Here is our weekly round up of science news, where we try to collate interesting links that have a thread running through them. This week, we found such a funny story, that we thought we’d devote the whole post to the five funniest science stories we could think of. These might not have the same level of provenence that we usually insist on in our posts. Indeed we are in a local hostelry, recalling these stories from the deepest recesses of our minds, with nothing more than Wikipedia to back us up. The most we can probably say is thay we hope they are true.
They are in no particular order. But we will start with the story that is our inspiration for this post’s theme…
1. Fobbing students off with “It is obvious that…”
Many of us, at some time or other, have been irritated with textbook passages that start “It is trivial to show that…” or “Clearly, …”. Triviality and clarity are often in the eye of the beholder. The perils of pretending that science/maths is easy is brilliantly described in this post by Alec Nevala-Lee. It’s short and sweet, so we won’t steal its thunder here. But do visit.
By the way, we are not criticising the subject of the story – for this story to have gone into the public domain requires that he has done an admirable job of poking fun at himself.
2. Mad Jack, the 20th Earl of Suffolk (no, really!)
It’s hard to know where to begin with this one…
In the 1930s and 1940s, Germany undertook an atomic weapons programme. It relied on production and storage of heavy water (deuterium oxide). The Allies implemented a series of sabotage events to prevent Germany gaining enough heavy water to create a viable nuclear weapon. Jim Baggott, in his book ‘Atomic’, describes an event in which ‘Mad Jack’, aka Charles Howard, 20th Earl of Suffolk (!), prevented a ship from leaving Bordeaux harbour by getting the entire crew too drunk to sail (!!). Howard’s wikipedia page tells that he died performing his 35th bomb disposal. Having typed this, it seems impossible that it could all be true – so you might have to read Baggott’s book to check. But you won’t regret it – it is excellent.
As a sideline, the page on ‘Atomic’ linked to in the previous paragraph mentions two other texts that are well worth a read. The Farm Hall Transcripts are the taken from recordings at an English country estate in 1945-6, during the incarceration of ten German nuclear physicists. The conversations of the scientists give an amazing insight into the state of the German atomic weapons programme throughout the war. And Michael Frayn’s play ‘Copenhagen’ is a fictionalised account of Heisenberg’s wartime visit to Niel’s Bohr in the Danish capital. Somehow Frayn manages to make the structure of the play mirror the science being portrayed. There is a film version starring Stephen Rea, Daniel Craig and Francesca Annis, but the script of the stage play is very readable itself.
Taken together, Atomic, The Farm Hall Transcripts and Copenhagen weave a compelling thread through an amazing time in scientific history.
3. The Pauli Exclusion Principle
There is a thing in Physics called the Pauli exclusion principle. It sets limits on how close a certain class of particles can get to each other, and a physicist might argue that it explains all of chemistry. As one of us is a chemist, I would never say that of course… Anyway, the following story is described in ‘Eurekas and Euphorias – The Oxford Book of Scientific Anecdotes’, which is an excellent source of funny science stories. It tells that Pauli was in a public debate with other physicists, on a raised stage. One of his interlocutors became animated due to the vehemence of his disagreement with Pauli, and inadvertently pushed his chair off the edge of the stage. He fell into the audience. At this point, Pauli allegedly leapt to his feet in triumph, and exclaimed “Exclusion principle!”.
Pauli was noted for his intelligence and humour. For some more Pauli stories, go here.
4. The cavity magnetron
Also in ‘Eurekas and Euphorias’ is this fantastic story about Isidor Rabi, who won the Nobel Prize for his work on nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR). We described this in a previous blog post on analogies in science. NMR is an indispensable technique in chemical analysis, and also the basis of MRI scanners in hospitals. This story shows that Rabi must have had the admirable trait of being secure enough in his intellect to not mind appearing ignorant. He and his colleagues were working on the cavity magnetron, a device that creates microwaves, specifically for use with radar. When someone asked “How does it work?” there was much scratching of heads, until one member of the group announced “It works just like a whistle.” There then followed an awkward silence, until Rabi asked “How does a whistle work?” Cue more scratching of heads…
5. Excuse Me Sir, Would You Like to Buy a Kilo of Isopropyl Bromide?
Believe it or not, this is the title of a book! It is Max Gergel’s memoir of his time as an organic chemist. We found it through Derek Lowe’s equally fascinating chemistry blog “In the pipeline” (see for example ‘Sand won’t save you this time’ for a journey through the dangers of chlorine trifluoride). Please read it- it’s not just for chemists…
Here’s a typical passage from Gergel’s memoir, describing a visit from a person asking him to make the horrendously explosive pentaborane:
“He told me that we had been especially chosen as the only vendor with the skill, the integrity and the willingness to stick to a project once we started it. I told him there was a small matter of startup costs to put in a plant for the manufacture of a substance known to be violently pyrophoric. This revelation took him back a bit, but he proceeded silkily to tell me he was prepared to place a large order and my bank would do the rest… That evening I studied Schlesinger’s monumental work on boron hydrides at the University library and the next day told Parry that I was flattered but would not make pentaborane. He was affable, showed no surprise, no disappointment, just produced a list of names, most of which had been crossed off; ours was close to the bottom. He crossed us off and drove off…”
So I suppose this post was a bit lazy, in that we didn’t really manage a ‘thread’ through these stories, other than the thread of ‘here’s another amazingly funny story’. Apologies – it just seemed like too much of a good idea. You’re just lucky we didn’t alight on science jokes as a theme…