Smiling at people on the underground
I have tried this twice, on the London Underground and the Paris Metro. Paris people are surprisingly more friendly - 58 of them smiled back, compared with 23 Londoners.
Surprised I wasn't stabbed...
Going to London on Tuesday, though, so I shall try again.
Edit: At the smiling, that is, not getting stabbed.
(Pretty strangers and promises, Sat 26 Jul 2008, 21:24, 2 replies)

A few years back...
I was going to perform a few experiments and conduct some research into modern scientific apathy...


But I couldn't be arsed.
.
( sir_spicious2000 Crap I've watched: www.filmplop.blogspot.com/, Sat 26 Jul 2008, 21:23, Reply)

Things that Stick to a George Forman Grill
1. Bananas

2. Brie

Thats it for things i've tried, but i'm sure theres more.
(spent.fish flipping and gasping, Sat 26 Jul 2008, 18:20, 5 replies)

popcorn cookies
Not me, my brother. I was baking cookies and darling bro wanted to see if popcorn would pop in the cookies when they baked. He snuck several popcorn kernels into about 6 unbaked cookies and then waited to see the results. Nothing happened but it was impossible to tell which cookies had the kernels until you bit into one. The brother has tried other cooking experiments and we cringe whenever e find out he has been cooking. Never know what to expect.
(uffda, Sat 26 Jul 2008, 17:48, Reply)

I believe I can fly.
I was raised on a small farm in the middle of Dartmoor.

When I was about 5 or 6 I managed to get hold of a pair of complete chicken wings, which my dad had for some unknown reason chopped off a recently slaughtered chicken. After a few amusing seconds pulling sinews and waving the wings about, I decided that since I now had wings I would be able to fly.

I climbed onto the kitchen table and, with a wing in each hand, I launched myself into the air flapping furiously.

I failed.

Miserably.

A dozen or more times.

Conclusion: I just havent got the technique right yet - it has to work.. I have wings!
(Freakmandu, Sat 26 Jul 2008, 17:31, 1 reply)

Not me, my dad.
My dad was young when the movie 'Zulu' was popular, having never seen it myself I am told that the Zulu warriors in it have things sticking in/out/shake-it-all-about of their noses, I'm guessing tribal things, aye?

Now my dad lived near a small forest and a river, so there was plenty of places for him to play when he was a kid. Now does any 1 know them plants that when they get old or die, the stems (which are shaped hexagonally, but with more sides, if you catch my drift) go light brown and hard, which you can peel away and inside is a thick tube of foam like stuff? Well I hope you do as its part of the damn story.

Anyway, my dad, playing Zulu with his friends one day decided he really should try to be a more authentic Zulu warrior and so got two of these stems, peeled of the 'bark' to get the foam tube below and promptly stuck them up his nose.

I can imagine his glee at being even more Zulu'ey than the others, I can imagine him playing around having fun, I can definitely imagine the panic on his face when he realises they are stuck and it damn well hurts.

Apparently he had to go to the hospital to get them removed, which my grandma, being the understanding and softly softly sort of parent reacted to by giving him a belting.

Lesson, don't stick plant life up your nose.
(Guilt wants to get in your moist confines, Sat 26 Jul 2008, 16:54, 1 reply)

Oh, related to the story given by the frog.
I practice frequently walking down the road with my eyes closed. It livens up a walk which I've done for the last 17 years.

At first I could only go about 5 steps before having to open my eyes, but now I can walk about 10 before checking for lampposts.

Once I walked into a hollybush, but it was okay, as I had my eyes closed.
( Rev. Cleo still alive, Sat 26 Jul 2008, 15:05, 4 replies)

One summer day back when we were about 15,

...me and a couple of friends were out in the village next to us. Small place, but being paranoid as we were we were about half a mile into the nearby woods where we could smoke weed all afternoon without being disrupted.

It had just been raining, and my friend tried to find out what would happen if he chucked a big wet stick up at the pylon above our heads. Now I didn't know exactly what was going to happen, but I knew just how much electricity those things carry, so tried to warn him not to do it. The first couple of times the stick hit one of the wires and nothing happened. Then, he managed to throw it in such a way that it connected with two of the wires at once, shorting the pylon. All I can remember is hearing (literally) the loudest noise of my life, seeing a massive bolt of electricity heading for miles down towards Reading, and then the previously wet stick raining down on us as little bits of fire.

Obviously we shat it, and ran and ran until we were back in the village, only to find that we'd caused a major power cut. The next day the landlord of our local was replacing all of the bulbs outside his pub trying to figure out which ones had blown.

