Strange Science

by Editors of Portable Press

  The festival, which lasts three days, began in 1976 with 37 sets of twins; today, more than 2,000 pairs participate. It’s been profiled on television programs like Nova and That’s Incredible and is mentioned in the Guinness Book of World Records as the largest gathering of twins.

  Here’s where science comes in. Having so many sets of people with identical DNA in one place gives researchers an opportunity to study genetic and environmental influences on human beings. For example, they study the effects of medicine, cosmetics, and everyday products on twins. Even the FBI sends researchers to test facial recognition tools and biometric technology to try to distinguish between twins who have identical faces and DNA.

  ACCIDENTAL DISCOVERY:

  PHOTOGRAPHY

  The camera obscura, described by Leonardo da Vinci in the early 1500s, was widely used in the early 1800s—but not for photographs; the technology for photos didn’t exist. People used the camera for tracing images instead, placing transparent paper over its glass plate.

  In the 1830s, French artist Louis Daguerre began experimenting with recording a camera’s images on light-sensitive photographic plates. By 1838 he’d found a way to capture an image using silver-coated sheets of copper.

  However, the image was barely visible. He tried dozens of substances to see if they’d darken it, but nothing worked. Frustrated, Daguerre put the plate away in a cabinet filled with chemicals and moved on to other projects. A few days later, to his astonishment, the plate had darkened; the image was perfectly visible. One of the chemicals in the cabinet was almost certainly responsible…but which one?

  He devised a method to find out. Each day he removed one chemical from the cabinet and put a fresh photographic plate in. If the plate darkened overnight, the chemical would be disqualified. If it didn’t, he’d know he’d found the chemical. It seemed like a good idea, but even after all the chemicals had been removed, the plate continued to darken. Upon examining the cabinet closely, he noticed a few drops of mercury that had spilled from a broken thermometer onto one of the shelves.

  Later experiments with mercury vapor proved that this substance was responsible. The daguerreotype’s popularity paved the way for the development of photography.

  That David’s

  No Goliath

  Michelangelo’s David is one of the world’s best-known statues, and represents the artist’s ideal human form—even though critics have long wondered why the “ideal human form” would have such disproportionately small “private parts.” David is 17 feet high and placed on a pedestal so admirers have to look up at him. But according to Pietro Bernabei, writing in the Italian journal Il Giornale dell’Arte, viewing David’s face head-on, his blank expression changes to one of fear and worry. This makes sense—the statue depicts David just before his fight with the giant Goliath. And in a bit of dark humor, it explains the figure’s “shrinkage”: Male genitals typically recede when the body is under stress.

  Superglue is so strong that a single square inch can lift a ton of weight.

  FLORA FACTS

  •Does Barbra Streisand smell better than former first lady Barbara Bush? Horticultural experts say yes, judging by the scents of the roses named after them.

  •The substance in poison ivy that makes you itch is an oil called urushiol.

  •It’s possible to grow bananas in Iceland, in soil heated by underground hot springs.

  •The trunk of the African baobab tree can reach a circumference of 110 feet.

  •An olive tree can live for 2,000 years.

  •What’s in a name? The Venus flytrap feeds primarily on ants—not flies.

  •As many as 179 species of tree can be found in a 2.5-acre area of rain forest.

  •Where does vanilla come from? From a bean—the fruit of an orchid vine that is native to Mexico.

  •There’s a rose named for Whoopi Goldberg.

  Generating a

  Regeneration Theory

  “The invention of models to explain what nature is doing is the most creative thing scientists do,” explains Michael Levin of Tufts University. So he decided to teach a computer how to invent its own model. Along with fellow computer scientist Daniel Lobo, Levin fed into a computer all of the data they could find on flatworms. They were trying to solve a mystery that so far has eluded biologists: how flatworms can regenerate into more flatworms when they’re sliced into little pieces.

