Podcast 83: Journeys of Toothbrushes

Toothbrushes journey — somehow, and other — to the depths in humanity, 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 discusses medical reports about toothbrushes that mysteriously found their way into people’s stomachs and other deeply secret places. Harvard chemist Daniel Rosenberg gives dramatic readings and opinions: Toothbrush journey #1: “The Swallowing of […]

Apparently intelligent behavior from the head of a toothbrush

Ig Nobel Physics Prize winner Mahadevan and his colleagues have demonstrated how to produce seemingly intelligent behavior with the head of a toothbrush. The Physics arXiv blog summarizes the study, in a few words: Toothbrushes, BristleBots, and the Nature of Intelligence: Fix a vibrating motor to the head of a toothbrush and you have an […]

Giving Us Reasons To Smile (teeth + electricity)

Schemes for ‘harvesting’ energy range from electricity-generating dancefloors to knee dynamos. But there is now a new option – patented last month by the Colgate-Palmolive Company (New York), the ‘Oral care implement with mechanical energy harvesting‘. During use, the invention employs piezoelectric devices to generate electricity from the stresses-and-strains caused by bending the toothbrush head […]