Last night
My friend decided to see if he could play Wii Bowling from my kitchen saying he reckon he could get a strike as he always pressed the right arrow a certain amount of times blah blah.

So he is in the kitchen I am watching the TV, his little bowler moves over takes his swing and...

CRASHFUCKTINKLESHITSHITSHIT

My friend had forgot to put the wrist strap on and has fired the remote straight at the window knocking over the huge glass vase which rolled off the sill, onto the counter collected another pint glass and then both on to the floor smashing into a million pieces and cutting the top of my friends foot quite badly.

So badly that when the bleeding had not stopped 15 mins later we had to admit defeat and go to the hospital where he needed 3 stitches.

So in conclusion you can play bowling from another room but you are still advised to always wear the wriststrap.

Oh and he did actually get a strike. I estimate I won't hear the end of this for a while.
( TGB checking Off Topic is still shit at, Mon 28 Jul 2008, 15:20, 3 replies)

I once had a pointless experiment in bed.
It involved folding the sides and end of the duvet into a sort of sausage roll, furiously guffing as much as I could within one minute, then waiting to see how long the fruity tang remained. The best I managed was 26 minutes before the bed became a whiff-free environment.

In my defence, I was unemployed.
(powervator and NONE SHALL PASS, Mon 28 Jul 2008, 14:42, Reply)

Georges Marvellous Medicine
My sisters recently admitted that they used to invent Georges Marvellous Medicines for me to drink.

Their best effort involved crushed laurel leaves, Nesquik, raw eggs, food colouring, Kwells travel sickness pills and fisherman's friends.

I didn't shrink, but I did carry a resentment that has lasted into my adult years.
( browser still relating boring anecdotes into a void on, Mon 28 Jul 2008, 14:09, Reply)

The burning fiver
Our chemistry teacher once demonstrated the fantastical experiment whereby you soak a fiver in ethanol, and set it on fire. The ethanol burns below the combustion temperature of the cotton paper of the money, and the fiver remains intact.

We learnt two more things in that lesson.

1. Rob's polyester trousers are not the same as a five pound note.

2. When someone stands up with flaming trousers, their shirt catches fire.

Obviously, the error analysis on this experiment is extremely complex, but I am confident that a Nature paper will come out of it.
(Rotten_Cointreau is a proper scientician, Mon 28 Jul 2008, 14:06, 2 replies)

Chemistry lessons
Empirical evidence suggests that bunsen flames are hotter than 100oC, and getting boiling mercury all over the desk gets you belted round the head and sent home.
(davywavy, Mon 28 Jul 2008, 14:02, 5 replies)

Fire
Fire is hot, right? But just how hot? Is the heat from a single bar of an electric fire hotter than, say, a bonfire? And more specifically, what would happen if I poked something through the ‘protective’ metal grill and onto the element?

Thus my 8 year old mind reasoned that the cellophane wrapper of my stick of rock would be a useful tool to use in this experiment. I unwrapped a length, and pressed it against the element. After about two seconds, the cellophane caught fire, and rather enthusiastically.

“Oh shit”, was the thought running through my head. I had noticed my mum extinguishing matches by giving them a shake after she’s lit a cigarette, so thought I’d give that a go. Result: A piece of cellophane detached itself from the rest of the wrapping and fell onto the sheepskin rug.

From this small and simple experiment I gauged two things:

1) Never to do anything as stupid again, and;
2) As a general rule, Sheepskin rugs manufactured in the 1970s do not have flame retardant qualities.
( Davros' Granddad a voice of calm reason in a world of spastics., Mon 28 Jul 2008, 13:30, 1 reply)

Q: What happens when you chase a cat arund the house?
A: You have to clean up the piss on all the furniture afterwards.
( Crap Little Monkey Deathstar, so good they built it twice, Mon 28 Jul 2008, 13:26, 1 reply)

Unofficial Chemistry experiments
I always learned something in Chemistry. None of it relevant to the curriculum though. These are some of my findings.

1) During an experiment involving electricity, I discovered instead of hooking the wires up to a bulb, you could put both wires against someones arm. Hilarity will, inevitably, ensue.

