It was sometime around 1752 that Johann Georg Sulzer decided (for reasons best known to himself) to put the tip of his tongue between two plates of (different) metal whose edges were in contact. The results were, quite literally, shocking. He’d not only inadvertently stumbled across one of the world’s first electrolytic batteries, but it […]
Tag: taste
Tastes like chicken for millionaires (with a dinosaur twist)
Joe Staton’s classic article “Tastes Like Chicken” was the subject of a question on the September 25, 2013 edition of the “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” TV program: The question posed to contestants on that program: “Since the animals are thought to be distant relatives, biology professor Joe Staton once wrote ‘chances are that […]
Effect of Skull Shape and Size on Musical Preference
Your skull, as much as what’s in it, may affect your musical taste — you may dislike a song because your head is too big (or too small) — suggests this study: “Music of the Body: An investigation of skull resonance and its influence on musical preference,” Jitwipar Suwangbutra, Rachelle Tobias and Michael S. Gordon […]
The sound of the taste of your coffee
The Edible Geography blog tells of an innovatively intense, focused approach to listening to people eat: …in a paper to be published in June 2013 in the journal Food Hydrocolloids, scientist George A. Van Aken of NIZO, a Dutch food research company, reveals a new method of measuring mouthfeel: the wonderfully named “acoustic tribology.” Van Aken took a tiny […]