What Pointless Experiments Have You Tried in Your Life?

[Pengwuino]

So what kind of stupid experiments has everyone tried?

For example, i was going to (but never got around to it) try to find out the specific heat of coca-cola. I also wanted to find out if smaller ice cooled faster then larger ice. So what kinda stupid or pointless or nearly pointless experiments have you done? :)

 

[BobG]

While I was on a remote assignment in Alaska, a few of my friends had an assignment in Australia. We all drunk to excess, then called each other to see if the room spun in the opposite direction in the Southern Hemisphere than the Northern Hemisphere. The results were inconclusive either because there are other dominant forces that affect the direction the room spins or because we were too drunk to do the experiment properly.

 

[Astronuc]

That would involve cooking.

I had to eat the whole thing.


Other than that, I had a chemsitry set when I was very young. We just mixed a bunch of stuff together to make the 'next greatest invention'.

It was rather 'toxic' - but no we did not ingest it. It just killed whatever my brother and I put in it. Probably a universal bateriacide, herbicide, insecticide and rodentcide.

I think we eventually flushed it down the toilet.

 

[wolram]

I found with a take off speed of 70 mph i can fly about 40 ft.

 

[BobG]

I found with a take off speed of 70 mph i can fly about 40 ft.

In what? And with what angle of take off?

At an intersection where the side roads had a pretty steep angle (at least 30 degrees) up to the main road, a friend of mine managed to clear a two lane intersection (about 30 feet?) to beat the yellow in his family's station wagon, but the landing didn't do the muffler any good.

I wouldn't have any idea how fast he was going - my life passing before my eyes obscured my view of the speedometer.

 

[wolram]

In what? And with what angle of take off?

At an intersection where the side roads had a pretty steep angle (at least 30 degrees) up to the main road, a friend of mine managed to clear a two lane intersection (about 30 feet?) to beat the yellow in his family's station wagon, but the landing didn't do the muffler any good.

I wouldn't have any idea how fast he was going - my life passing before my eyes obscured my view of the speedometer.

A 650cc triumph motor cycle, take off via unknown humped back bridge,
the test apparatus suffered destruction, the idiot experimenter walked
away just.

 

[Delta]

I wanted to test if the neutral line from a power supply was safe to touch based on the fact that the voltmeter only gives out 5V.

I took out my desk lamp from its socket and touched the metal instead only to jump 4ft and give meself an electric shock.

I'm not sure whether I touched the wrong end (i.e. live) or not but I'll not be trying that experiment again.

 

[kaos]

Put a exploding firework( some kind of green flash with a very loud sound) in a aluminium can. It tore up the can into pieces.The shrapnel almost got me . Did it when i was 9.

 

[JamesU]

mixed everything I had inthe kithen into agoey mess and then eat it...

 

[yourdadonapogostick]

open heart surgery on my chihuahua

seriously, it wasn't a "real" experiment. it was a math thing. i found the mass of a photon at different speeds. results: below c- very tiny imaginary mass, c-0, above c- very tiny real mass

 

[hypatia]

LaChoy Mist

1 tightly Saran wapped bundle of chinese food
+
1 potato cannon

= a bunch of angry neighbors

 

[Math Is Hard]

LaChoy Mist

1 tightly Saran wapped bundle of chinese food
+
1 potato cannon

= a bunch of angry neighbors

You are my idol!

 

[yourdadonapogostick]

reminds me of the KFC balloon wars we had at BBC.

 

[hypatia]

well I was only 42 when I did that..I'm much more mature now

 

[Math Is Hard]

well I was only 42 when I did that..I'm much more mature now

<snark> awesome!

 

[yourdadonapogostick]

how can you be more mature than 42? i thought you would know everything then

 

[Moonbear]

My first biology experiment:
When I was a kid, my neighbor and I dumped everything we could find and fit into the "trunk" of her Big Wheels (the little plastic box on the back). That included stuff like sand, weeds, bugs, we gave it a good stir, then let it sit for a few days until her mom discovered it. Her mom made us clean it, and we had to draw straws to decide who would open the lid to dump it out. Had to hold our noses to even get close to it.

 

[Stupid_Idiot]

When I was 11, I decided I wanted to make a stink bomb, so I got a plastic cup and mixed a whole bunch of different leaves, sticks, berries, and bugs, and a handful of mud, some Nair, and bird seed. It smelt horrible and the neighbors next door could smell it from their porch, so I had to throw it in the woods behind our house. It was seriously nasty!