2) Carbon rods (attached to electrical wires) are even better for administering these electric shocks.

3) The most painful part of the face to attach a crocodile clip to is the eyelid. Don't try it, just take my word for it.

4) If you put a Bunsen Burner in front of a gas tap, and turn the gas tap on, the flame will travel straight towards the gas. Probably not one to try at home, but the (almost) perfectly straight line of flame does look fucking awesome.

No, I never did pass Science.
(peterlynch, Mon 28 Jul 2008, 13:10, 4 replies)

Mould-farming.
As a child, I was extremely interested in mould. Not why it exists,or even how it forms, but just what I could do to manipulate it's forms and growth. I think it all kicked off when I found an old bit of bread in a cupboard, covered in white fluff. I didn't know it wasn't meant to be there, so I put it back. A week later, the white fluff was completely green! WTF? At that moment, my hobby was born.

For a few weeks, I collected lots of plastic pots, such as one gets hummus in, and secreted them in my room. Once I had enough, I got bits of bread, and the experiment began: what can I do to breed mould in different textures and colours?

I can't remember all the results, but I seem to remember that mould grown on plain, damp bread was the fastest to grow. Bread with some fruit in took quite a while to get going. Putting them in dark cupboards worked better than on a windowsill in the direct sunlight. Adding drops of chemicals from my toy chemistry set did absolutely nothing.

Above all, I learnt that when doing scientific experiments, one has to keep records of:
what is in each pot? (bread, water, jam, mud etc).
how long it has been grown? (5 days or 5 weeks?)
under what conditions? (sunlight, dark warm airing cupboard, dark cool and damp cellar?)

And, most importantly:
Where the hell did I leave the pots? I'm sure I had more than this!

Apparently my mother was finding little pots of life in the airing cupboard/my wardrobe/the coal cellar/on top of the fridge for ages. I got a massive bollocking for that. And she threw away the pots, so I didn't know how well those ones had worked.
(The Empress it seems you CAN polish a turd!, Mon 28 Jul 2008, 13:01, 6 replies)

Do men respect women who put out on the first date? A scientific approach.
Research hypothesis
Based on a claim made by my flatmate, men do not want anything long-term with women who sleep with them on the first date. The research hypothesis (H₁) is that there exists a significant difference between a man’s respect for a woman who sleeps with him on the first date (condition 1), a subsequent later date (condition 2) and not at all (condition 3), thus (H₁): x-bar_first ≠ x-bar_later ≠ x-bar_never. The null hypothesis H₀ is that there is no significant difference between conditions.

Ethics
This work did not pass ethics committee scrutiny, but participant confidentiality was assured.

Sample (x-bar)
The population was “men I fancy” and thus the experiment was conducted on a subset, or sample, of these men.

Pilot study
My life prior to the experiment.

Stimuli
Me in a short skirt, getting drunk.

Participant A
Friend-of-a-friend. First date. Got very drunk. Fell into bed. It wasn’t great. Decided to give him a second chance and the fecker turned me down. Didn't see that coming, which was pretty much what I said the night before too.
Conclusion: he did not respect me in the morning.

Participant B
The Lovely-ex. In pub after work. Vaguely knew him. Got very drunk. Fell into bed. After a rocky start where I bullied him into dating me we got it sorted and were together for two and a half years and lived together in domestic bliss disputes bliss harmony for a year and a half of that.
Conclusion: it was indeed long-term. Hmm, one-all.

Participant C
A lengthy (for me) courtship before dragging him to my lair, and I have no idea if he respects me more for it, or if he respects me at all, but hell, he can do things with his tongue that'd make you go blind.
Conclusion: inconclusive.

Participants D-Z
All the men I wanted to shag but never got to shag. I'm sure they respect me more, now that my cries of "pleeeeease sleeeeeep with meeeeee" have faded.
Conclusion: I'm sure they'd all be on for something long-term, oh yeah.

Statistical analysis
I can’t be arsed running stats tests.

