The Guardian published an article called “The day I removed a toy dinosaur from a woman’s vagina“. It’s a firsthand medical report by a student nurse who uses the pen name Poppy Ward. The article includes the image you see here, from an entity named Alamy: (Thanks to Adam K. Olson for bringing this to our attention.) BONUS QUESTION: Should […]
Tag: toy
The effect of gravity on slimy little men
These videos show the effect of gravity on slimy little men — the kind of slimy little men called “Peta Peta men”: General effects: An ungentle experiment: BONUS: US patent 6527616, issued March 4, 2003, for a “Throwing toy for producing splash effect” which “is comprised of a sticky elastomer shell around a liquid core. The shell is […]
The jet powered maple seed (new patent)
In 1992, Litos et al. patented their bio-mimic throw-in-the-air toy called the ‘Autorotative Flyer’. It might not occur to everyone that the passive toy could be updated, and militarized, with the addition of a supersonic jet pack. But occur it did to high-tech weapons manufacturer Lockheed Martin Inc. which has just received a US patent […]
Insatiable Birdies of the Second Kind
A new variant of the famous ‘Drinking Bird’ has been developed at Kent State University, Ohio, US. But first, some background on the the ‘Drinking Bird’ a.k.a. the ‘Insatiable Birdie’ … A version [* see note below] of the ‘novelty device’ first received a US patent in 1946, inspiring many to endeavour to explain how […]
Towards a taxonomy of teddy bears
New efforts (see below) in France are adding info to the past, isolated attempts to classify the different kinds of teddy bear. The three most celebrated academic studies are: “The Survival of the Cutest: Who’s Responsible for the Evolution of the Teddy Bear?” P.H. Morris, V. Reddy, and R.C. Bunting, Animal Behaviour, vol. 50, 1995, pp. […]
Tipu’s Tiger
Maggie Koerth-Baker, Boing-Boing’s ace science observer, is doing a series of essays about “My Favorite Museum Exhibit”. The Bishop of Durham’s rectum, on which we have spent an inordinate amount of time and space, because it has a curious back story, is there. (Well, actually, the Bishop’s bottom, what’s left of it, is in the […]
Ten Tops List [videos of spinning tops] — 2011
There are lots of top ten lists, but this is the first Ten Tops List. Here are ten videos of spinning tops that scientists find interesting and or amusing. [Want to take a whirl at learning the science of spinning tops? Download (free) Professor John Perry’s 1890 book Spinning Tops— The “Operatives’ lecture” of the British […]
Little train info and a little train info
Here are this month’s Railroads for Physicists links (thanks to investigator David Kessler for bringing them to our attention): 1. Info about train travel to the Princeton Plasma Physics Lab. 2. Info about: (A) the toy train inside the National Spherical Torus Experiment at the Princeton Plasma Physics Lab; and (B) the NY Times account […]