Sugar in the tank!

[BlackBetty]

Doesn't anyone watch Mythbusters here? They did a series of tests called Car Capers where they tested the sugar in the tank theory. Below is a link to the video, skip to 6:40 to see the sugar in the tank run.

[urlhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ziQPq9o6fSs[/url]

Hope this ends the argument.

 

[BlackBetty]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ziQPq9o6fSs

 

[azmalibuwagon]

Doesn't anyone watch Mythbusters here?

Yep. Blake brought it up back on about page 2.

 

[axisg]

I'm starting to notice a loss of power.. :?

OH NO!! Maybe 454 was right all along and the sugar has turned the gas into yellowish sludgy goo !!!

Keep it going GP I know you can solve this mystery.

 

[BlackBetty]

Doesn't anyone watch Mythbusters here?

Yep. Blake brought it up back on about page 2.

Yea and then I see it was shot down by someone saying they didn't test with the right conditions. However they did let the car sit overnight and they say they let it run for awhile. they obviously cant show them running it for a long time in a hour long show.


I believe back in my first engines class in ninth grade we tested this, even without fuel filters the engine ran through a tank fine.

 

[pontiacgp]

I'm starting to notice a loss of power.. :?

OH NO!! Maybe 454 was right all along and the sugar has turned the gas into yellowish sludgy goo !!!

Keep it going GP I know you can solve this mystery.

It got real bad and then I had a coffee and filled my tank with a nice lunch. I cut back on sugar with my corn flakes trying to lose a few pounds and that's could be why I was losing strength so early on in the am...I had to ask barney to pick me up I was feeling so weak

 

[454muscle]

Thanks BlackBetty for your usable and relevant information.

For you and anyone else not interested in acting like an idiot and clowing around:

One reason that the sugar could have passed through the fuel system passed the sock and fuel filter could be a result of a reaction with the gas tank itself. New gas tanks are made of plastic. Older ones, metal, and lined with zinc. Sucrose may react chemically with the zinc, or other metal or other contaminants in the gasoline iself. A catalyst need only be present in a small quantity, to initiate a chemical reaction.

It's feasible:

The Straight Dope - "Sugar in the Gastank" Thread:
Quote:
I recall in JR high chem an experiment where soem kind of acid was added to sugar, and it resulting reaction freed the carbon from the sugar. The interesting thing was that the carbon alone took up much more volume that the sugar.
Quote:
Yes! I remember this! About a half beaker of sugar, pour in some acid and foooom up sprang a stack of black carbon about 6-8 times higher than the beaker. My friends & I were so impressed by it that after school we stopped by the chemisty lab to have another look-see. The teacher opened up the cabinet full of the day's experiments and there were 8 beakers with huge black carbon masses sticking a foot or so up in the air. We called it Mr. Miller's sh*t farm.
(http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/arc ... 70884.html)

References:

Metal Chlorides in Ionic Liquid Solvents Convert Sugars to 5-HydroxymethylfurfuralAbstract: "Replacing petroleum feedstocks by biomass requires efficient methods to convert carbohydrates to a variety of chemical compounds. We report the catalytic conversion of sugars giving high yield to 5-hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF), a versatile intermediate. Metal halides in 1-alkyl-3-methylimidazolium chloride are catalysts, among which chromium (II) chloride is found to be uniquely effective, leading to the conversion of glucose to HMF with a yield near 70%. A wide range of metal halides is found to catalyze the conversion of fructose to HMF. Only a negligible amount of levulinic acid is formed in these reactions. "
Science 15 June 2007:
Vol. 316 no. 5831 pp. 1597-1600
DOI: 10.1126/science.1141199
(http://www.sciencemag.org/content/316/5 ... 7.abstract)


Reactions of metal(II) ions with sugar α-amino acids: nickel(II) complexes containing an α-amino acid derived from galactose or mannose
Abstract "The reaction of NiII ions with 2-(benzylamino)-2-deoxy-d-glycero-l-gluco. heptonic acid (BnGa:C14H21NO7) or 2-(benzylamino)-2-deoxy-d-glycero-d-talo heptonic acid (BnMa:C14H21NO7) in water yields complexes of formulae [Ni(BnGa)2(H2O)2] and [Ni(BnMa)2]·2H2O, respectively, which were characterized by elemental analysis, spectral techniques (u.v.-vis.-n.i.r. and i.r.), magnetic susceptibility measurements, thermal measurements (t.g. and d.s.c.) and X-ray powder diffraction. Both complexes are octahedral with two positions of the coordination sphere occupied by nitrogen atoms. Moreover, in [Ni(BnMa)2]·2H2O four oxygen atoms of bridging carboxylate groups are coordinated to the metal ion, while in [Ni(BnGa)2(H2O)2] only an oxygen atom of each carboxylate group is bound to NiII. In this case, the coordination is completed via two water molecules."
Chemistry and Materials Science
Transition Metal Chemistry
Volume 21, Number 3, 197-199, DOI: 10.1007/BF00165966
(http://www.springerlink.com/content/k14q4178n877q186/)

