Will a ROCKET POWERED SAW cut wood? - Smarter Every Day 210

You wanna see it kicking back in normal conditions, and you wanna test it in not-so-normal conditions. Until that's not kickback, you wanna give it all of the edge cases so it knows what's going on.

[Destin] Why are you smiling, why are you smiling? (laughing)

I think we should test the edge cases.

I normally say, "Hey, it's me Destin, welcome back to Smarter Every Day," but there's nothin' smart about this. So here's the deal, this is a rocket saw and I wanna say I'm sorry but I'm totally not.

Here's the deal, here's how we got here. So in the last video, we explained how we had incorporated machine learning into power tools in order to keep them from hurting you, right? So the way you work with a machine learning algorithm is you get a really big fancy computer and you start to sort events out like data collection events.

In our case, normal use of a saw, so we see like a normal thing that happens with a saw, we put it in the normal bucket, right? But as we see these things that are dangerous, we would put those over here in the dangerous pile and if you do this enough, eventually the computer can sort between dangerous events and normal events.

You can't test everything in the world, okay? So you come up with all these really weird things, and you do your best to like sort 'em out but eventually you get to the edge cases and you have to make a decision like as a human, where do these things go?

One of those things we thought about was a rocket saw. Obviously the rocket saw's gonna go in the danger pile, and we're not actually gonna collect data on this shot, but we thought about a rocket saw and once you realize you're smart enough to make a rocket saw--

So we got a rocket powered saw and we're gonna see what happens. I think it's just gonna stop back there. I don't think it's gonna make it this far, do you?

[Man] Yeah, no bets buddy.

[Destin] Four rockets, we got two Fs and two Ds.

If only we had five.

[Destin] If only we had fire. And you've got it all wired up, ready to go, right?

[Man] Yeah.

[Destin] This GoPro lookin' back at the blade is gonna be nice. Like the GoPro should see the engagement of the teeth and stuff, this is so dumb, I love it. (saw running)

I think it makes-- (laughing) Alright, you're tall, you gotta turn that beast on. So it's ready to fire, right? You've got the thing wired up, right?

Right.

Okay. This is one of the more noble things I've ever done in my life. Now would be an excellent time to make a prediction on what you think this thing is gonna do to the wood.

Also, the very first video I ever uploaded to this channel, called, "How to Light a Bonfire with Rockets," cringe-worthy. It's like the first video ever made. It also involves shooting a rocket from this exact same tree.

(beeping) (saw running) Alright, lemme go arm the high-speed camera.

[Man] Oh my god. (laughing) (saw running)

Three, two, holy crap, one. (rocket whizzing) One! (rocket whizzing) (laughing) What happened? Holy crap.

[Destin] Get the GoPro before it catches on fire.

[Man] If it's still there.

[Destin] Oh, it's still there.

[Man] Is it still there?

Oh! (laughing) Totally survived.

[Man] It bounced up.

[Destin] Yeah I don't even think, like it didn't even try. It didn't even try.

[Man] It just rolled on it.

[Man 2] We got it man.

[Destin] Did we, dude? We totally did, oh! (laughing) (slow motion rocket whizzing) That's a thing you can do with friends.

[Man] On a Friday night.

Who needs drugs when you can do stuff like this, right? Let's zoom in closer and see if the saw blade does what you thought it would do. (laughing)

Oh my goodness, my heart. Oh it just dinged the screen? Who cares, did you see what we just did with that? You're still here which means you understand.

We're both winnin' here, my whole life led up to this moment to make the rocket saw. Your whole life led up to watching this video, we're all winners. Thanks.

There was a smart reason that we got to that point, I promise.

I think we yelled, "For science!" several times.

Yeah, that's how that works. Alright, well, you're getting smarter every day. Have a good one, thanks for watchin'.