Chronology Current Month Current Thread Current Date
[Year List] [Month List (current year)] [Date Index] [Thread Index] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Date Prev] [Date Next]

Leidenfrost effect on prime time...



For fans of the Leidenfrost effect:
(and fans of pseudoscience....)

On Tuesday night FOX aired an edition of Guiness World Records (or the like --
I confess I don't have a TV) in which a man placed a silver-dollar sized dollop
of molton lead (900 F by the show's thermometer) on his tongue for about a
quarter of a minute.

A colleague taped it for me and I just saw it -- the host of the show made it
out to be a case of "mind-over matter" and claimed that the performer had spent
years learning to control pain. Why the audience wasn't skeptical of this I
don't know -- the host also poured some of the lead on a slab of bacon which
sizzled away merrily -- clearly pain wasn't the only thing that needed to be
controlled. The performer showed his tongue to the camera after the fact and
while I'm not sure I'd know a third-degree burn if I saw one he looked pretty
healthy to me.

For anyone who hasn't already seen it, there's a lovely essay by Jearl Walker
in the newer Halliday & Resnick & (now) Walker on the Leidenfrost Effect and
the (asinine? daring? have-faith-in-physics?) things the author has done to
investigate the phenomenon. When I was in college at Oberlin I recall meeting
a steelworker from Lorain who told me that there was a way of hazing new guys
in the mill that required them to place a bare hand on a chute over which would
be poured molton steel. This guy claimed it was safe -- as long as you
remembered to take off your wedding ring.

Yikes.

David Strasburger