Posts filed under 'Science Punks'
We’ve seen the awesome spectacle of Cock-Eyed Science Club on SciencePunk before - last time they were testing the traffic-slowing capabilities of Mr Potato Head. I’m proud to award them a second Science Punk prize, given to those who’ve made a piece of science both entertaining and educational on a loose-change budget.
This time the club decided to test Mr Peanut’s claim that a tin of Planter’s Mixed Nuts contained no more than 50% peanuts. How awesome is this experiment? It contains glamorous scientists:
hammer wielding action:
and science buddy high fives!
Plus, there’s a thrilling plot twist toward the finish, and it all ends in delicious style. What more could you want? (link)
April 5th, 2008
Clearly inspired by their academic surroundings, some students at Rice University, Texas, have created the T.W.I.N.K.I.E.S. Project (Tests With Inorganic Noxious Kakes In Extreme Situations). This involves subjecting the cakes to a whole barrage of low-budget yet ingenious experiments to further humankind’s knowledge of these indestructible confections.
Witness the soaring beauty of a Twinkie as it plummets several storeys in the “Gravitational Response Test”, and the not-at-all devastating consequences:
As soon as the Twinkie was released, it began to fall. It fell until it hit the ground. Upon impact, there was a loud “splut” sound (see Fig. 2). A small crack opened on one side of the Twinkie (see Fig. 3). There was no noticeable change in the control.
Visit the site to investigate all of their findings, from the promising results of the Resistivity Test to the highly humorous outcome of their Turing Test for sentience in Twinkies.
So, congratulations to Christopher Gouge and Todd Stadler, you are the latest individuals to be crowned Science Punks! Hurrah!
December 11th, 2007
The fallout from our internationally-acclaimed booklet on evidence hunting, There Goes the Science Bit, had left us with some interesting flotsam knocking about the office. Someone had kindly donated to us £20 worth of Champneys Detox Patches. These claim to:
draw out your body’s harmful toxins overnight. Repeat the treatment every night and by morning you will be able to see the results of the detox.
O RLY? I suspect that these pads contain nothing more than wood vinegar, which will turn an ugly brown colour when wet (HYPOTHESIS). This calls for a little experiment!
METHOD: Here’s Alice. She busted homeopaths prescribing water-remedies for malaria prevention. She’s awesome.
Alice will be our CONTROL. Here’s Ellen. She’ll be our TREATMENT GROUP. Is she look toxic? We’ll soon find out.
Ellen decided to use the patch on her foot. I expect that’s where all the heavy metals end up (arf! arf!).
Alice applies some lovely Thames tap water to the control pad. It’s the cleanest water in the world, you know.
This is what the pad looked like to begin with.
After a few minutes, the control patch was turning a funny colour. OMG toxins!
I decided to give the detox pad a little poke. Aware that my finger might contaminate the pad, I placed it back inside its protective cover. Here is my prodding action, so that you may replicate it.
That looks nasty! Let’s see what we ended up with.
Now, the important bit. How has our control fared against the treatment group? It’s time for Ellen to remove her detox pad (approx 6 1/2 hours early, according to instructions on the box).
Wow! Ellen = nasty. Her pad has changed colour too! More or less the same amount as our control pad. What can we learn from this?
CONCLUSION - One or more of the following may be true:
- Toxins make the pad turn brown.
- Water makes the pad turn brown.
- London tap water is full of toxins.
- Ellen is full of toxins (but slightly less so now)
- Ellen is full of London tap water.
We’re off to carry out more research. All we can recommend is not spending £20 on detox patches until we have definitive proof!
NEW! See what happens inside a detox pad: Champneys Detox Pad Dissection!
NEW! More slamming science in:
Champneys Detox Pads - the clinical trial
NEW! Even more science punkery in:
Scientific Study on Detox Pads
October 16th, 2007
Now over to the wonderfully named Cockeyed Science Club, where Rob has constructed an interesting experiment in novel forms of speed reduction. Living in a leafy suburb that suffers at the hands of speeding motorists, Rob decided to see what objects, left by the road, would reduce traffic speed most effectively. Mr Potato Head? A pink tricycle? Or something else? Armed with a $20 Hot Wheels radar gun (yes, they make them and yes, they work), Rob sets out on an intrepid adventure of science, danger, children and maths. Cockeyed Science Club, we salute you, our latest Science Punk!
October 5th, 2007
I recently chanced upon the strange and possibly true story of William Kogut, a prisoner at San Quentin who came up with a cunning plan to avoid the executioner’s chair.
