This week’s Feedback column (that I write) in New Scientist magazine has five segments. Here are bits of each of them: Down, with texting — Want to guess what might happen if someone walks while texting? If you prefer a formally educated guess to an autodidactic supposition, Paulo Pelicioni and his colleagues at the University of New […]
The physicist who won an Ig Nobel Prize for analyzing whether buttered toast usually falls on the buttered side has now examined the similar question: what happens when you drop a mobile phone? The Digit web site reports: Why do phones always seem fall with their screen facing down? While most people would be satisfied […]
Richard Lehman writes (in his journal reviews column, in BMJ), about a standout article about standing up for standing up, in The Lancet: I do wish the world was run by New Zealanders. Unassumingly tough, kind and sensible, uninterested in adopting other people’s bad habits and neuroses, they are just wonderful at getting on with life. […]
What happens when Helmeted Guinea Fowl, out walking, encounter an unexpected pothole? Do they fall over? That depends, in quite an improbable way, on whether they see it coming or not … In 2005, a research team at Concord Field Station, the Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University, US, endeavoured to clarify things by encouraging […]
Following on from a recent Improbable note which highlit research into Lower Extremity Kinetics in Tap Dancers, we can suggest to readers that just about any* kind of occupation or professional activity has the potential to cause discomfort and/or injury of some kind – and tap dancing is no exception. Despite its long history, however, it […]
For the first time, Improbable can draw attention to an experimentally verified investigation into ‘Lower Extremity Kinetics in Tap Dance’ (in: Journal of Dance Medicine & Science, Volume 14, Number 1, March 2010 , pp. 3-10(8)) Investigators Lester Mayers, M.D., Shaw Bronner, P.T., Ph.D., O.C.S., Sujani Agraharasamakulam, M.S., and Sheyi Ojofeitimi, M.P.T. asked six professional […]
Two looks at how and when lizards fall. First: “Total recoil: Perch compliance alters jumping performance and kinematics in green anole lizards,” Gilman C, Bartlett MB, Gillis G, Irschick DJ., Journal of Experimental Biology, vol. 215, 2012, pp. 220-226. Click on the image here to see video from the experiment. The authors explain: “Many species […]
Joel Ivy collected and edited this video compendium of astronauts on the moon, falling and getting up. Or so says the info on YouTube. (HT Lisa Yoo)
It was back in 1844 that the Victorian poet and satirist James Payn wrote : “I’ve never had a piece of toast particularly long and wide, but fell upon a sanded floor, and always on the buttered-side.” Depending on whether you are an optimist or a pessimist this poetic generalisation may […]
“EGGS ARE FALLING“, says an ambiguously worded headline in the March 12, 1910 issue of the Lawrence Daily World. BONUS: The much later development of the square egg BONUS (and possibly bogus, despite and because of which it drew angry letters from the same person): Experiment: Which Came First — The Chicken Or the Egg?