Shoe-throwing at weddings, the great untied-shoelace experiment, washing machines that go wandering, the fullness of empty picture frames, and the capacity of the nose — all these all turn up in this week’s Improbable Research podcast.
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This week, Marc Abrahams tells about:
- Shoe-throwing at weddings. (“Shoe-Throwing at Weddings,” James E. Crombie, Folklore, vol. 6, no. 3, 1895, pp. 258–81.. Featuring dramatic readings by Robin Abrahams.)
- The great untied shoelace experiment. (Mörth, Ingo (2007). ‘The Shoe-lace Breaching Experiment.’ Figurations: Newsletter of the Norbert Elias Foundation 2 (27): 4–6. / Elias, Norbert (1967). ‘Die Geschichte mit den Schuhbändern.’ Die Zeit, 17 November. Featuring dramatic readings by Jean Berko Gleason.)
- Washing machines that go wandering. (Conrad, Daniel C., and Werner O. Soedel (1995). ‘On the Problem of Oscillatory Walk of Automatic Washing Machines.’ Journal of Sound and Vibration 188 (3): 301–14. / Whiteman, Wayne E. and Kip P. Nygren (1999). ‘Basic Vibration Design to Which Young Engineers Can Relate: The Washing Machine.’ Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Society for Engineering Education, Charlotte, N.C., 20–23 June, session 3268. Featuring dramatic readings by Richard Baguley.)
- The fullness of empty picture frames. (“Empty Photographic Frames. Punctuating the Narrative,” Nancy Pedri, Image and Narrative, vol 15, no. 2, 2014, pp. 60-76.. Featuring dramatic readings by Sue Wellington.)
- Capacity of the nose. (Naftali, Sara, Moshe Rosenfeld, Michael Wolf, and David Elad (2005). ‘The Air-Conditioning Capacity of the Human Nose.’ Annals of Biomedical Engineering 33 (4): 545–53. / St. Laurent, Robert, and Jacques Larochelle (1994). ‘The Cooling Power of the Pigeon Head.’ Journal of Experimental Biology 194: 329–39. Featuring dramatic readings by Richard Baguley.)
The mysterious John Schedler or the shadowy Bruce Petschek perhaps did the sound engineering this week.
The Improbable Research podcast is all about research that makes people LAUGH, then THINK — real research, about anything and everything, from everywhere —research that may be good or bad, important or trivial, valuable or worthless. CBS distributes it, on the CBS Play.it web site, and on iTunes and Spotify).