Results
i) It shouldn’t matter a damn.
ii) The only thing I learned was that if the hypothesis is true then it works both ways: there’s been a very lengthy courtship with the one person I want more than anything.
iii) I'd forgotten how tedious it is to run experiments.
iv) I should've applied for funding from some social sciences research council, then I'd have broken even on drinks and condoms.
( crackhouseceilidhband Fuck off back to Mumsnet, Mon 28 Jul 2008, 13:00, 21 replies)

Investigation into flammability of decane
Equipment:
1 bottle of decane, 1 secondary school laboratory, 1 pyromaniac

Method:
Pyromaniac applies decane liberally to all work surfaces in lab.
Pyromaniac then applies lit splint to work surfaces.

Readings:
Aaah aaah burny burny hot hot

Results:
Decane is pretty fecking flammable.

Conclusion:
The class was banned from the lab for two weeks and pyromaniac was suspended.

Possible improvements:
MORE DECANE! MUWAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!
(tarbin tarbis, tarbit, tarbamus, tarbimus, tarbant, Mon 28 Jul 2008, 12:42, 3 replies)

Do not try at home

Date of Experiment - Circa April 1986. (After college)
Performed by - Dr Tugnut and Friend.
Location - My flat, front room.

Objective - To find a cheap and easy way of getting high based on a theory proposed by 'a mate at the pub'.

Apparatus - Two cans of coke, ten packs of 'space dust'/'Pop Rocks', two glasses, two human volunteers.

Method - Put the five packs of space dust/pop rocks in a glass, add the coke, drink quickly, sit back and wait for 'take off' into another dimension.

Results - No discernible euphoria or high. Plenty of frothy projectile vomiting and a severe headache.

Conclusions -

1. The 'mate in the pub' is a lying bastard.
2. Stick to recognised drugs.
3. Dr Tugnut and friend were total twats.
(Tugnut Ex of this parish, Mon 28 Jul 2008, 12:38, Reply)

Cartoons lied to me
After testing this out at the age of 8, I can seafely say that an umbrella (borrowed from my Grans garden furniture) wont work like a parachute when jumping from the roof of a decent height (In this experiment I used my Grans roof).

Thank God she lived in a bungalow
(mon bison powered by magnets, Mon 28 Jul 2008, 12:31, 3 replies)

Smile and Wave
A simple experiment, this one.

While travelling through the North of England on a long coach journey, I decided to smile and wave at the people I happened to pass, to see who would wave back. I was on the National Express 060, which goes Liverpool - Salford - Manchester - Falisworth - New Moston - Chadderton - Bradford - Leeds.

The first thing I noted was that more people look up at coaches than I'd realised, so the sample was larger than anticipated.

Without proper recording of the results, I wasn't able to draw up a full and detailed analysis, but I did note trends.

Of the main cities, Liverpool was the most friendly and responsive, then Bradford, then Leeds, and Manchester last. I'm not going to suggest why this may be, as I can't think of any reasons. All the cities involved are pretty similar.

I also found that black people were the happiest, often returning an enthusiastic smile and wave, while Middle-Easten/Asian people were more likely to look puzzled at me. While a few white people waved back, most seemed disinterested. One young white girl saw me, looked at her friends, then looked about her, before sticking her middle finger up to me.

I also found younger people seemed happier than older people, and men seemed happier than women.

Though my being a young-ish white male may have influenced the results a little, I still ponder on it to this day. I often repeat the experiment in other places, on other journeys, even in other countries, and I still find the same age / gender / race trends.
( Thinker, Mon 28 Jul 2008, 12:13, 5 replies)

In his youth..
.. my uncle was left to look after my grandparent's house whilst they went away for a week.

They were slightly apprehensive about leaving him in charge due to the fact that last time he was, the television started smoking for some reason and ended up being lauched out into the garden. Through the window. It rained that night and poor little TV was ruined.

On this occassion it was poor little pet cat that was ruined.

Obviously a painful moment in any family when a pet dies but my granny is a cat fanatic so everyone knew just how upset she would be.

Thinking it would be a good idea, my uncle decided to find out exactly how the cat had died (probably to save him from getting the blame) so the shed turned into an operating table.

