Feeling Like a Rat

Rats use whiskers to feel around in the dark. They navigate by "whisking" — moving their whiskers rapidly back and forth. Humans, however, don't have whiskers. But could people learn to navigate in the dark using artificial whiskers? That was the question posed by a recent experiment published in the Journal of Neuroscience.

The researchers attached plastic whiskers to the fingers (not the cheeks, unfortunately) of blindfolded volunteers. These volunteers were then asked to try to identify the relative position of several poles on either side of them. The researchers discovered that the volunteers skill at this task improved significantly over time. So they were learning to use whiskers just as a rat would. The practical value of all this is that the researchers hope to develop finger whiskers for blind people.

Incidentally, if you read the abstract of the experiment, you would never know it had anything to do with rats and whiskers. The researchers describe their experiment as a study of "motor-sensory interactions in humans using a novel object localization task that enabled monitoring the relevant overt motor and sensory variables."

Posted By: Alex - Thu Nov 08, 2012 - Comments (8)
Category: Animals, Science, Experiments

Decomposition of a Pig Underwater

Back in Jan 2009, I posted a video showing the decomposition of a pig. Here's a similar video, also showing the decomposition of a pig, but underwater this time. It was an experiment conducted in Feb 2012. The pig was in a cage to stop sharks from getting to it. Watch to the end to see the surprise visitor.

Posted By: Alex - Tue Oct 30, 2012 - Comments (4)
Category: Death, Science, Experiments

Engage The Tractor Beam!!

Star Trek fans rejoice. A small scale demonstration moved a particle toward the tractor beam when two scientists focused a pair of Bessel beams at it. I'm already in over my head, so don't look for any further explanation here. But I can post a great graphic.



Large scale tractor beams of this type would probably destroy the object trying to be moved. Here's the link to the abstract at phys.org:

http://phys.org/news/2012-10-physics-duo-tractor-dual-bessel.html

Once a large scale tractor beam has been developed, what would you use it to do?

My first use would be to draw the moon closer, just to see if what "Bruce Almighty" predicted would happen.

Or to move the refrigerator to me, instead of me having to walk to it.

Posted By: gdanea - Fri Oct 26, 2012 - Comments (4)
Category: Experiments

Seasick Sheep

University of Queensland PhD student Eduardo Santurtun is conducting research into whether sheep get seasick. Or rather, the effect of "ship motions" on sheep. But he's not studying the sheep on an actual ship. Instead, he's created a contraption (a modified flight simulator) that replicates the roll, pitch, and heave of a ship. His subjects spend hours a day inside this thing being gently see-sawed up and down, back and forth. This is all being done to help the sheep, not hurt them. His research is supported by the Centre for Animal Welfare and Ethics, which is concerned about sheep getting seasick and dying as they're transported from farms in Australia to consumers around the world. [qt.com.au, abc.net.au]

Posted By: Alex - Mon Oct 22, 2012 - Comments (8)
Category: Animals, Science, Experiments

Singing Gibbons on Helium

I think a study of helium-sniffing singing gibbons qualifies as weird science. Link to the original article in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology. And you can hear the gibbons singing with and without helium either at eurekalert.org, which has the sound files posted, or in the Newsy Science video below.

Posted By: Alex - Sat Aug 25, 2012 - Comments (6)
Category: Animals, Music, Science, Experiments

Nostril Dominance

People are either right-handed or left-handed. But are people also left-nostriled and right-nostriled? Yes, they are — as reported in an article published in the journal Laterality (Mar 2005). From the study:


The researchers also discovered that people are pretty much useless at self-determining their own nostril dominance. (i.e. It's very hard to tell which nostril you're breathing more air through.) So they used a gadget that measured airflow into each nostril to get an accurate measure of nostril dominance.

Posted By: Alex - Sat Aug 04, 2012 - Comments (7)
Category: Body, Science, Experiments

The sound of copulating flies

In order to test the theory that noisy copulating animals are at greater risk of being found and eaten by predators, German researchers mounted "dead, noiseless fly pairs" on the ceiling of a shed. The bats that lived in the shed ignored them. But when the researchers played the sound of copulating flies through loudspeakers, the bats attacked the loudspeakers. So, theory proven!

Max-Planck-Gesellschaft has a video of the bats attacking the speakers, but unfortunately the video has no sound. And below is a youtube video of some copulating flies -- but again, you can't hear the flies, just some people in the background. So I still don't know what copulating flies sound like.

Posted By: Alex - Fri Jul 27, 2012 - Comments (3)
Category: Animals, Insects and Spiders, Science, Experiments, Sexuality

Human falling into lava lake: a scientific experiment

Some researchers wanted to know what would happen if a person fell into the lava lake of the Erta Ale volcano in Ethiopia. Would the force of the impact be enough to break through the thick crust, or would the person simply lie on top of the crust and get toasted?

To answer this important question, the researchers used a 30kg bag of trash as a stand-in for a human and threw it into the lava, from a height of 80 meters. Watch the video to see what happened. If they're true mad scientists, they'll find a way to repeat the test with a human body.

Posted By: Alex - Wed Jun 27, 2012 - Comments (15)
Category: Science, Experiments

Rubber Chicken At The Edge of Space

Sent there recently by California high school students to measure the radiation from a solar storm. Details here. I wish my high school science projects had been that cool. Instead, they were all intensely boring. The only one I even remember was a water electrolysis experiment that I had to work on for weeks, and which involved the edge-of-your-seat thrill of watching a battery split water into hydrogen and oxygen.

Posted By: Alex - Fri Apr 20, 2012 - Comments (6)
Category: Science, Experiments

Interior Clouds

Dutch artist Berndnaut Smilde creates temporary clouds inside rooms by regulating the temperature and humidity inside the rooms.



When I saw this it immediately reminded me of an experiment conducted in the eighteenth century by the Dutch scientist Martin van Marum. He created two artificial clouds by filling calf's bladders with hydrogen, causing them to float around his laboratory. He gave one of these bladder-clouds a positive charge, and another a negative charge. As these charged clouds floated around, sparks would pass between them. This was Van Marum's way of simulating a lightning storm.

But van Marum had an extra trick that was always a great crowd pleaser. He introduced a third (non-charged) cloud into the room. When this non-charged cloud passed between the two charged ones as they were exchanging sparks, it would noisily explode into flames (kinda like a miniature Hindenburg). That's how to do an interior cloud installation properly!

Posted By: Alex - Tue Mar 13, 2012 - Comments (11)
Category: Art, Science, Experiments