Built in 1852 by the prisoners who would eventually go on to be incarcerated in it, San Quentin is California’s oldest prison. It has a long list of notable visitors, including Johnny Cash, who famously played to prisoners there in 1969. It featured a gallows and later a gas chamber, where hydrogen cyanide was used to execute inmates on Death Row.
Kogut had been sentenced to death for the murder of Mayme Guthrie, but had no intention of allowing the state to decide the time and circumstances of his death. On October 20, 1930, prison guards found Kogut’s body in his cell, a note found near the body read:
Do not blame my death on any one because I fixed everything myself. I never give up so long as I am living and have a chance, but this is the end.
San Quentin’s Death Row prisoners were not easily afforded the luxury of suicide. Inmates were kept under close watch and not permitted any materials that could conceivably used to hasten their end. Yet somehow Kogut had managed it. He simply used an inconceivable weapon - inconceivable to anyone except Kogut, of course.
First of all, Kogut procured several packs of playing cards - a fairly innocuous possession, even in a prison. Once in his cell, he tore the cards into small pieces and stuffed them into the hollow metal leg of his bunk. He then poured water into the leg and sealed it with a wooden broom handle. Placing the leg on top of a paraffin heater, Kogut lay his head on top of the device and waited for his end.
In the 1930s, a substance called nitrocellulose was cropping up in all sorts of places, and still does now - it appears in film reels, nail polish, hair dye, guitar laminate, aircraft dope, car body work, cryptography pads, wound dressing, wart remover, and DNA blots. Oh, and playing cards.
Nitrocellulose is unstable, and decomposes easily, releasing nitric acid. This nitric acid further decomposes nitrocellulose, leading to a self-catalysing reaction. Nitrocellulose is also quite flammable, and when wet forms an explosive mixture. As Kogut lay his head down to rest, the warmth from the heater accelerated the reactions taking place within his improvised pipe bomb. Soon the concoction reached a critical state and exploded, killing Kogut instantly. History doesn’t record whether playing cards were subsequently contraband in San Quentin prison, but we can only wonder what William Kogut ’s intellect could have offered the world had his life taken a different path.
Via gargles.net
September 10th, 2007
What happens if you seal bacon and an egg in a Perspex tomb for a year? See the effects of time ravage two once-proud constituents of an English breakfast.
Link
August 15th, 2007
The strange and beautiful machine shown above is a reconstruction of a mechanical calculator built by mathematician and inventor Thomas Fowler in the 1830s. The orignal machine has long since been lost, and precious few clues to its design and construction exist. Painstaking research by Pamela Vass and David Hogan eventually pieced together enough information to allow them to start building their own machine, aided by Mark Glusker. Together this team were able to construct the first working model of Fowler’s ternary calculating machine in over 150 years.
What I love about story is three-fold: here is a project spread over several years pursued by a small group of everyday people in their own time, fuelled purely by their own passion for the subject and desire to publicise this incredible device. Second, the machine uses an unusual counting system - ternary. The easiest way to describe it is like this: if binary uses two digits, 0 and 1, ternary uses three - 0, 1 and 2. So the numbers one to five would be written: 1, 2, 10, 11, 12. Remember that in Fowler’s day, the decimal currency system was still a long way off, and he had to deal with complicated and awkward calculations involving shillings, farthings and crowns. I imagine this had something to do with his decision to work with a base-3 system. Finally, the machine itself is beautiful and elegant in its construction, a true work of art.
As if that wasn’t enough, the website itself is beautifully laid out, illustrating the history, design and construction of Thomas Fowler’s calculator with a clarity and concision that makes me green with envy. Top marks all round, Science Punks! (link)
June 8th, 2007
It seems every man and his dog is barking on about DNA these days, from beauty products that claim to repair broken DNA to wolf criers who claim soda pop damages it. But what is DNA? What does it even look like? Well, over at the very excellent Science and Progress, kitchen-sink scientist Coracle has posted a DIY guide to extracting DNA from a humble lettuce. “But wait”, I hear you cry, “DNA is so small, I couldn’t possibly see it without a microscope”. Don’t be so sure - in under 15 minutes, with nothing but a few common household items, you too can extract a stringy mass of gooey white DNA! All that remains is to splice it with pig and tomato DNA and grow a one-stop sandwich filler plant!
For this reason, Coracle is the latest addition to the esteemed ranks of our Science Punks.
June 2nd, 2007
From Stuff.co.nz:
Two Kiwi schoolgirls are worldwide celebrities after their school experiment forced an international pharmaceutical and food giant to admit it made false claims about vitamin C levels in Ribena.
Nice one, ladies!
