Penguin Pooing Pressure, Calculated Anew

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 […]

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 […]