I cannot resist replying to this remark:
Jan Skibinski writes:
> Now, someone, somewhere could have written a paper
> "Isolation properties of sandwiched materials", but
> how on earth he/she would ever invented something
> of this sort in the first place or - granted that -
> how could he/she ever appreciate an importance
> of this little problem?
I would not be surprised to find this article appearing in the next Scientific
American.
Consider these gems:
"Finger-Length Ratios and Sexual Orientation," Terrance J. Williams,
Michelle E. Pepitone, Scott E. Christensen, Bradley M. Cooke, Andrew
D. Huberman, Nicholas J. Breedlove, Tessa J. Breedlove, Cynthia L. Jordan,
and S. Marc Breedlove, Nature, vol. 404, no. 6777, March 30, 2000,
pp. 455-6. [This yielded what the authors call "some surprising
information." From it they concluded that, statistically, it is possible to
ascertain people's sexual orientation simply by knowing the ratio of each
individual's finger lengths.]
"Why are Toads Right-Handed?" Nature, T. Naitoh and R.J. Wassersug,
vol. 380, 1996, pp. 30-1. [Sims, Andrews, and Young explore the method by
which certain fish "remove noxious material from the stomach." Called "full
gastric eversion," this consists of turning the stomach inside out and
draping it through the mouth. Wassersug explains that, "for the record, the
serious scientific answer is that frogs have to do this task of stomach
wiping with their right hand simply because the upchucked stomach always
hangs out of the right side of the mouth."]
"Effect of Ale, Garlic, and Soured Cream on the Appetite of Leeches," Anders
Barheim and Hogne Sandvik, "British Medical Journal," vol. 309, Dec 24-31,
1994, p. 1689. [This article won the Ig Nobel Prize.]
"Bed Rest: A Potentially Harmful Treatment Needing More Careful Evaluation,"
Chris Allen, Paul Glaszious, and Chris Del Mar, The Lancet, vol. 354,
October 9 1999, p. 1229. [The authors conclude that bed rest by itself
doesn't necessarily help you get well, especially if you are ill.]
"Pigeons' Discrimination of Paintings by Monet and Picasso," Shigeru
Watanabe, Junko Sakamoto, and Masumi Wakita, "Journal of the Experimental
Analysis of Behavior," vol. 63, 1995, pp. 165-174. [Another Ig Nobel Prize
winner, "for their success in training pigeons to discriminate between the
paintings of Picasso and those of Monet."]
So, no matter what your problem, rest assured that, sometime, somewhere,
somewhy, a scientist has probably already reported on it.
[These citations are courtesy of the Annals of Improbable Research,
http://www.improbable.com.]
--
Frank Atanassow, Dept. of Computer Science, Utrecht University
Padualaan 14, PO Box 80.089, 3508 TB Utrecht, Netherlands
Tel +31 (030) 253-1012, Fax +31 (030) 251-3791
