, and the Euromast. Their stunts and experiments are entertaining but they also have a meaningful purpose: they aim to inspire viewers to battle poverty. Through a relationship with international organization Compassion, they offer fans of the channel the opportunity to sponsor children in developing countries.
There’s more to the story with Line-X as well. The company’s coatings aren’t used just for trucks and watermelons, but for buildings like the Pentagon or emergency response vehicles. According to the company’s website, they were the first company to provide “commercially available pure polyurea,” and they created the first “spray-on blast-mitigation coating” tested by the U.S. military.
+ How Ridiculous
Via Sploid
