What is necessary — from an engineer’s perspective —to keep a strapless evening dress in place? We explore that question, and the Henson-Conantian music that resulted from it, in this week’s Improbable Research podcast.
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This week, Marc Abrahams — with dramatic readings by Nicole Sharp — tells about:
- Stress Analysis of a Strapless Evening Dress: The essay — Charles E. Siem‘s essay “Stress Analysis of a Strapless Evening Gown” appears in the book called Stress Analysis of a Strapless Evening Gown, edited by Robert Baker. Here’s a look at the book cover, and at one of the diagrams in the essay:
Stress Analysis of a Strapless Evening Gown: The music— Deborah Henson-Conant‘s musical creation appears on her Grammy-nominated album Invention & Alchemy, which is available via her web site, HipHarp.com: 
- Stress Analysis is a collection of knowledge and techniques developed by engineers, to help them figure out whether particular objects will remain intact, or will instead crack and perhaps break.
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).