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 […]

Catastrophic Snow Globes – who’s shaking who?

At first glance, snow globes might seem trite or trivial objects, however : “[…] on closer reflection, they are revealed to be symbolic realms that provide clues to the desires, dreams, nightmares, and memories of the cultures that produce them.” – explains professor Lindsey Freeman, a sociologist who teaches, writes, and thinks about cities, memory, […]

Scientists Gain Insights into and with Cereal Flakes

After generations of humans had been pouring cows’ milk onto breakfast cereal flakes and then pouring that milk/flake mixture into themselves, a researcher named Luigi Degano fed breakfast cereal to 21 cows in Italy. Degano wanted to see how this might affect the milk that later issued from the cows. Degano, based at the Istituto Sperimentale Lattiero […]

Jogging on / kitchen-sinking into muck

In this video for New Scientist, Chris Chiswell jogs on the non-Newtonian fluid known as cornstarch-mixed-with-water, until he stops jogging and sinks into it, demonstrating the non-Newtonianness of the muck. The ingredients of the goo—cornstarch and water—are commonly found in kitchens, thus this demonstration shows an example of kitchen sinking. (Thanks to investigator Alicia Weston […]