Lesson? Don't play with pylons...
( Turquoise Hexagon Sun has just dropped acid on, Sat 26 Jul 2008, 13:27, Reply)

Handblender
Miss Photon's little sister once idly mused: "Hmm... handblender. I wonder if it blends hands?".

One short experiment later, and we can indeed confirm - yes, they do.
(Photon wasting your time since, Sat 26 Jul 2008, 12:46, 2 replies)

Paperweight vs. child
A much younger and less wise Photon once decided to see whether he could throw a stone paperweight from one hand to the other, with his arms outstretched. The result: I probably could have, but I failed to factor in one obstacle to the paperweight's flight - my head.

The paperweight, being about the size of a grapefruit, and carved into an interesting geometric shape, was as a result quite weighty, and had a lot of sharp edges - one of which connected perfectly with a minor artery in my temple.

"Mum, I think I need to go to the hospital please!", I yelled down the stairs. "Oh, and I'm really sorry about the carpet. And the duvet. And the wallpaper."

Bled like a bastard for a few minutes, and then just stopped, and by the time I'd been seen by a nurse, there was barely anything to see. Didn't even stitches - I was so disappointed.
(Photon wasting your time since, Sat 26 Jul 2008, 12:42, Reply)

Disappearing sledge
I live in Oslo and on the hills above the city is The Corkscrew. It’s the site of the bobsleigh track from the 1952 Winter Olympics. The ice walls are long gone, but what’s left is a steep twisty track with the top at the final metro stop, and the bottom a few stops further down. It’s ideal for sledging, and you can even rent sledges for a few hours.

So when my Dutch friend Micha came to stay we headed up there for an afternoon of sledge fun.

I was a bit annoyed that his sledge was faster than mine, even more so when his was faster even after we swapped. But I was very surprised to zoom round a corner and see him standing at the side of the track. He had managed to roll off the sledge going round a corner, and it had sped down the track without him.

So I got off the sledge and we started walking down the hill. A vigorous debate ensued. I was sure that his sledge would just skid off the track at the next corner, and we should look for it there. He was sure that it would turn the corners on its own, and we would find it at the bottom.

Being a man of science, I decided to prove through experimentation that I was right. So I launched my sledge down the hill, expecting it to veer off the track and into the deep snow at the first corner.

It didn’t.

Instead, just before the corner it made a dainty left turn and kept on going. We ran after it, got to the corner, looked down the hill, and saw nothing. Perhaps it has already rounded the next bend at high speed.

So we walked down the hill, carefully inspecting the sides of the track for any lost sledges. At the bottom we saw one sledge standing in the middle of the track. It was his.

It was quite difficult explaining to the hire people what had happened to their sledge.

So the result of that experiment is that if you launch a sledge down a hill, it will disappear.
(woodchopper likes chopping wood, Sat 26 Jul 2008, 11:22, Reply)

A Uni Student
Ah, to be young. To have way too much free time on one's hands. Why yes, it is summer break and while I'm holding a full time job back at home, it's in the evenings and therefore, I have whole sunny days to myself while everyone is off at the offices.

Being a science major, or more specifically, Physics, I have the usual curiosity that leads to things being built. The agenda? Why I'm a guy so it must involve destruction (that will impress the ladies, riiiiiight?)!

The code name was Operation Caddy-Walks. Why? I have no idea. It involved, basically, a trebuchet. It was to be built with materials from the basement, as all my money was actually going towards the booze that would be consumed during its operation. I live near the beach, so that would obviously be my ammo. For whatever reason, we have a ton of wood on the property.

Shit.

There's a problem.

I couldn't find any nails, but I did find a lot of glue.

Ah fuck, I'll go ahead.

But I guess you could say that, well, my experiment ended up being pretty pointless.

_{some of this may not be true.}
(Sco smokes crack often., Sat 26 Jul 2008, 10:44, Reply)

Stopping engines
Now if you've got a smallish petrol engine (well, up to a couple of litres), you can stop it when it's idling by putting your hand over the top of the carburettor. This of course blocks off the air, and leaves you with a slight carb top-shaped mark on the palm of your hand, and a petrolly smell. It's quite safe because the engine is only turning slowly and the throttle is closed, so there's already a high vacuum in the carb and you don't increase it much.

A total mong that I used to work with tried this with a 4.5 litre diesel engine in a lorry which was running at a fast idle, about 1200rpm. the intake was the size of the palm of his hand. Oh, and because diesel engines don't have throttles but *do* have massive pumping efficiency (they suck lots of air through, which is why turbo-diesels are so good) they suck really hard.

