Adventures in Research: The Scientific Method

My Curious Reading

Adventures in Research

The Scientific Method

 

 

 

 

 

Ordinarily, I don’t editorialize when I post an “Adventures in Research” subject. The stories speak for themselves. However, I’ll introduce this item with my own “Ball of Fire” anecdote. (Not the “Shower of Sparks” story, that’s another thing.) Some years back, I was setting about to make popcorn. I had the oil heating up on the stove. I went off pottering, and saw that, checking the pan, it had started to smoke. I snatched it up, the oil burst into flames; I then went directly to the sink, turned on the water, and blasted in a shot.

FWOOM.

I believe that’s the sound effect. Hence, the ball of fire; fortunately, in an instant this disappeared… Fortunately, without disaster. So, as I’ve learned, when they say “Don’t put water on a grease fire”, they tell the truth. But I have a certain sympathy for those who defy common sense until they’ve put it to the test.

 

 

 

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Balloon News

 

I found this story first in Gertrude Bacon’s ballooning survey of 1905. And when I find a curious story, I like to verify by locating a newpaper reference to it. Jean Francois Pilatre de Rozier had volunteered to be the first passenger in the newly invented Montgolfier hot air balloon.

After this initial success, and the acclaim that accompanied it, he decided to try crossing the English Channel. His brainstorm was to combine a hydrogen fueled balloon with a hot air balloon, creating, as he supposed, twice the momentum. He was advised against the plan, but persisted. The letter in the article describes the aftermath, the unnamed correspondent writing that he had himself examined the bodies:

“The two intrepid Adventurers were dashed to Pieces…the Legs and Thighs are broken in many Places.”*

 

 

 

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Frying Pan/Fire

 

Another item, from the South London Press, 9 September, 1899, on the death of Pierre Curie. (Having often read the final result of the Curies’ experiments with radium, I’d assumed he died in the same way she did.) The article says, of M. Curie, that in crossing a Paris street, he encountered a sudden taxicab:

 

“In attempting to get out of its way M. Curie slipped on the macadamised roadway and fell under the wheels of a heavy van coming in the opposite direction.”

And there’s the fate of Mr. John Henry Warner, himself a pursuer of radium.

 

 

 

 

 

*From the Derby Mercury of 16 June 1785 “Extract of a Letter from Boulogne”

(Correspondents were literally correspondents, in those days.)

 

 

 

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Scientific

Tear Gas and Salesmanship

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(2014, Stephanie Foster)