Cool science

[tell-me-more]

I once tried to boil water in a microwave, and was amazed to discover that it seemingly did nothing for quite a while, then suddenly all shot out of the top of the cup in one go.

I also saw something in the New Scientist that told how you could throw raw eggs into the air and have them land without breaking - I tried that too and it worked.

Does anyone have any more examples of cool science like this?

[WaldoMcFroog]

Place a polo in the lid of a 500ml bottle of lemonade and screw back on. Puncture a hole in the top and discover how you are holding a high pressure lemonade squirter.

Mind you, shaking always worked perfectly well...

[OBonio]

Dropping iron filings onto a flame had me entertained for over 5 minutes when I was younger. Managed to use all my iron filings though which rendered most of the rest of the experiments useless.

[Clanad]

A note of caution... when heating an open container of liquid in the microwave oven, use caution when removing it. It may not, as you've mentioned, appear to be boiling, but the mixing or agitation caused by your moving it can cause it to suddenly explode, causing serious burns. Check this out:

http://www.patmedia.net/marklevinson/cool/cool_illusion.html

[Clanad]

Hmmm... try it again here: http://www.patmedia.net/marklevinson/cool/cool_illusion.html

[Clanad]

Well, good intentions... enter the url with the ending html, should work then...

[bongerman]

My favourite is the demonstration of osmosis...

Put a jelly baby in a bowl of water overnight or better still one of those "cola bottle" sweets - it gets about 5 times bigger and is so liquidy you can't pick it up!

[lepers]

how do u do the egg thing?

u need to put a plastic spoon in ure liquid so bubbles can for against it or something . . .

[tell-me-more]

The egg thing's remarkably simple Lepers. You just chuck a raw egg in the air and it always lands, like a shuttlecock, on the pointy end, and that stops it from breaking somehow. New Scientist said it needed to reach the height of a double decker bus to not break, so we threw half a dozen of them over a double decker bus and only one broke. It was amazing! Clanad's link is cool - the first link was fine for me.

[fo3nix]

Clanad, all those links are fine. it's just a problem with AB's display.

tell-me-more, be careful with the water thing. this is due to the container not having many nucleation points (rough bits that cause the water molecules to get agitated and let out energy), so all the energy builds up. upon touching the container, you move the water and supply enough energy to release all this built-up energy. can be quite dangerous if the water is sufficiently hot.

[boobesque]

microwaves create pockets of heat and pressure. never tried it myself but supposedly if you put ants into a microwave they can happily wander about avoiding the pockets of heat and high pressure which will frazzle the ant and will live until they get bored and suicidal.

[Aschenbach]

Microwave an old CD for a couple of seconds and see amazing sparkling effects.

Microwave half a grape

Or a lightbulb in a half glass of milk will light up in the microwave

(Courtesy of Adam & Jo)

[October]

Oh Clanad - green dot, pink dot, green dot, pink dot.....I'm getting out of here... back to to Motoring or Inernet or even the CB's with the crazy ladies....

[SpottyB84]

Zeb you can melt chocholate, thats how i all ways do it, its easier than doing it on the hob though i wuldnt recomend white chocolate as it just burns realy quickly.