He then proceeded to cut open my granny's beloved pet to discover that it had eaten a rat that had eaten rat poison which my grandad had put down). Result! He wasn't to blame.
(WillyNilly SillyBilly, Mon 28 Jul 2008, 12:11, 1 reply)

The Dark Knight
Hypothesis: Will watching The Dark Knight wearing sunglasses make me cooler?

Answer: Inconclusive, due to the fact that I didn’t watch The Dark Knight. Instead I ended up watching the 16 year old lesbians that were sat next to me in the cinema kissing and fondling each other.
(powervator and NONE SHALL PASS, Mon 28 Jul 2008, 11:59, 9 replies)

Me daughter yesterday
started experimenting with smelling stuff. She's only 16 months old and was walking around me mum's garden sniffing daisies bless 'er. After 10 minutes of doing this, she walks up to her mum while scratching her nose. Mum looks up her nostril and no sign of any snot or anything...that's odd.

She then turns around an sneezes a daisy out onto mum. Nice.
( Jeccius Steam Borderlands 2 junkie, Mon 28 Jul 2008, 11:47, 4 replies)

As a child my cousin had one of those Soda Stream carbonaters,
popular in the late '70s and early '80s, for those unfamiliar with them the idea was you take a sugar syrup and add a little to a special bottle, add water to taste, then put it under the Soda Stream making a good tight fit, press a button, and it would force carbon dioxide from a small pressured cylinder into the drink, henceforth rendering it fizzy. This was some kid of magic to a young child.

We (me, my sisters and he) wondered what fizzy milk would be like, so with visions of revolutionising breakfast for children everywhere, we whacked it into the Soda Stream and gave it a good shot of gas.

Basically when released from the machine the milk did what milk does when it boils, except extremely violently. The contents of the bottle, that we had foolishly filled to the brim, shot up and out like a comedy cum-shot all over the ceiling, and then outwards onto all the surrounding chairs, cupboards, sugar bowl, washing, carpeting, us, and everything else within about a 6 foot radius, which was pretty much the entire kitchen.

Cue a bunch of panicked kids furiously cleaning said kitchen, and themselves, for the next few hours before their respective parents came back from the pub!

I think we got away with it, but we never did get to find out what fizzy milk on your cornflakes would be like.
( ..wil, Mon 28 Jul 2008, 11:11, 5 replies)

Experiment: Can Goldfish Survive in Cider?
Hypothesis: Perhaps
Results: No they can't
Conclusion: Let's try it with Vodka.
(__, Mon 28 Jul 2008, 11:08, Reply)

Dead fish.
I discovered at the age of 5 or 6 that goldfish don´t like to drink milk.And that when you put them on your palm to try and teach them to "do tricks",they are not doing somersaults to please you, they are dying.
RIP,my orange friends....
(shirleytemplesarse, Mon 28 Jul 2008, 9:54, Reply)

The world's strongest magnets
Got stuck up my friends nose. Magnetically. Through his septum.

The gang and I were over at a friends house whose parents were out of town. We were hanging out, admiring refrigerator photos, looking through junk drawers, when we came across a bag labeled, "World's Strongest Magnets!" There were 2 rectangular stainless steel wafers about the size of my thumbnail. we marveled at way the magnets attracted each other through your arm. Not your hand mind you, but your arm.

So my friend Aaron, the loud, jovial one of the group puts the magnets on the outside of his nostrils. We all giggle like maniacs as his nose is pinched together and he crosses his eyes.

Did I mention we were tripping balls on acid? No? Well, we were.

So he goes to take the magnets off but they have a strong grip on either side of his nose. He tries to slide them down his nostrils but the magnets somehow flipped up inside his nostrils.

We pissed ourselves literally and physically (one of us) as Aaron's face turned beet red while he ran around waving his arms and screaming. After the initial hilarity wore off we had to figure out how to get these magnets out of his nose.

Since we were frying, we devised a electro magnetic polarity reverser that was a car battery tied to a refrigerator magnet with a torn extension cord. It didn't reverse the magnetic fields, but it did make Aaron scream more. That made us laugh more.

