Podcast 89: Can a cat be both a solid and a liquid? (The Deborah Number)

Can a cat be both a solid and a liquid? A physics paper explores this question, using a special number called the “Deborah number”. We explore that physics paper, in this week’s Improbable Research podcast. SUBSCRIBE on Play.it, iTunes, or Spotify to get a new episode every week, free. This week, Marc Abrahams  teams up with fluid dynamicist Nicole Sharp, creator of FYFD, the […]

The role of flapping elephant ears in heat dissipation

Elephants are big, and they get hot. Especially in Africa. Thus, from the elephant’s point of view, there’s sometimes an urgent necessity to dissipate excess heat. Some investigators have suggested that flapping their large ears (strictly, their ‘pinnae’) could provide a significant heat-loss mechanism. (e.g. Buss, I. O., and Estes, J. A., 1971, ‘The Functional […]

Pole Dancers and Stock Brokers

What psychological / philosophical concept might serve as a way to connect these two photos – featuring pole dancers and stockbrokers? One answer, a surprising one according to authors Karina Paludan Nielsen and Kristina Stockunaite (who recently participated in the MSocSc in Social Science in Service Management programme at Copenhagen Business School) is ‘Flow’ [for […]