I hit the "STOP NOW" lever on the injector pump within about a second, but that was long enough to turn his entire right hand into an enormous uber-hickey that swelled up to about 2" thick and purple.

This was not a pointless experiment, because he learned not to do that again, and I learned not to let him near things I was working on.
(gordonjcp, Sat 26 Jul 2008, 10:07, Reply)

will this stone fit up my nose?
yes.

cue 4 year old self spluttering with panick and having to be picked up from school by angry parents to be taken to the doctor then the hospital where she was wrapped up in a blanket so tightly she couldn't move her arms or legs and having a some bizarre instrument inserted up one nostril to remove the stone.

apparently, doctors have a small pair of pliers especially designed for removing small items from peoples' noses.

nice to know.
(ladyintheradiator, Sat 26 Jul 2008, 8:17, 6 replies)

Priests
.
In the olden days, beating children wasn't frowned upon like it is these days. In fact, it was positively encouraged. Everyone used to take a swing at you. Teachers - I've been beaten with canes, slippers perspex rods, had wooden blackboard rubbers hurled at me and been zapped on the forehead by lethally sharp lumps of chalk. Any adult in the street who, if you were cheeky to, would give you a few kicks up the arse and a few slaps across the head. And it was no use going crying to mum 'cos she'd belt you as well for setting your lip up in the street.

So I was used to violence from adults and was used to avoiding it where I could.

So this one year, at the end of summer, it was scrumping time. That meant sneaking into peoples orchards and nicking the apples and pears. Previous experience and lore passed down from older siblings meant that we new which gardens to avoid - like Mr fucking Sibley's. Childhood rumour had it that he used to push old razor blades into his apples and, any kid who bit into one of these, would have his jaw sliced open. Mr Roger's garden was out as he was a fucking sadist who's spend hours in his garden shed with an air rifle just waiting for us. That one I knew was true as the bastard had shot me in the back the year before. Old Man River's was out - his garden had so much barbed wire in it that it looked like the Somme so it was down to me, the thinker of the group, to find out a target to raid.

The Priests garden. High walls to be sure but he was a *priest*! I'm sure it was written somewhere that he wasn't allowed to hit people. He was a man of God. And Jesus loved the little children so, my reasoning went, even if we got caught he wouldn't belt us.

Only one way to find out. APPLE RAID!!!!!

At first it all went well. We swarmed over his wall like a wave of under-sized ninjas and dropped into his garden. We hid in the bushes for a while, looking for signs of movement, but concluded that it was safe. So we dashed for the apples trees and started grabbing all the fruit we could reach and dropped it into our pulled-out jumpers. Then a branch snapped with a loud "CRACK" and the backdoor flew open.

An avenging demon stood there. An avenging demon in a dress( well, cassock) who was pissed in both senses of the word. With an incoherent scream he flew out of his door way and started lashing out with a walking stick.

I was quickly felled, I thought he'd broken my back, and he left me to pursue the rest of the gang around the garden. A couple got away but three of us were lying incapacitated from blows from that fucking stick. The he came back and dragged us all into a pile and really taught us the meaning of God's Vengeance. He beat the living shit out of us.

Eventually he either tired or needed another drink and kicked us out of the back gate into the street.

Never liked priests since. I'm still *fucking sure* that the bible says that he wasn't allowed to do that......

Conclusion of experiment?

Don't fuck with men in skirts.

Cheers
( Legless Mister Stabby - shanks for the memory, Sat 26 Jul 2008, 7:34, 7 replies)

dehydration
I can't remember why but not drinking anything for three days seemed like a good idea.

The experiment ended on the third day when I found myself sitting on a lawn giggling at grass.
(mortisdead, Sat 26 Jul 2008, 7:03, Reply)

9v battery absolute stupidity
You put a 9v battery to your tongue. It tingles in a pretty funky way.

I found out when I was about 7 that it's a terrible idea to touch the contacts to your eye.

You will, unsurprisingly, go blind in that eye.

I was SO relieved to wake up the next day and be able to see.

Another stupid thing I did was when I had a really itchy ear. Inside, too far in to scratch with your finger. So you use the nearest small thing don't you? I used an LED.

I lost it, and it stayed in there for literally years, until one day it just fell out. Not sure what caused it to fall out, but I'd forgotten all about it. You can imagine my confusion for a bit, until i remembered...