Finally someone sober came over and went in with a pair of tweezers. There was a lot of screaming and laughing but they did come out.

Then we went to Denny's.
(anotherlogan and the whit he shites, Mon 28 Jul 2008, 9:54, 2 replies)

An Experiment in Gender Double-Standards
Like most men, I have often asked my girlfriends (past and present) the very important question, 'do I have a big cock?' and the common response always seems to be, word for word, 'Yours is the second biggest that I've ever had, and the only one that I had which was bigger than yours was too big, it hurt, and I didn't like it.'
I've heard that exact same line, verbatim, from at least three women.
So, it got me wondering, aside from the obvious, 'Do women all sit around, discussing this stuff, and coming up with ways of appeasing their insecure partners?' and 'God I wish mine was so big that it hurt. Sometimes.' I wondered whether a woman would be insecure about something similar, if the shoe was on the other foot.

You see, men are renowned for being egotistical, over-sensitive and downright silly about the size of their penises, whereas I've met very few women who even care at all about how tight they might be down there.

So, to the experiment, I was going to repeat the line that I'd heard from so many women, including my current partner, back at her, with certain aspects reversed, obviously.

After Mrs Sexmonkey and I had engaged in another one of our now legendary, acrobatic, marathon-esque sex sessions, we collapsed on the bed,

'Wow,' says I, 'I swear, you have the second tightest p*ssy that I've ever felt in my life.'

A look of horror, shock, disgust, revulsion and disbelief spread across Mrs Sexmonkey's face.

'Oh, don't worry though, the tighter one was too tight, I didn't like it at all, it actually hurt a little.' I said, as re-assuringly as possible.

She left shortly after that, and three days later, she's still not talking to me.

Conclusion
Women have enough neuroses about their weight, looks, hair, make-up, careers, skin, men and life in general, without adding, 'You've got a fanny like a damp windsock' to the equation.

Arse.
( Bert Monkeysex is waiting for the mods to delete him, Mon 28 Jul 2008, 9:11, 45 replies)

My parents
had finally judged that I smelt enough to warrant buying me deodorant (aged about 8), and bought me some foul-smelling floral stuff in a pink can. Even at that age I thought it was disgusting, but wearing deodorant made me a WOMAN, so I sprayed it on with gay abandon.

Except that sometimes, if I sprayed enough on, it turned into a white dust on my skin. How rare! I tried it on a piece of paper and, sure enough, a fine dust appeared on the paper.

And I wondered...how big could I make a mountain of it? I decided it would be an awesome idea to try this on my right hand.

I think I told my parents I burnt my hand on the grill.
(and now for someone completely different, Mon 28 Jul 2008, 7:35, Reply)

Hammer cricket
Stupid game we came up with during the ashes a few years back.

We didnt have a cricket bat in the office and we all wanted to play cricket. We did have a hammer though. So i was handed the task of making a bat.

I taped a big fuck off hammer to some foam board so that the handle of the hammer was the grip (deeeeeeeeer) and then cut the foam board into a bat shape.

It had a nice feel to it, nice and heavy. So, stumps are made, me facing the first ball of the office ashes.

Oh its a low one, a nice flick off the pads will get me runs here i think. But i wasnt wearing pads, and managed to smash the hammer into my knee. It hurt. A lot. I was in agony. Everyone was laughing and that was the end of the game.

It still hurts when it gets cold out
(Lanceuppercut, Mon 28 Jul 2008, 6:07, 2 replies)

Picric acid
Look it up in wiki.

Shouldn't (and now probably isn't) let anywhere near A level chemistry students, but at the time it was thought of as a mildly dangerous reagent.

This stuff is potentially lethal. We had a small bottle of it in the locked fume cupboard in the lab, and were told NEVER to touch it.

Well. You know what that means to schoolkids.

This stuff has to be kept wet as when it dries it crystallises into a violent explosive. That's why, when on the one occasion we were allowed to use it, we had to smear the top and neck of the bottle with Vaseline.