The Straight Dope - Fighting Ignorance since 1973
A Staff Report from the Straight Dope Science Advisory Board :
Quote:
My original sources were actual mechanics and auto salvage yard operators. The five I spoke with had a total of over 150 years of automotive experience. Two admitted that they had, in the past, actually perpetrated the sugar trick and seen the successful results - one cackled gleefully at the memory. That was enough for me ... but since you asked, I did a little SDSAB experiment of my own.

The vehicle utilized was a 1983 Cutlass Ciera with 94,000 on the clock and a mortal lifter knock. Along with my assistants, we lowered the gas tank and pulled the fuel pump (the pump is mounted on the tank these days). Hmmm, about 1/4 full. Excellent. In went a healthy amount of Domino's Refined Sugar ... not enough to touch the fuel pump sock. Back went the the pump. Gentlemen, start your engine. After 10 minutes, I began to get nervous. But at the 16 minute mark, the motor made the first of what would prove to be a series of hiccups. Twice it stalled and had to be restarted. At 31 minutes the engine quit and would not restart until we fired it up and kept it running by squirting a steady stream of starting fluid directly into the carburetor. Clearly, fuel was no longer coming from the fuel tank. When the pump unit was removed for re-examination, the sock was caked with sugar and the pump sounded a tad ill when juice was applied. It would be interesting to learn the conditions under which Motor Service magazine failed to achieve this result. Those who had supplied me with the earlier information merely shrugged and said, "I told you so." They also waxed nostalgic on the old golf ball trick. While I go get the Go-Jo to get the gas smell off my hands, let's all pause a moment and sigh happily that at least one urban myth is not a myth at all.
(http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1586/followup)

 

[pontiacgp]

it's quitting time so we're off for the weekend 454...hey did that yellow goo look anything like this?..

 

[Randy_W]

I know I said I quit, but, the test with the Ciera proved only that enough sugar can clog the pickup, not that sugar will damage an engine if poured in the tank. Why? Because it won't, period. I can't for the life of me understand why people want to keep that myth alive. O.K., I really quit now!

 

[pontiacgp]

there are myths that won't die but this lame one doesn't even make the list..personally I believe the earth is not only oval it's hollow as well.. 8)

1 The Abominable Snowman

The Abominable Snowman - or Yeti to give him his proper Tibetan, if less evocative, name - is a huge, hairy ape-man hybrid beast who lives above the snowline in the Himalayan regions of India, Nepal and Tibet. I do not lace my words with "allegedly", "perhaps" or "maybe", and that is because of the veritable Himalayan mountain of evidence that we have of his existence. Perhaps you can deny pictures of the Yeti in ancient Bhutanese murals, reports of sightings by yak herders, pictures of giant footprints, a patch of humanlike skin and mummified finger at 18,000ft found in 1950 and the testimony of the snowblind and hypothermic Captain d'Auvergne that he was saved from certain death by two 8ft-tall creatures somewhere between Bhutan and Sikkim. I, however, cannot. And they found a frozen hairy foot in Siberia three years ago. So there.

2 Nessie

The days of people being snatched up by alien spaceships may be over, but belief in the Loch Ness monster persists. The reason is simple: a picture - in this case purporting to show the creature's long neck and little head poking out of the water - is worth far more than a thousand words, even after it is revealed by its snapper to be a hoax. The preferred explanation, these days, is that Nessie is a plesiosaur, a remnant of the Mesozoic era who has cleverly circumvented the need for a breeding colony (which one might expect to have been discovered during the 80 years of exploratory expeditions), and done away with the original plesiosaur's need to break the surface to breathe, which would have made Nessie sightings as common as Paris Hilton's.

Does Nessie speak to our psychic depths, to a collective hankering to be wild, mysterious and free, to a submerged longing for a connection to the primordial waters in which we all once swam? Or would we just all love to see a really, really, really big fish?

3 Hollow Earth

In 1692, Edmund Halley - not yet of comet fame - posited that inside the earth nested a series of spherical shells, like tubby Russian dolls, each with their own atmosphere, magnetic poles and rate of rotation. He did this in order to try to explain anomalous compass readings in the absence of alternative evidence, and he and later scientific followers gladly let it give way as evidence to the contrary became available.

Others, however, continue to prefer the notion that if you tap the home counties, you will hear a deep, reverberating echo and the squeals of rudely awoken interior inhabitants. In the 19th century, John Symmes popularised the belief in a hollow earth and other proponents' efforts resulted in the Great US Exploring Expedition of 1838-42, which did a lot in the way of mapping Oregon and furnishing the Smithsonian but failed to provide proof of a hollow world. Still, the belief has survived to the present day - the Hollow Earth Society now claims 400 members in more than 30 countries - and received a particular boost in the early 1980s from the masterful Jim Henson series Fraggle Rock, now available on DVD.

4 Crystals

To detail the health and spiritual benefits claimed for various crystals would take more time and mental space than anyone should have to give the concept that lumps of translucent rock can affect the human mind or body in any way other than if they are thrown fast and hard at the latter, a procedure I heartily recommend if anyone ever starts trying to convince you otherwise.

This belief will persist for as long as rocks can be dug up for free. I know this because I have shone a light through my pink imbecilia quartz and it refracted into whole industries stringing stones on to leather thongs and laughing all the way to the bank.

5 Elvis

There is a lesser known version of the ancient philosophical conundrum, which goes: "If the world's first and greatest pop icon dies on the toilet and there is nobody around to independently verify the fact, did he really make a gently expiring sound, or did he fake it in order to live out the rest of his life in solitude, save for the occasional excursion to Chipping Sodbury or Neoprene, Ohio, to allow sufficient sightings to keep the flame of remembrance alive?" And the answer is no.

But that doesn't stop collective international grief morphing into years of delusional sightings of the King, a testament to the power of human resistance to the appalling notion that death is the end not just of life but of celebrity. Expect the first Diana sighting at a Lidl near you any day now.

6 Electronic smog

This, like crystals, is a favourite of holistic health practitioners, homeopaths and the kind of hippies who advertise pet aromatherapy. But it received the beginnings of mainstream acceptance at the weekend, when the Department of Health announced that it was to make two reports on the phenomenon to the government next month.

Electronic smog is meant to refer to the electrical and magnetic fields thrown out by the electrical appliances in our homes, and the radio frequency fields emitted by masts, transmitters, mobile phones and so on. It is believed, in certain quarters, that these can interfere with the natural electrical activity of the body (particularly in the heart and between nerve cells) and cause anything from leukaemia to cancer to depression.

Ever since the first electrical pylon was raised, there have been studies both supporting and contradicting the idea that strong electrical fields can cause cancer. Clusters of patients found at such sites by research teams are generally dismissed as truly random occurrences. But the fear of invisible rays is a hard one to allay. Fighting the belief in electronic smog will literally be like fighting mist.

7 Telepathy

There seemed to be a great many television programmes in my youth that centred round people staring at white cards with black symbols on them while other people sat behind a screen and tried to say what they were seeing. It wasn't great TV, but remote controls hadn't been invented so whatever channel was on at teatime stayed on until closedown.

Whatever these and other experiments in telepathy and ESP various idiots have carried out over the centuries, they have yet to produce a shred of verifiable or duplicable evidence that the mind can transmit messages. And yet we continue, as a species, to have a deep-seated belief in the idea that telepathy is not only possible, but actually happens: I give you the phenomenon that is Derren Brown.

8 Fairies

Fairy lore has survived for centuries, partly because it arose among Celtic people who historically would rather lose a limb than a good story, partly because it is infinitely adaptable to all times and ages, and partly, and most sickeningly, because fairies have an eternal appeal to the vast swathes of every female generation who love their ickle-bitty dresses and their iridescent wings and their flowery bowers. Rational argument becomes sodden and useless upon contact with minds so wet, alas.

9 Big cats in Britain

There are parakeets in West Wickham. I've seen 'em. Why not beasts on Bodmin, caracals in Cornwall, pumas in Penge? A travelling circus, a faulty lock, an ocelot with initiative - it's not hard to imagine and it really could be true. Cue, every month or so, yet another newspaper picture of what may or not be a large, out-of-focus domestic moggy - or not.

10 Angels

Originally members of the lowest division of the celestial hierarchy, lumbered with sorting out human affairs rather than singing the music of the spheres or guarding Eden like the Seraphim and Cherubim, angels have long since been co-opted by new agers and pressed into service in ever more demeaning ways. Instead of divine servants, they are now usually conceptualised as floaty-robed guardians of man whose benevolent energies can be channelled through crystals, or used as a way of personifying self-help beliefs, resulting in a plethora of books with titles like, How My Angel Told Me to Tell You to Love Yourself and Give Me £7.99. Like crystals and fairies, they will exist for as long as they make money and there are enough drippy women out there with sufficient disposable income to make it so.