I also did an experiment to see what kind of food produces the best mould. Boiled potatoes are pretty impressive. A little tea in the bottom of a cup take a while but will eventually turn into a little green disc of mould.
(weegiegeek, Sat 26 Jul 2008, 5:04, 3 replies)

is there a car coming/will a growing lad literally and absolutely shit his pants in front of his friends?
Ktulu O'Ryleh's post reminded me...

with friends, go to free party in some godforsaken part of Devon back in the day, and soak up the atmosphere. then...

in the early hours of the morning, take four weary occupants and a less-than-legal driver in a shitty little car and approach a crossroads that you've driven over a thousand times - "hell, I KNOW these roads" - which happens to be a country lane crossing a fuck-off main road.

let the driver wonder, "D'you reckon there's any cars on the road?"

watch in wonderment and disbelief as driver switches off headlights for a foolproof method to display the viabilty of oncoming or cross-coming traffic.

foot down. drive the fuck over.

yes, as it happens, there was a car coming.
we missed it by a matter of feet.
his reasoning was sound, although his judgement was spoilt by NOT FUCKING LOOKING.

I should point out that I didn't actually shit my pants, but that's as near as I've been since I wore nappies.
( nightbuffalo needs more duct tape, Sat 26 Jul 2008, 4:05, Reply)

Pocket rockets and other match experiments
When about 13, we liked to make pocket rockets. You remove a paper match from the book, lay a pin along it with the pointy end towards the tip of the match, and then tightly wrap a bit of aluminum foil around the head of the match. Withdraw the pin, and you have a pocket rocket. Slightly lift the inside coil of a paperclip to create your V2 launch ramp, and you're ready. Lay your new rocket on the launch ramp, which has been bent to produce a 45-degree launch trajectory, light a second match and hold it under the head of the rocket. You'll get a nice launch that results in a small, very hot projectile landing somewhere you wish it hadn't. Don't aim for cleavages. Trust me.
(tintinmilou, Sat 26 Jul 2008, 3:07, 2 replies)

You know when you get a lighter.....
...and fill your hand up with gas then ignite it? Well, I tried it with my ear once.
( Black Moon Not cracked, I'm all up to be., Sat 26 Jul 2008, 2:24, 1 reply)

I'm claiming idiot savant
When I was around nine, science introduced me to the mechanics of smell. Specifically, the idea that smelling requires particles of the thing traveling into your nose*. After thinking about this for a while, I started to wonder: If I spent a lot of time sniffing at something, would I be using up enough particles to make the thing smaller?

In case you're wondering, NO**. But it will make you dizzy.

Other brilliant moments:
- Experimenting with the physics of suction with the lid on one of the tins of spices. Long story short, I covered the cat with curry powder.
- Taping my thumbs to my hand to understand why opposable thumbs were so great. It's kinda hard to tape up the second hand, since there's the whole "no opposable thumb" thing going on already.
- Yeah, I did the "blind" thing too. I had a time-out for misbehavior, during which I decided to keep my eyes closed through the day. My sister was less than thrilled when I came back to the dinner table and, uh, missed and ate her roll.


* Just humor me and pretend I know what I'm talking about.

** For the love of god, don't get all anal-retentive over this. Any effect my smelling had on the object was negligible, okay? I don't care if the thing was ten molecules smaller.
(Exempt OH WOW, VICODIN, Sat 26 Jul 2008, 1:57, Reply)

I tried being blind once:
Aged approx 10, and full of the empathy which only a pre-teen can posess. To negate the effects of accidentally opening my eyes, I tied a sock around my head. I spent, I think, about 4 hours as a blind boy.

Conclusion of Experiment: Being blind is rubbish.
( kfk I get all my everything right here, Sat 26 Jul 2008, 0:48, Reply)

Extreme sports and electricity
Experiment: "I wonder what happens if I alter this setting like *this* before jumping off this hill?"

Conclusion: When moving headfirst (and fast) toward the ground from 8ft up, things will not end well.



Experiment: "I wonder what happens if I turn on this car battery charger, then connect both leads at once?"

Conclusion: Really, really, no.



Experiment: "Can I change this lightbulb in this inaccessible, wall-mounted socket without turning the power off?"

Conclusion: No, but I can ram my swearing finger straight into said socket. Bugger.
( MatJ LOOK, Sat 26 Jul 2008, 0:45, Reply)

Bubbles
We had this ancient gas cooker that didn't have the sort of modern sparky ignition thing to light the hobs. Instead it had this little hand-held lighter that ran from the mains but wouldn't burn your hands like a dwindling match might. Kind of like a mains-gas cigarette lighter. It was pretty cool - you'd light it with a match and get a flame about 2-3 inches high.

So I'm about age 14 and in the middle of my *really big pyro phase* and this gets me thinking. Bubble mix. Plastic Deodorant lid.... Flaming bubbles FTW!.