One bright spark (scuse the pun) thought "It can't be that bad, can it?" , undid the bottle (all inside the fume cupboard thank god), poured a bit out and hit the small puddle with another bottle.

Cue evacuation, and 1 new fume cupboard.
(Dr Teeth Who asked you, you fuckin' hobbit?, Mon 28 Jul 2008, 5:47, 2 replies)

Pre-teen speed
As a child I was a bit fascinated by sweet things (can't stand them now), but at that age my grandad used to drink Camp Coffee (it's a sickly sweet syrup that you mix with with hot water to make ersatz coffee).

Young Dr Teeth thought it'd be a good idea to and try the stuff neat. Now it's mostly chicory, but with a sizeable caffeine content and shitloads of sugar. I was uncontrollable for hours.
(Dr Teeth Who asked you, you fuckin' hobbit?, Mon 28 Jul 2008, 4:53, Reply)

The Coca Cola Kid
Way, way, way before Coke eventually got wise to the old "Tilt Coke Machine, deposit free can of coke" routine that was the lifeblood of poor students at the Halls of Residence at Royal Holloway, the routine experiment was summarily halted one night when yours truly - 100% trousered by a night on the beer - proceeded to tilt said Coke Machine a trifle too much.

Cue enormous crash, pandemonium in halls, front page of the 'Egham Sun', a furious caretaker and probably most agonising - one broken leg (notwithstanding the enormous embarrassment of being found pinned under a coke machine at 3am)

Should have stuck to Coke that night.

Tsk.
(zit, Mon 28 Jul 2008, 4:26, 2 replies)

Football - Stupid
As ive said before i used to be a Physio at a certain Prem Club.

Footballers are very very stupid people (not all but id say a good %90 are dumb)

Apart from always being caught roasting page 3 tarts and playing away from home (pun intended) they are often experimenting.

A few i can remember -

Not really an experiment but always funny. Any new member of playing staff signed or on trail or thinking of signing would be tied to a post and have balls smashed at them for a good 10 mins from close range. Remember these boys can smash it very hard and never miss. This has caused many players to refuse to join, you would see world famous players in tears and wanting to go home, the overseas players couldnt work out why this was done. So if you see a press conference and a newly signed player looks a bit bruised its normally because of this.

Experimenting with the managers daughter is not very well taken by said manager, and not 3 or 4 at a time.

Experimenting with other players wives/gf's is also not very well taken, and not 3 or 4 at a time.
(Lanceuppercut, Mon 28 Jul 2008, 3:39, 1 reply)

What's the best way to put a hole in a ping-pong ball?
I don't know, but I can tell you the worst way to put a hole in a ping-pong ball is to melt it.

I was a pubescent lass who had just discovered the Anarchist's Cookbook. I was having a blast making napalm, thermite, and other explosive substances for the purpose of blowing mailboxes and gopher holes to smithereens. I had a whole drawer in my room filled with black powder, solidox, and fuses. One day I got the bright idea to fill a ping-pong ball with black powder and make it go boom. I could have used a drill. I could have used a knife. I could have used a pen. But my dumb ass decided to melt a hole in a ping-pong ball. Not only that, but I decided to do this right over my explosives drawer. With my friend holding the ping-pong ball with a set of pliers, I lit the lighter under it.

I'm not sure exactly what ping-pong balls are made out of, but whatever it is it's flammable as a motherfucker. The fireball melted off the pliers and melted onto the top of a coffee can filled with about 2 kg of black powder. My friend and I gave each other the "Shit!" look and we hit the deck. I heard the 20 feet of fuse I had in the drawer light and I kissed my ass good bye. After spending a few moments on the floor and realizing that we weren't dead yet, we scrambled to put out the fuse. If you have ever tried to put out a fuse or even seen a Wile E. Coyote cartoon you know it's virtually impossible.

So my friend and I are trying to stomp this fuse out on the carpet in my bedroom upstairs and now my mother is knocking on the door wondering what's going on. The carpet was burned, I was grounded, but at least I didn't blow up the house.
(anotherlogan and the whit he shites, Mon 28 Jul 2008, 1:46, 3 replies)