  The computer spent three days crunching the numbers and processing the data until—all on its own—it came up with the flatworm’s “core genetic network” that finally explained how the invertebrate could regenerate. “None of us could have come up with this model,” Levin told Popular Mechanics in 2015. “We have failed to do so after over a century of effort.” His ultimate goal is to teach a computer how to find the solution to an even bigger mystery that has baffled scientists for centuries: how to cure cancer.

  7 NATURAL

  WONDERS OF

  THE WORLD

  THE GRAND CANYON was created by millions of years of wind and water erosion from the Colorado River. The rocks of the canyon walls range from 250 million years old at the top to more than 2 billion years old at the bottom.

  PARICUTÍN VOLCANO erupted out of a Mexican cornfield on February 20, 1943. Located about 200 miles west of Mexico City, Paricutín grew to 10,400 feet in just nine years, making it the fastest-growing volcano in recorded history. Its lava destroyed two villages and hundreds of homes, but caused no fatalities.

  THE HARBOR OF RIO DE JANEIRO in Brazil was first seen by Portuguese explorers on January 1, 1502. The Portuguese thought they had reached the mouth of an immense river and named their find River of January—Rio de Janeiro. The spectacular harbor’s landmarks include Sugarloaf Mountain and Corcovado Peak.

  THE NORTHERN LIGHTS, also called the auora borealis, occur when solar particles from the Sun collide with gases in Earth’s atmosphere. The energy created by the collision is emitted as photons (light particles)—and we see lights dancing across the sky.

  VICTORIA FALLS, the world’s largest waterfall, lies between Zambia and Zimbabwe in Africa, where the Zambezi River plummets 420 feet over a cliff. Although Scottish missionary David Livingstone named it after the Queen of England, native Africans call it Mosi-oa-Tunya (“The Smoke that Thunders”), because the falling water makes thunderous clouds of spray.

  THE HIMALAYAS, the highest mountain range in the world, formed about 60 million years ago. India (at that time a separate continent) rapidly moved northward and collided with Asia, and the crash produced these amazing mountains. The famous Mt. Everest stands above the other peaks at 29,035 feet, making it the tallest on the planet.

  THE GREAT BARRIER REEF off the coast of Queensland, Australia, is the world’s largest coral reef, with an estimated 1,500 species of fish and 350 types of coral. It is over 1,400 miles long and can be seen from space!

  TECHNOLOGICAL DIFFICULTIES

  Man created technology in his own

  image…which is why it’s so weird.

  WORST APP EVER

  There are thousands of apps for Apple’s iPhone, but none drew more complaints than the “Baby Shaker”: a video game in which the player shakes the iPhone until a virtual baby stops crying (then two red Xs appear over its eyes). The app was only available for download for two days in 2009 before Apple removed it. The company explained that it should have been rejected before it was added, but someone must have “missed it.” Alex Talbot, the app’s designer, admitted, “Yes, the Baby Shaker was a bad idea.”

  HOW TO GET ON THE NEWS

  Say, what’s that suspicious-looking device? It’s the “Suspicious Looking Device”! This real product you can purchase is a darkly humorous response to the increased fears of terrorism in recent years. What is the SLD? It’s a red metal box with dotted lights, a small screen, a buzzer, and whirring motor. What does it do? Nothing. It’s just supposed to appear suspicious. So if you want to see your name in the headlines, just place the SLD in front of your
local police station.

  Can You Dig It?

  On page 43, we told you about the fascinating applications of nano-gold, particles of gold so small that they measure in nanometers. (A million nanometers could line up single file across the head of a pin!) But where does nano-gold come from?

  Currently, scientists must make their own nano-gold by dissolving larger pieces of gold and growing nanocrystals. That may soon change. A research team has found nano-gold in western Australian clay. The area’s salty, acidic water dissolves gold deposits in the clay and redeposits them in masses of gold nanoparticles. But finding extractable deposits isn’t easy. “Gold nanoparticles are transparent and effectively invisible,” explains lead scientist Dr. Rob Hough. Why bother? Invisible gold—just like the kind you can see—is worth $1,500 an ounce and is projected to rise to $15,000 per ounce by 2020. All you have to do is find it.