So I make a hole in the lid of the can, pop it over the 'lance' like end of the lighter so I can get a nice film of bubble-mix and dip it into a bowl full of Woolworth's finest. It worked. I mean it really worked; I kinda thought it might but the bubbles were incredible. You'd press the button and the bubble would emerge quickly and neatly. It was easy enough to get into the air (where it sort of rose) and then—when you lit the mini tranparent zeppelin with a burning match the slow-motion fireball was just beautiful. For the record a 2" bubble gives a round flame of about 15". Yay!!!!

Got away with not burning down the kitchen (a miracle); Sadly never had the prescence of thought to do it at night and get photos. Damnation! We got a new(er) cooker later that year so the experiment was never to be repeated, though typing this and knowing there's a gas cooker just one flight of stairs down (I'm 34 now) is tingling my senses! Just. Need. Some. Flexible. Pipe.


Other highlights from this pyro phase:
1) Unfurling the tape from a whole VCR tape into a bin. Light. Watch how fast (literally about a second) it turns into a pile of chrome-dioxide ash. Flame was about 5" high.

2) Making 'explosive putty' by mixing turps with flour and attaching blobs to things. It didn't explode and was a monomentally crap experiment.

3) Trying to set a field of dry, ripe wheat alight on hot day in high summer. God knows how I failed but thank god I did. What WAS I thinking?

4) Burning pools of lighter fluid on the draining board at a friends house, getting caught, and really having no fathomable excuse for such a betrayal of trust.

5) Not quite pyro this one but it involves cookers. Poking finger into ignition-spark of gas hob in School Home Economics lesson. Flew back about 4 feet. Thought I'd been punched in the back and not in fact touched the spark. I had. It was kind of a rush to be honest.

6) Sellotaping mini-rockets to matchbox car roofs and sending them down the street. They generally don't go far, opting instead to make smoky 1440° doughnuts as you run away hoping not to get caught in the explosive crescendo. I really had it in for my dinky cars for some reason.

Length? It's all about the width and veininess...
( LittlePixel, Sat 26 Jul 2008, 0:39, 1 reply)

I used to make pocket fans when I was bored.
I would've been about 12 or 13, and my dad had recently bought me a soldering iron. Then, I would take apart anything of mine that had a motor, and stick propellors on them. I would use different batteries and switches, and some of them were quite powerful. Used to have fun with them at school, as we used to see who would dare put their fingers into the fan.
(lickmyballsandscrotum, Sat 26 Jul 2008, 0:34, Reply)

I once made a speaker
using a copper coil from a motor and a magnet, taped to the back of a wooden picture frame.

I noticed that it generated a lot of heat, so much so that condensation formed inside the glass of the picture. I'm sure that's contrary to physics but it did happen.

Anyway, I decided to harness this heat and wrapped a reel of fine copper wire around a thermal coffee mug and put a magnet base, intending to makea device that played music and kept your tea warm (no home would be complete without one)

I connected the copper coil to the speaker out on my amp and piped some music through it. The sound quality wasn't exactly bang and olufsen but it worked rather nicely.

For about ten seconds.

Something went pop in my amp and a puff of smoke drifted out of it.

I crack open the amp and one of the internal fuses has popped
"hmm, needs a bigger fuse" thinks I, so I rummaged around for something a bit sturdier and crammed it in.

I turned the music on and the amp lasted about 15 seconds this time.
"gosh darn it" thinks I "there goes another"
So I reached into the still open case of the amp (can you see where this is going?) Yes, ladies and gentlebens, I got my first major electric shock since I was 6 and by fuck it hurt. The fingers on my right hand didn't stop twitching for days.

I still reckon the teacup speaker is a goer though
( VampireMonkeyOnSpeed a super sexy sexual sex terrorist sex, Sat 26 Jul 2008, 0:01, Reply)

I decided to see what would happen if i....
put my sub woofer on its back so the speaker cone was facing up
cover it in cling film
pour flour paste into the cone
turn it up to 11

exciting fountains of goo is what happened
( VampireMonkeyOnSpeed a super sexy sexual sex terrorist sex, Fri 25 Jul 2008, 23:50, 2 replies)

Ku Klux Cats
My then-housemate showed me this (but I named it). Get one of the paper bags that a longneck of beer comes in. Hold it with the open end towards the cat. Scratch on the other end. Hopefully the cat will get fascinated with the noise, and eventually pounce, putting its head in the bag. Cuteness will ensue.

It's not cruel, the cat can get its head out easily enough, and after a bit of confusion it will.
(apeloverage committed the vile act of onanism on, Fri 25 Jul 2008, 23:28, Reply)