David argues about movement at the atomic scale

David first looks inside the fourth bucket from the left, finding the knitted gloves within. Having misunderstood the task brief, he immediately grabs the gloves and starts using them to soak up water from the bucket, stating that “I’ve got a minute, so I might as well…” before Alex confirms with him that he has now made his choice for the whole task.

Despite immediately recognising that “this was a bad move, wasn’t it?”, David does his best with the gloves, running backwards and forwards with them and managing to drip at least some of the water into the bottle.

After a few attempts, he decides to move the table that the bottle is sitting upon closer to the bucket, reasoning in his mind that he is not directly moving the bottle itself. With the bottle now much closer to the source of the water, he is able to completely fill the bottle with time to spare, which he decides he will use to make himself a coffee.

As he leaves the scene with his mug of coffee at the end of the task, he can be heard arguing to himself that he hadn’t moved the bottle, and had “only moved the table”.

In the studio, Greg suggests that they should “talk about the concept of moving things”. When David attempts to argue that even putting water into the bottle would have caused “tiny little movements” of the bottle, Hannah asks him whether he talking about things “at the atomic scale”. Martin then chips in to add that matter is always moving, unless the temperature is absolute zero, before Hannah helpfully adds that “technically, the Earth is moving”. Greg responds to this discussion by checking whether they are suggesting that, in order for anyone to have succeeded in the task, they would have had to “broken the laws of physics”. He then rules that “We’re looking at the concept of moving in more pedestrian – or ‘normal’ – terms”.

When Alex checks with Greg on the status of David’s attempt, Greg confirms that he had moved the bottle, and was therefore disqualified, telling Alex “Don’t make me feel like I’m going mad!”.

(Written by Karl Craven and proofread by M3 / Andres Sanchez)

(Illustrations collected by Jenny R and adjusted by Karl Craven)