  MILK AND

  MICROBES

  Louis Pasteur wasn’t much of a student in his youth, but he developed an interest in the process of fermentation when he became a dean at Lille University in France in 1854. In 1865 he decided that there must be some sugar-fed organism in wine and beer that was busy reproducing and giving off gas, a microorganism so tiny that it was invisible to the naked eye. This came to be known as “germ theory,” and it led to Pasteur being dubbed “the father of microbiology.”

  Soon everyone realized that bacteria, although you can’t see them, are everywhere and in everything. And they come in battalions, not as single little sneaky guys. You’ve got a bunch of them right now inside you: without them you can’t digest anything because they live, love, and work in your gut. They’re also what makes yeast work. Bacteriology was a shiny new science, and in its wake came a number of life-enhancing developments.

  Heat, Pasteur knew, kills bacteria; by experimentation, he found that heating milk or another food to 161.6°F for 15 seconds and then cooling it quickly killed the bacteria. That way, disease-causing bacteria can’t be passed from the cow to the human who drinks the milk.

  By the time Pasteur died in 1895, his name was everywhere. Almost all the milk sold in the Unites States and most of Europe was being routinely pasteurized. Result? A massive drop in the incidence of typhoid, diphtheria, dysentery, and tuberculosis. Today, almost all milk is pasteurized.

  Pasteur was also the man behind immunization. A large number of diseases are caused by an invasion of harmful bacteria. If the body’s own army of antibodies can’t get rid of them, you’re in trouble. “Why not send in reinforcements?” reasoned Pasteur. “Strengthen resistance by making the antibodies multiply. Theoretically, that would prevent diseases from developing.” And that is exactly what immunization does.

  Mixed-Up Geology

  “Wait, volcanoes are real?

  I thought they were made up.”

  —a high school freshman

  UNSUNG SPACE TRAVELERS

  FRUIT FLIES

  The first travelers in space were not humans, dogs, or apes, but plain, everyday fruit flies. In 1947, at the beginning of the space race, the United States launched a V-2 rocket carrying seeds and fruit flies in an effort to study the effects of radiation beyond Earth’s atmosphere. The rocket went up 68 miles to the edge of outer space. Then the capsule detached, the parachute engaged, and the capsule fell back to Earth. The bugs and seeds survived the journey.

  IBERIAN RIBBED NEWTS

  In 1985 Soviet scientists operated on 10 newts, amputating one of their front limbs and an eye lens before launching them into space. But why? The Soviets wanted to know if the missing limbs would regenerate in zero gravity in the same way they regenerated on Earth. In fact, the newts healed significantly faster when in space than similarly amputated control groups back on Earth.

  ROUNDWORMS

  When the space shuttle Columbia disintegrated over Texas in 2003, its seven crew members died. So did the silkworms, garden orb spiders, carpenter bees, Japanese killifish, and harvester ants that had been on the shuttle with them as part of various experiments. The only known survivors were roundworms called nematodes that were found intact in the debris.

  More “Science” Museums

  PAPER HOUSE MUSEUM

  Location: Rockport, Massachusetts

  Background: It took 20 years and 100,000 newspapers for the Stenman family to build this tiny house. It’s only one room, but everything is made entirely of newspapers. The walls are made of 215 layers of newspaper. Fireplace, chairs, tables, desk—you guessed it—all out of newspaper.

  MUSEUM OF BEVERAGE CONTAINERS

  Location: Goodlettsville, Tennessee

  Background: In 1973 Tom Bates started to pick up empty cans on the walk home from school. Eventually he opened a museum, and it was even listed in the Guinness Book of World Records for its collection of 36,000 cans and bottles. Among the treasures: soft drinks with names like Zing, Zippy, and Zitz, a can of soda for pets, and camouflage cans produced for the U.S. Army during World War II. Unfortunately, it has since closed, and we’re crushed.

