Many years ago, T.C. Poulter revealed some loud surprises from Antarctica, in the study “Arctic and Antarctic Acoustics,” T.C. Poulter, Stanford Research Institute Biological Sonar Lab, 1966. Poulter reports: …first observed in the Antarctic in 1934 during the construction of a tunnel through the very porous, coarsely crystalline snow for communication during the winter night […]
Tag: explosion
Effect of Explosion-Puffed Coffee on Fruit Flies [research study]
Fruit flies can be measurably affected by explosion-puffed coffee, suggests this new study: “Effect of Explosion-Puffed Coffee on Locomotor Activity and Behavioral Patterns in Drosophila melanogaster,” Bong Soo Ko, So Hyun Ahn, Dong Ouk Noh, Ki-Bae Hong, Sung Hee Han, and Hyung Joo Suh, Food Research International, epub 2017. The authors, at several institutions in […]
Exploding-whale day: the 45th anniversary
Today, reportedly, is the 45th anniversary of the famous exploding whale. The event was documented in this KATU television report, in 1970: The announcer summarized, firsthand, the fallout: “However, everyone on the scene was covered with small particle of dead whale.” Now, people have built an entire business, or at least a web site, on the […]
When soy sauce squeezing residue (SSSR) explodes
Bad things can happen when soy sauce goes to waste. Bad things can happen, too, when the residue of making soy sauce goes to waste. This study explains and explores: “Causes of accidents by soy sauce squeezing residue and fish meal,” Naoharu Murasawa, Hiroshi Koseki, Yusaku Iwata, Journal of Material Cycles and Waste Management, January 2013, […]
For sodium disposal enthusiasts
This 1947 video is catnip for sodium disposal enthusiasts [HT Bob O’Hara]: Many people have re-enacted that on a tiny scale, albeit in a bigger body of water. Here’s one example: If you have a nuclear processing facility, you can pick up some tips on alternate methods of sodium disposal by reading the International Atomic Energy Agency‘s […]
Flammable trousers: then, and later, and now
Behold three eras in the international saga of trouser flammability. THEN: The 2005 Ig Nobel Prize for agricultural history was awarded to James Watson of Massey University, New Zealand, for his study, concerning the period between World War I and World War II, called “The Significance of Mr. Richard Buckley’s Exploding Trousers.” LATER: This month, in 2013, the […]
The Coffin Blew Up (and maybe something about why it did)
This newspaper report gives public details about an embarrassing explosion: “The Coffin Blew Up“, The Meridan [Missouri, USA] Daily Republican, July 21, 1890. (Thanks to investigator Erwin Kompanje for bringing this to our attention.) Here is a reproduction of the entire article: BONUS (mostly unrelated): The 2012 Ig Nobel Prize for medicine honored the […]
A few gigatons short of a blockbuster (part I)
Bruce Willis heroically managed to save the world in the film 1998 Armageddon. He was able to deflect a huge Earth-bound asteroid with the expedient use of a well placed thermonuclear explosion. But some have questioned whether Willis’s feat would actually have been possible – without breaking the laws of physics . . . A […]
Deciding not to blow up a cow (officially)
The US Forest Service has decided to not use its standard disposal-by-detonation procedure in the celebrated case of the forlornly frozen cows, which we described recently. MSNBC/US News reports [HT Adam Orbit, again]: Solution found for dead cows stuck in mountain cabin: saws What to do with the carcasses of six cows inside a U.S. […]
The problem of exploding pacemakers
People muse that they will, come the day, “go out with a bang”. A little more often than you might expect, someone or other does exactly that, which is why there came into existence a study called Pacemaker Explosions in Crematoria: Problems and Possible Solutions. Christopher Gale [pictured here], of St James’s University Hospital in Leeds, and […]