Maybe the phrase "knock your socks off" came to be before elastic was added to socks.

maybe you should post in the Moderator initiated discussion?

Or did you not read before posting?

That would keep the number of discussions in the forum managable.

Also, would you accertion mean that the phrase is being incorrectly used in modern times and should be dropped?

thanks for the instructions.
no dropping of the phrase is necessary. just test the phrase with socks from the appropriate time frame. it is certainly going to be near impossible to knock elastic socks off; where socks of woven wool with no ability to conform to the wearers foot may better fit the phrase. and no didnt read before i posted.....oops

Wouldn't it be fun to see if Buster's socks survive wind and water- tornadoes, white water rafting, ocean waves, avalanche, etc.?

Wonder why y'all didn't do the math on this one. Seems like it would be simple enough. Measure the force required to remove the socks, the mass of the socks, and you should be able to calculate the acceleration required of the foot, to leave the socks behind. I promise the body cannot survive that large of a gee load. I do agree, myth busted, just would have liked to have seen ya do the math. C'mon Grant, thats your department.

Back in 1980 I was on police patrol in Oxnard CA and a person that was walking down the tracks with his back to an oncoming train was hit. He did not hear the train coming and subsequently was hit and completely left his shoes and socks on the tracks where he was hit. In fact the shoes were left in the walking stance, presumably in the same place they were when he went 0 to 54 mph in Zero seconds. Knocked his socks off and the pedestrian survived.

I wanted to add that I was the first Police Officer on scene and also investigated the injury accident. I remember the socks to have been dirty white long athletic socks.

quote:

Originally posted by swatretired:
Back in 1980 I was on police patrol in Oxnard CA and a person that was walking down the tracks with his back to an oncoming train was hit. He did not hear the train coming and subsequently was hit and completely left his shoes and socks on the tracks where he was hit. In fact the shoes were left in the walking stance, presumably in the same place they were when he went 0 to 54 mph in Zero seconds. Knocked his socks off and the pedestrian survived.

Holy Cra*!

His shoes may have been caught in the rail ties and his socks were pulled-off by his shoes.

quote:

Originally posted by swatretired:
I wanted to add that I was the first Police Officer on scene and also investigated the injury accident. I remember the socks to have been dirty white long athletic socks.

Also, do you think that you can find us a news clipping to verify your account?

quote:

Originally posted by TimJ76:
Maybe the phrase "knock your socks off" came to be before elastic was added to socks.

I totally agree. Men used to wear garters to hold their socks up. I should be easy to knock them loose and have them come off with the shoes.

An easy way to test this would be to use old socks that have lost all of their elasticity.

why did you guys only use long socks?
most people i know wear the low cut (or crew cut) socks that hide in your shoes?
i think that you guys should try to use some of those...
when one of the sock almost came of buster(i think you named him buster)'s foot with a long sock on, i think that a low cut (or crew cut) sock would have been knocked off!!!
-melisa m. (14years old)

Well, I am a survivor of having my socks knocked off. When I was 5 years old, we were going to go out and throw rocks at cars. Karma steped in and I was hit by a car traveling around 45 miles per hour. I was wearing "Combat" style boots which were laced and tied. The rescue crew found me 15 or more feet from my boots and my socks were still in them. Granted, I was legally dead for a short time, spent three weeks in the hospital and three months in a body cast. But my socks were knocked off.

I am a paramedic in a large city. Pedestrians that get struck correctly WILL get knocked out of their Shoes and Socks. Several times, The socks are still in the shoes!!!! It has nothing to do with "What style sock or shoe they are wearing, It has to do with the fact that when you are hit, Your ankle flex and bend almost becoming straight. Your foot flexes straight out where Busters isn't doing that. His ankle stays in a 45 degree angle. Simple physics that the show should have picked up on.

I must agree with Melissa on this one. The first thing I said while watching the episode was "why not use ankle socks?" They're much more common. Also, trying socks without the elastic seems to be a must. There was obviously a reason they put the elastic there... maybe the socks were coming off too easy?

In the experiment with the battering ram one (or both.. can't remember) of buster's socks were almost pulled off from him sliding on the ground. They basically said.. Even if his socks had come all the way off it wouldn't have been confirmed.

If he had slid far enough back and his socks were pulled off, IMO, I believe that should be confirmed. from the time he gets his to the time he stops, anything that happens is because of the hit and if they did come off (no matter how), it should be confirmed.

Also this is an old myth, so perhaps they should have used older style socks. And as the paramedic has pointed out, it is not uncommon to see pedestrians knocked out of both their socks and shoes when involved in an accident. That implies that buster and company are not very good models of the human foot.

My question is for the second part of the show... The bullet myth. As I understood the 'myth', shouldn't the experiments involve firing the gun vertically, straight down, rather than horizontally? Or did I misunderstand?

You misunderstood. The original wording is horizontal.

I Stand corrected... I just reviewed it. Still, I wonder if the vertical aspect could be done in a vaccuum? Hmmm

I was involved in an ATV accident where I was a passenger on an ATV that failed to stop at a highway intersection when we were T-boned by a buick traveling between 65 and 70 mph. When I was revived by paramedics I was 168 feet from the impact sight where both of my shoes and socks were lying in the road. I was wearing a "high top" shoe. Since boxers also use above-the-ankle footwear, I wonder if this is a factor since these types of shoes would more likely allow the foot to come out of the sock rather than the foot-and-sock to come out of the shoe?