  Ancient Art

  Petroglyphs are a remarkable reminder of past civilizations. Indigenous people made these rock carvings by scratching or chipping at dark rock to unveil its lighter surface underneath. Some fascinating examples exist in northeastern Arizona, where Anasazi Indians made petroglyphs that date to at least A.D. 1000. Despite being exposed to hundreds of years of harsh sunlight, desert winds, and monsoon rains, many engravings remain intact. The art includes squiggles, stick figures, scenes, and complex geometric patterns. Their meanings generally confound archaeologists, but many believe the Anasazi—who had no other written records—used the pictures to communicate important information about their village and its residents. Scientists speculate that the carvings may be maps, prayers, or even warnings that say, “Hey, foreigners, this is our village.”

  Some experts think that some of the petroglyphs function as solar calendars. The Anasazi relied on the angle of the sun’s light to tell them of impending season changes. When sunlight intersects with certain spirals and other carvings on the rocks, it acts like a sundial, letting them know when the days would become longer or shorter and when they could start planting crops.

  Although the human race is about 200,000 years old, one out of

  every ten humans ever born is alive right now.

  Skinner’s

  Box

  B. F. Skinner was a behavioral psychologist like John B. Watson (see page 192). His early experiments with rats and pigeons showed that they could learn quickly with rewards, otherwise known as “positive reinforcement.” His success encouraged him to try the process on a human being. And who better than his own daughter, Deborah?

  Skinner had performed his animal experiments in a controlled chamber that he called the “Skinner Box,” so when Deborah was born in 1944, he created a similar item: a glass-enclosed combination of crib, playpen, and diaper-changing station into which warm air circulated so that Deborah could sleep and play comfortably in her diapers, without the confinement of clothing or blankets. She seemed to enjoy the arrangement, and her mother liked doing less laundry. But then came the urban legend.

  It all began in 1945 when Skinner wrote an article about his “air crib” for Ladies’ Home Journal. Unfortunately, the photo that ran with the article depicted the baby in a smaller, portable box that was different from her usual box and was captioned “Baby in a Box.” Eventually, the legend grew to horrific proportions, to the point that a 2004 book titled Opening Skinner’s Box claimed that Skinner kept his baby in a Skinner Box while running experiments that left Deborah so deranged that she later killed herself.

  The urban legend made baby Deborah famous—and the book made grown-up Deborah furious. In fact, she’d grown up to be a well-adjusted adult. She countered the stories about her father’s experiments with a newspaper article entitled “I Was Not a Lab Rat,” in which she angrily refuted the book’s claims.

  “Science may have found a cure for most evils; bu
t it has found no remedy for the worst of them all—the apathy of human beings.”

  —Helen Keller

  DIRTY TRIX

  The Trix Rabbit is trying to brainwash your children. And so is Cap’n Crunch, Toucan Sam, and dozens of other cereal box cartoon characters. That’s what a team of researchers at Cornell University concluded in 2014. They discovered that on cereals marketed to kids, the characters’ eyes are shifted down 9.6 degrees…directly at kid level in the cereal aisle. That way, the eyes “follow kids around” (much like a museum painting). Test subjects were shown one of two similar boxes of Trix—one with the silly rabbit looking down, the other altered so he’s looking straight ahead. The subjects who were met by the rabbit’s gaze “increased feelings of connection to the brand by 28 percent.” The study concluded with two recommendations:

  •If you are a cereal company looking to market healthy cereals to kids, use spokes-characters that make eye contact with children.

  •If you are a parent who does not want your kids to go “cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs,” avoid taking them down the cereal aisle.

  When a Man

  Loves a Bird

  In honor of Tesla’s obsession with the number 3,

  page 333 tells a little-known story about him…

  Nikola Tesla wasn’t much of a ladies’ man, and rumor has it he died a virgin. But that doesn’t mean that the Serbian-born scientist—who invented the X-ray machine and a lot of other cool things—wasn’t a romantic. He did find love in his life…with a pigeon. And according to Tesla, it was reciprocal. He adored all of the birds that he fed each day in New York City’s Bryant Park, but there was one white female that was truly special. “I loved that pigeon as a man loves a woman,” he said.