March 28th, 2007
Shown above is what happens when Australian inventor and thief-hater Peter Terren adapts one of his many high voltage electrical contraptions to car protection. A Tesla coil generating a huge electrical field discharges into the ground as it rotates on a long boom. Any would-be car jacker with poor timing skills is zapped with a pleasing bolt of electrical justice.
Via Wired Blogs!
March 21st, 2007
I recently wrote about the heartening attempts of everyday people to further science in their own small ways. Embracing a rudimentary scientific method and applying it to small-scale projects is the seed from which paid-up scientists grow, and fosters a sense of curiosity about the world around us. So far, Graeme Cole has asked “How Difficult is Nailing Jelly to a Wall?”, while George Waksman continues to deduce how many licks it takes to get to the centre of a Tootsie Roll Pop. Our latest Science Punk to be featured is one Barry Rice, who wondered “can Venus flytraps digest human flesh?”.
I thought about my Venus flytraps. (You can start squirming now.) Could they digest diseased human flesh? If so, this would mean that if a person were trapped by an adequately large (giant, special-effects-monster-movie size) Venus flytrap, he or she could be digested. I figured this would be unlikely because surely the skin would be able to resist the puny enzymes from the plant. But here was a chance to prove it.
Four plants and one nasty case of Athlete’s Foot later, he has the answer. (link)
February 26th, 2007
Throughout the ages, the smartest minds on the planet have tackled the great questions of the world. Foremost upon these is the Tootsie Roll Pop Problem, which asks us: “How many licks does it take to get to the centre of a Tootsie Roll Pop?”. For British readers, the Tootsie Roll Pop is broadly equivalent to a chocolate-filled Chuppa-Chup. For illustration purposes (and I do use that term loosely), here is an attempt to address this question using an owl, a tortoise, and a gramophone.
Over to George Waksman, who has spent over two years and several dollars researching this problem. Formulating a strict methodology, Waksman has been making slow but steady progress discerning the true number of licks it takes to reach the centre of a Tootsie Roll Pop. His preliminary findings suggest that it takes approximately 248 licks if licking is concentrated on one side of the Tootsie Roll Pop. However, with such a small team and sample size, George has calculated a standard deviation of 170 licks, on which he admits:
The small number of trials makes for a very large standard deviation. The standard deviation is so large, in fact, that it is not reasonable to assume the conclusions are accurate.
If you thought that George was battling alone in his quest to solve the Tootise Pop Roll Problem, think again. A brief web search uncovers a hive of activity dedicated to cracking this conundrum, including students at Purdue University who constructed a licking machine to aid the quest for knowledge, with mixed results.
These grassroots efforts may not have ended debate on the true number of licks it will take to reach the centre of a Tootsie Roll Pop, but it brings a swell of pride to my heart to see such democratic participation in science.
December 18th, 2006
I realise that I’m buying into the viral marketing on this one, but there is nothing more awesome or more science punk at the moment than the series of videos put out by Blendtec, entitled “Will It Blend?”
Imagine, for a second, that you are a ten year old boy, and you’ve been left alone in the house with nothing but a blender for amusement. That is the simple premise behind these adverts, where your host Tom Dickson blends all the things you wanted to put in your mum’s blender, and more. Why am I including this on SciencePunk? Because it’s exactly the kind of rudimentary curiosity that fuels science. Scientists even have blenders in their lab, though they call them fancy names like homogenizers.
We’re not talking ice cubes and hazelnuts here: think big, like a credit cards, golf balls, whole can of Coke (can included), a crowbar, an oar, a rake, marbles, or an entire Thanksgiving dinner. Of course, all of them will indeed blend. The videos are divided into “try this at home” and “don’t try this at home”, and naturally, all the cool shit is in the second category. You can even suggest items yourself via the website.
Only question is: why would I want a blender that makes golfball smoothies?
Visit the site
December 13th, 2006
For a long time I’ve been an admirer of basic science. I like to remember that science isn’t all about expensive labs and particle accelerators. In fact, everyday people can embrace the scientific method and advance the field of human knowledge from their own homes. So I’m starting a new category: Science Punks.
Whilst punk science is often a derisory term, I’m claiming “science punk” as a positive one. Kinda what New Scientist might look like if it was put together with safety scissors, UHU glue and bad photocopying. And nothing is more punk than people doing it for themselves.
Our first Punk is Graeme Cole, an aspiring pedant and publisher of the excellent study, “Nailing Jelly to a Wall: Is It Possible?”.
We’ve all heard the old saying “it’s like nailing jelly to a wall” to describe a task that is very difficult or impossible. But is our view of the difficulty of this task justified? Has anybody actually tried nailing jelly to a wall? In this experiment I attempt to establish, one way or the other, the validity of the old proverb.
See the results…
November 30th, 2006