 

[mgb_phys]

Breathing in helium gives you a high pitched voice
Argon is heavier than air so should give you a lower voice, right?
Argon is pretty definitely non-toxic, so it's safe.
So - you should be able to breath argon and get a lower voice.

Cue a bunch of physicists and a supply of Argon...

Volunteer/idiot appeared to be in "respiratory distress"
Someone thought it might be because Argon was too heavy and he couldn't breath it out - so he was tipped upside down and eventually recovered.

A chemist friend claims that Argon would mix so well with air that it shouldn't really have been a problem, so maybe the volunteer/idiot just panicked.

 

[Astronuc]

Argon is pretty definitely non-toxic, so it's safe.

Umm, while Ar is not poisonous, would could asphyxiate oneself by breath pure Ar without air. One breath of He or Ar is not a problem, but continuous breathing without air could be fatal.

Fuel tanks are sometimes inerted with pure nitrogen. Workers have died after going into such tanks without the proper self-contained breathing apparata.


And one more thread resurrected from the past (3 years in this case).

 

[edward]

Back in the 80's GM catalytic converters were filled with small pellets coated with the catalyst. I had heard from a friend that the pellets would eventually break into small pieces and clog the converter.

My older car was due for an emissions test so I thought I would take some action. I removed the converter and flushed it out with the garden hose. Some small junk did flush out.

I put the converter back on the car and expected to see a lot of steam when the converter got hot.

But when I revved up the engine what I saw amazed me. It created a whiteout that engulfed the entire neighborhood. After about fifteen minutes everything was back to normal.

 

[Jimmy Snyder]

how can you be more mature than 42? i thought you would know everything then

This reminds me of a saying. A child thinks that 50 cents or 50 years could scarce ever be spent.

I once visited the site where a battle had occurred. There I found an empty anti-aircraft shell casing with the cap still intact along with a bullet. I stuffed the bullet into the shell casing along with some tissue paper to seal it and put the contraption on a frying pan and heated it on the stove. It worked.

 

[rootX]

I was 10, I went to my grandparent's place.
While playing with their old tractor, I accidentally
released the brakes(or something) and it started
moving slowly downhill.

I managed to stop it without much damage
but I almost killed two kids .

 

[B. Elliott]

I took a spare turbocharger that was laying around and hooked up the turbine side to my flowbench which was powered by eight vacuum motors. I got the compressor to push four lb/in² by drawing a vacuum on the turbo.

One time while camping, a few friends and myself felt like getting a little dangerous and decided to throw an airbag from a car into a campfire. It did what we expected!

 

[Stupid_Idiot]

A chemist friend claims that Argon would mix so well with air that it shouldn't really have been a problem, so maybe the volunteer/idiot just panicked.

Lol I believe it. My brother was play tag with us and slipped on a playing card on the ground and started over-reacting cause he thought he leg was broken, so for three weeks he had to keep his leg propped up because if you barely touched it, he'd freak out and that would in turn tell his brain that he was seriously injured, so his leg would swell because it was told it was seriously injured by the brain. Pretty weird how that happens ^_^

 

[tribdog]

I tried to get a drink by melting a frozen 2 liter bottle of soda with MAPP gas and a torch. Most of you know the results.

 

[WarPhalange]

Delicious results?

 

[tribdog]

If by delicious results you mean lower property values and risk to life, love and happiness then yes

 

[Moonbear]

Welcome back, tribdog! Yes, the MAPP torch and soda bottle story is still a GD classic, told around the campfire to scare little children.

 

[Borek]

A chemist friend claims that Argon would mix so well with air that it shouldn't really have been a problem, so maybe the volunteer/idiot just panicked.

If I recall correctly SF₆ is even better for that, but heavy gases have tenedency to settle down in such circumstances. Putting volounteer on the head was the right thing to do.

There are videos of people speaking in low pitch after inhaling SF₆ on the web.

Stupid experiments... like brominating myself and my friend in a closed school lab? We were preparing to chemistry olympiad and procedure wasn't clear, so we pour concentrated hydrochloric acid over solid KBrO₃, we should have add water first.

In general I am pyromaniac and at some point as a kid I was doing pirotechnic experiments; it is a miracle I have both eyes and ten fingers yet, after one of my firecrackers exploded in my hand. I had numb fingers for several hours and many small holes in the burned out in my jumper.

For a stink bomb I put an egg in small jar onto heater in my room. It worked, although too early and not outside, but inside of the room. Jar was not sealed well enogh.

There were more, like setting my room on fire when playing with a candle, I was about 7 then... Nothing to be proud off