Research — on any and all subjects — that makes people LAUGH, then THINK.
This week’s Feedback column (that I write) in New Scientist magazine has three segments. Here’s how each of them ends: Turning point—… And that paper, in its own turn, led to a study published this year in the journal Scientific Reports. It is called “Influence of roundness errors of bearing components on rotational accuracy of cylindrical roller […]
At least one co-author of this study stayed awake while the data for the research was being collected. Probably. The study is: “Dreaming During Scientific Papers: Effects of Added Extrinsic Material,” Richard F. Harvey, Melvin B. Schullinger, Alexis Stassinopoulos, and Erica Winkle, British Medical Journal (Clinical Research Edition), vol. 287, no. 6409, 1983, pp. 1916-1919. […]
This week’s Feedback column (that I write) in New Scientist magazine has four segments. Here’s how each of them ends: Sing it loud—… One implication from that intensive Hong Kong experiment: most karaoke singers manage to keep the quality of their singing fairly constant, no matter what. Kinetic excitement— … Then the word “kinetics” takes centre stage, […]
A lot can happen to a drop. That becomes evident as one reads this study, and even more evident if and as one tried to replicate the study: “Controlled Uniform Coating from the Interplay of Marangoni Flows and Surface-Adsorbed Macromolecules,” Hyoungsoo Kim, François Boulogne, Eujin Um, Ian Jacobi, Ernie Button, and Howard A. Stone, Physical […]
This week’s Feedback column (that I write) in New Scientist magazine has three segments. Here’s how they begin: What’s in a name?—This month, Sam Bankman-Fried returned to the head of the nominative determinism parade of tech entrepreneurs, following his portentous appearance earlier in the year.…. Non-Newtonian milk—Research is “the mother’s milk of feeding [and] fueling the economy”, […]
Encyclopedia Sciplayer has made two more videos, each about a different Ig Nobel Prize winner: “Why Don’t Woodpeckers Get a Headache”: “How to take a blink-free photo”:
This week’s Feedback column (that I write) in New Scientist magazine has three segments. Here’s how they begin: Curiously Meta—Coltan Scrivner’s curiosity about morbid curiosity is ushering him to higher and higher realms. He wrote his PhD thesis on the subject and joined the Recreational Fear Lab at Aarhus University, Denmark. Scrivner defines morbid curiosity as “a motivation […]
Economically speaking, should one look up to the businesspeople who build skyscrapers, or look down at them? Calculation is involved in reaching the answer obtained in this study: “A Game-Theoretic Analysis of Skyscrapers,” Robert W. Helsley and William C. Strange, Journal of Urban Economics, vol. 64, no. 1, July 2008, pp. 49-64. The authors explain: […]
This week’s Feedback column (that I write) in New Scientist magazine has two segments. Here’s how they begin: Physics vs Mona Lisa — The wood and smile of the Mona Lisa fascinate scientists. Not wooden smile. Wood and smile. A new study in the Journal of Cultural Heritage reveals how researchers have spent 18 years exploring the wooden panel on which Leonardo da […]
Encyclopedia Sciplayer made these two videos, each about a different Ig Nobel Prize winner: “Why can itch can be relieved by mirror scratching”: “How do wombats make cubed poo”: