Friday, October 6, 2006

Kitchen Science 101 : Common Household Items Yield Explosive Mixture ... And More!

I'm humble to announce the imminent arrival of my Science Advisor as a semi-irregular contributor. He'll be writing an off-topical column for us every now and again, and I'm looking forward to it in a moderate way.

The "feature" he'll be writing will fill a space which is yet to be named. So we're taking suggestions; if you can think of a good witty name for a wide-ranging science feature on a cold and windy blog, please share it in the comments thread below. Big blocks of ice for the top three entries. We're also looking for a good graphic; public domain only, please. So if you see anything worthy of consideration, please let us know.

Behind the nearly frozen scenes, we're working on the first installment, tentatively to be called "Skewed As In Screwed". It's about the various ways in which scientific research can be (and is) ... um ... um ... oh, never mind.

While we're talking about science again, and further to my soon-to-be ongoing series of articles about the alleged Liquid Bombers whose alleged Plot was allegedly busted in Britain on August 9/10, I can't help but wonder how much longer the Department of Homeland Insecurity can afford to overlook the possibilities inherent in...

The Extreme Diet Coke & Mentos Experiments

What happens when you combine 200 liters of Diet Coke and over 500 Mentos mints? It's amazing and completely insane.
The first part of this video demonstrates a simple geyser, and the second part shows just how extreme it can get. Over one hundred jets of soda fly into the air in less than three minutes.

These guys are crazy and I love 'em.

But I worry about 'em, too. You sort of have to, don't you?