Do Sparrows Like Bach?: The Strange and Wonderful Things that Are Discovered When Scientists Break Free

by Unknown

  It seems that the people of Winnipeg had a penchant for wild ideas in the 1950s. Another inventor in the city was also struggling to make headway with his invention. It consisted of a gigantic cake of soap 15 feet long and 3 feet wide. His idea was that you wet yourself with water before sitting on the soap and sliding up and down to wash yourself. As much fun as licking a lolly that looks like Madonna? Surely not?

  How to mould an X-rated lolly

  In 1992 a new wave of ‘adult’ ice lollies promised to liven up summer thanks to a new way of moulding detailed shapes. It was hoped that jet-stream extrusion moulding could provide British lolly lickers with risqué lines including lifelike images of Madonna and other sex symbols.

  Sean McKee, a researcher at the University of Strathclyde, said the technique could pave the way for companies to increase the size of the £150 million water ice lolly market by targeting adults. ‘Just imagine Madonna or Marilyn Monroe on a stick,’ he said. ‘We could get at least half the adult population wanting to lick ice lollies.’ Spaniards had already taken to licking Hot Lips, a red lolly shaped like a large pair of lips.

  Since Snofrut, the first mass-market ice lolly, went on sale in 1922, lolly companies had struggled to improve their moulding techniques and had only been able to make blurred shapes. Production lines poured flavoured water into crude rubber moulds which were frozen and turned inside out to release the lolly.

  Jet-stream extrusion moulding squirted a slush of almost-frozen water ice into a hard mould at high speed. How the lolly came out of the mould was a trade secret. But Birds Eye Wall’s, a division of Unilever, put the world’s first extrusion-moulded lolly on sale in the UK in 1992 with Boomy, a sort of fruit kebab that was distinctly unsexy.

  McKee said one of the biggest production problems for extruded lollies was structural weaknesses caused by air bubbles trapped in the mould. ‘If the character’s nose is missing, there will be no repeat sale,’ he said.

  Clarke Foods, which makes Lyons Maid lollies, was dubious about the value of the adult market. David Brown, a marketing director, thought that lollipops were a family product. ‘What sort of adult audience you would attract I’m not quite sure,’ he said. ‘We would not want to do anything that was too risqué.’

  We second that, after questioning when the lolly likenesses of Brad Pitt and David Beckham were going to be produced for those who prefer licking males. Still, it seems novelty items have no boundaries…

  Mozart’s bra

  The bicentenary of Mozart’s death in 1991 was celebrated by Japanese electronic wizardry. A lingerie firm in Tokyo made a musical bra containing a microcircuit in the clasp and a small loudspeaker which fitted into the wearer’s armpit. Hooking the bra up switched its audio system on, and it played a 20-second blast of Mozart. This was part of a miniature son et lumière display, because the bra also featured tiny flashing lights that winked during the music.

  Presumably you wouldn’t want to be wearing the bra when trying out the following.

  Vital statistic

  In 1981, two inventors in the US, Jack Grossman of California and Leonard Roudner of Chicago, claimed to have perfected a scientific system for measuring the size of female breasts with great accuracy. They were so proud of their results that they patented them.

  It seems that, in the past, this vital statistic had usually been estimated by eye. The only scientific approach had been to immerse the breast in a container of water and to measure the volume of liquid displaced. According to the inventors, this was inaccurate because breasts tend to float.

  The solution was a circular sheet of transparent flexible plastic with a single radial cut and a series of radial calibrations. The circular sheet was folded into a cone and placed over the breast. The cone was then tightened until there was all-round contact. The calibrations gave an instant readout of the breast’s volume in millimetres.

  Incidentally, breasts leave unique patterns on surfaces in much the same way as fingerprints. Even more surprisingly, it seems that jeans do too.

  In their jeans

  In 1998, the FBI found an ingenious way to catch crooks—by looking at their jeans.

  Scientists from the bureau reported that every pair of blue jeans has a unique wear pattern. The FBI actually used this ‘bar code’ to place a suspect at the scene of a crime.

  Richard Vorder Bruegge, a forensic scientist at the FBI laboratory in Washington DC, and his colleagues developed the technique while helping to identify suspects who were robbing banks and setting off bombs in Spokane, Washington. In April 1996, one of the gang was caught on film. He was wearing a mask, but part of his trousers was visible.

  When the photograph was enlarged, Vorder Bruegge noticed light and dark lines running across the seam of the man’s jeans. His team found that the pattern originated from slight imperfections introduced when the trousers were made. Workers sew the seams by pushing the fabric through a machine, and the irregularity of that motion stretches and bunches the fabric. The dyed layer of cotton in the raised portion is worn away, creating white bands.

  The patches are more striking on jeans than other types of trousers because they are often allowed to become extremely worn. ‘People just keep wearing them,’ said Vorder Bruegge.

  The FBI analysed the jeans of suspects in the Spokane case. One pair had a pattern with over two dozen features that matched the jeans photographed by Vorder Bruegge’s team. At the trial, the defence called in a used jeans exporter as an expert witness who claimed the patterns were common to all jeans. He showed the court 34 similar pairs, but in each case the FBI could distinguish them from the accused’s. The suspect was convicted.

  Some ideas, on the face of it, seem to make complete sense. It’s only when the practicality of putting them into action rears its contrary head that you see them in a different light.

  Round the bend

  Back in 1965, a circular runway for airports was being considered by the US Navy. It was thought to have some potential advantages even if it would be more expensive than normal runways. One advantage was that it would save one-third of the space occupied by a conventional airport.

  The idea was to match the circumference of the runway to the landing speeds of aircraft—for a large jet, a circumference of about 60,000 feet would be needed, allowing it to turn without toppling over. One more benefit was that if cross-winds were favourable, six aircraft could land simultaneously at different, equally spaced points on the runway.

  A tube train that splits down the middle

  Underground railways are the fastest way of transporting large numbers of passengers around cities and, in 1969, French engineers proposed a way of making the Metro even faster. The plan was for an underground train to run continuously, serviced by ‘ferry’ coaches from the stations to take passengers on and off.

  The ‘AT 2000’ looked like an ordinary underground train split lengthwise down the middle. The left-hand section would be fitted with seats in the normal way, and would never stop at stations. The right-hand side would have no seating. Instead it would act as a loading and unloading platform and stop at every station.

  The two sections would travel together like a railway coach with a corridor. Between stations, doors joining the two sections would open for a short period to let passengers move from one section to the other. Passengers wishing to get off at the next station would move into the ‘corridor’ section. Those who had just got on would take their seats in the non-stop section. As the vehicle approached the station, the ‘corridor’ section would separate and halt for the unloading and loading of passengers. The other section would continue and link up with another ‘corridor’ section already loaded with passengers.

  Artificial tornado plan to generate electricity

  Most of us know that tornadoes are unpredictable, uncontrollable and dangerous. But a Canadian engineer believed they could be the future of electricity generation. He wanted to make electricity from artificial tornadoes.

  In 2008, Loui
s Michaud, a retired petroleum engineer in Sarnia, Ontario, planned to use the waste heat from conventional power plants to create an ‘atmospheric vortex engine’—a small, controlled tornado that would drive turbines and generate electricity. ‘I’m confident that we could control these things,’ he said. Michaud also thought solar-powered tornadoes generated using the sun’s heat could work.

  His design was a circular wall 200 metres across and 100 metres high without a roof. Air carrying the waste heat would be blown in from vents on the sides, spinning around the walls into a vortex that becomes just like a real tornado. Once started, the vortex would draw in more hot air from vents in the wall, pulling it past turbines and generating electricity.

  Michaud calculated that a vortex engine of this size would create a tornado about 50 metres in diameter and generate between 50 and 500 MW of electricity. He patented the idea in 1975 and has continued to work on it ever since.

  Is it such a crazy idea? If only Michaud had befriended Professor Dessens, he might have been richer, faster. He’d also have a carbon footprint to rival Detroit’s. However, the idea of creating potentially disastrous major weather phenomena was so like the script of a dodgy 1950s sci-fi B movie that we decided to name the book after this next concept.

  Cloud-making experiment reaps a whirlwind

  In the early 1960s, a French scientist, J. Dessens of the Observatoire du Puy de Dôme, Clermont University, accidently discovered a way to make tornadoes artificially—and therefore a means of studying the conditions under which they arose.

  On a plateau in the south of France the observatory built an apparatus which was originally intended for making artificial cumulus clouds. It was called the Meteotron and consisted of an array of 100 burners spaced over an area rather larger than a football field. Fuel was pumped into them and, together, they consumed about a ton of oil a minute, producing the very considerable power of some 700,000 kilowatts. In operation the device produced a thick column of black smoke that permitted observations of the resulting upward air currents.

  During one experiment there appeared, besides the main mass of smoke, what seemed to be a black tube of whirling smoke. This tornado, about 30 or 40 feet across and up to 700 feet high, seemed to form about six minutes after the burners had been lit and subsequently moved away from the apparatus at the speed of the prevailing wind.

  Later, the research team attempted to reproduce the tornado conditions with only half the burners operating, but under very unstable atmospheric conditions. After about a quarter of an hour’s heating, they started a strong whirlwind in the centre of the apparatus about 130 feet across, with a bright tube a yard in diameter at its centre. It was so powerful that some of the burners were extinguished.

  This is real mad boffin stuff of the kind you thought existed only in movies. Completely bonkers, just like the one that follows.

  Human cannonballs

  The old circus trick of firing a person from a cannon was being considered by the US Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in 2006 as a way to get special forces, police officers and firefighters on to the roofs of tall buildings in a hurry.

  A ramp with side rails would be placed on the ground near the target building at an angle of about 80 degrees. A (very brave) person would then sit in a chair, like a pilot’s ejector seat, attached to the ramp. Compressed air from a cylinder underneath would be rapidly released to shoot the chair up the ramp’s guide rails. At the top the chair would come to an instant halt, leaving the person to fly up and over the edge of the roof, to land (one hopes) safely on top of the building.

  Of course, the trick would be to get the trajectory just right. But the DARPA patent suggested a computer could automatically devise the correct angle and speed of ascent. It also claimed that a 4-metre-tall launcher could put a man on the top of a 5-storey building in less than 2 seconds. Most of us would probably prefer the stairs.

  As a visitor to www.newscentist.com later said, ‘Aim really is important here’. Of course DARPA thrives on adversity of the kind thrown up on a plate by the ideology of the Cold War. That’s right—if it wasn’t boffins, it was Dr Strangelove. Mutually Assured Destruction provided plenty of opportunities for mad research, as does the whole field of weaponry and espionage generally.

  The shouting bomb

  Back in 1957, the Americans armed themselves with a shouting bomb which could address large crowds as it dropped to the ground on a parachute. According to its designers, military tactics at the time required a means of communicating propaganda or instructions to groups of soldiers or civilians.

  The bomb was said to be about 9 feet long and could be dropped from 60,000 feet. As it fell, it sprouted parachutes. At 4000 feet a tape recorder was automatically switched on and the bomb proceeded to deliver a 3-minute lecture. Trials showed that the bomb could be heard over an area greater than half a square mile.

  US military creates indestructible sandwich

  First came the atom bomb, the stealth bomber and the airborne laser. Then in 2002 came one of the US military’s most fearsome weapons: the indestructible sandwich.

  Capable of surviving airdrops, rough handling and extreme climates, and just about anything except a GI’s jaws, the pocket sandwich was designed to stay ‘fresh’ for up to three years at 26 °C (about the temperature of a warm summer’s day), or for six months at 38 °C (just over body temperature).

  For years the US army had wanted to supplement its standard battlefield rations, called ‘Meal, Ready-to-Eat’ (MRE), with something that could be eaten on the move. Although MREs already contained ingredients that could be made into sandwiches, these had to be pasteurised and stored in separate pouches, and the soldiers needed to make the sandwiches themselves.

  ‘The water activities of the different sandwich components need to complement each other,’ explained Michelle Richardson, project officer at the US Army Soldier Systems Center in Natick, Massachusetts. ‘If the water activity of the meat is too high you might get soggy bread.’

  To tackle the problem, researchers at Natick used fillings such as pepperoni and chicken, to which they added substances called humectants, which stop water leaking out. The humectants not only prevented water from the fillings soaking into the bread, but also limited the amount of moisture available for bacterial growth. The sandwiches were then sealed, without pasteurisation, in laminated plastic pouches that also included sachets of oxygen-scavenging chemicals. A lack of oxygen helped prevent the growth of yeast, mould and bacteria.

  Soldiers who tried the pepperoni and barbecue-chicken pocket sandwiches found them ‘acceptable’.

  The mother of all firework displays

  In 1998, Dave Caulkins hoped the millennium celebrations would go with a real bang, if he got his way.

  Caulkins, a computer network manager based in Los Altos, California, devised a plan to use obsolete Inter-Continental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) to launch artificial meteors. They would create stunning pyrotechnic displays up to 20 kilometres across, he said.

  Caulkins outlined his plans to provide a spectacular swansong for missiles like the US Minuteman or Russian SS-18 in the Journal of Pyrotechnics. It would make more sense to use these Cold War relics for entertainment rather than break them up for scrap, he argued.

  As the missiles returned to Earth, they would release their cargo of thousands of artificial meteors, each weighing between 10 and 100 grams. The meteors would burn up in the atmosphere, with different colours depending on the chemicals with which they had been doped—sodium for yellow, strontium for red, and so on. Those in the first wave would create sonic booms. The noise would alert spectators to the display. ‘It all happens pretty damn fast,’ said Caulkins. However, he admitted that he hadn’t worked out a solution to what was likely to be the most serious objection to his proposal: the fear that his pyrotechnic millennium party could be used as a cover for a real pre-emptive nuclear strike.

  Some people even tried to ensure God really was on their side�
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  And the voice said…

  An apocryphal tale perhaps, but one of our reporters might have heard the Voice of God. Apparently, researchers working with high-power laser weapons in 1999 created balls of plasma above the New Mexico desert which, when pushed around by the laser beams, created pressure waves that sounded like voices. The US military allegedly named the project the Voice of God and set about developing its use as a psychological weapon of war. It seems that they hoped to place the plasma balls in the sky high above the enemy and then speak to them—telling them, among other things, that their war was unjust or they should return home to slaughter their first-born. The military denied the experiments (as, of course, it would) and scientists were sceptical about whether such a phenomenon was possible. So apocryphal it remains…

  Cold War technology on a plate

  Hot, crunchy pizza delivered to your door? More often than not, what turns up is a tepid slab of dough, topped with cold congealed cheese. But for those pizza-lovers who are too lazy to budge from the sofa, there was a brief glimmer of hope in 1994, thanks to high-tech military engineering. Claude Hayes, a defence contractor in San Diego, converted a device built for the “Star Wars” Cold War defence programme into a tray that kept pizzas piping hot for more than an hour.

  The technology was originally used in the US government’s Star Wars project as a lining for satellites that would defend them from laser attack. The material was a mesh of graphite fibres impregnated with a substance which, when hit by a laser, reacted chemically, absorbing massive amounts of energy and protecting the craft from damage.