The penguin pooing pressure calculation that won the 2005 Ig Nobel Prize for fluid dynamics has been calculated anew by a different group of scientists. The new study is: “Projectile Trajectory of Penguin’s Faeces and Rectal Pressure Revisited,” Hiroyuki Tajima [@HiroyukiTajima3] and Fumiya Fujisawa, arXiv 2007.00926v1, 2020. The authors, at Kochi University and at the […]
Tag: pressure
Why he calculated the internal poo pressure of a penguin
Victor Benno Meyer-Rochow tells why he and his colleagues calculated the internal pressure of a penguin. He then confides that there remain questions worth answering: …The pressing question had been that of the pressure of course, but what still puzzles me is why the streaks were found all around the nest and not just in […]
High Altitude Flatus Expulsion (a.k.a. Rocky Mountain Barking Spiders)
One of the side effects of venturing to high altitudes (or any environment where the air pressure is lower than normal, say, for example inside a passenger airplane at cruising height) is an increase in the expellation of intestinal gases. As a number of our readers will no doubt be aware, the syndrome was first […]
Physics of Low Pressure Popcorn Popping
There’s news, though a few years old, about low-pressure popcorn popping: “The Effects of Popping Popcorn Under Reduced Pressure,” Paul Quinn [pictured here] and Amanda Cooper, Bulletin of the American Physical Society, Volume 53, Number 2 (poster at the 2008 APS March Meeting, New Orleans, Louisiana). The authors, at Kutztown University, report: “In our experiments, we […]
Shaving cream in low pressure (video)
This video (of a dab of shaving cream under glass, as someone lowers the air pressure) comes courtesy of the Wake Forest physics department: