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To Boldly Go Where No Mento Has Gone Before
rjwoodhead writes "This past weekend, my entire family learned what it's like to float in freefall aboard G-Force One (recently featured on the Mythbusters' Moon Hoax show). Being science-lovers, we wanted to do some kind of original experiment. So we decided to test whether the Diet Coke & Mentos reaction was affected by the lack of bubble convection in microgravity. At the link you can find the story of how the experiment evolved and how we talked Space Adventures into letting us fool around with sticky and corrosive cola and candy inside their nice clean airplane, as well as high-speed video of the results."
From problems with the camera to issues getting a mento and coke together. Add in some residual gravity, and it was a complete failure.
It was experimentation - not a failure. The blog says they're working on improving the design for next time - this is exactly what scientific experimentation should show. Initial postulate, experimentation, refinement based on results.
Far from a failure, and I certainly enjoyed reading about it and watching the videos.
Cheers,
Ian
Whatever you may think about the rules that the TSA enforces (and I agree with Bruce Schneier in that regard), the fact of the matter is that the frontline staff that you deal with have little or no freedom to apply common-sense discretion, and are often placed in situations where they don't have the time, or the background knowledge, to make an informed decision, which means that the default answer is "no". When you couple that with the fact that anyone can be having a horrible day, and some small percentage of people are jerks to begin with (a smaller percentage than most people assume), and multiply by hundreds of thousands of people going through security a day, it's a recipe for horror stories.
...and then he describes how they were pre-briefed and OK with everything...except some clay. Yeah, you heard that right. They were briefed ahead of time, there was no terrorist risk, and these asshats objected to clay because it looked like plastic explosive.
This has nothing to do with the people going through security, and it's only partly the rules. It is absolutely not okay for a TSA agent to "have a bad day" and do anything except apply TSA policies in a humane but consistent manner. If they can't do so on a "bad day", they need to find a different job.
TSA screeners and management absolutely LOVE the fact that despite being badly paid, undereducated, and almost always minorities- being a TSA agent places them at the top of the food-chain in an airport. Their words and decisions are that of god, and with a word they can transform anyone's business trip or vacation into sheer hell. Like the case where TSA screeners forced a new mother to drink her own breastmilk to prove it wasn't an explosive or poison.
They're also, in many cases, dumber than fenceposts. The guy whose Audi key was confiscated because it was a "switchblade", the Macbook Air fiasco...I'm sure there are thousands of similar incidents we never hear about.
For chrissakes, these people banned NAIL CLIPPERS and thought liquid binary explosives were possible to deploy on a plane because they'd seen in the movies that the baddies had these scary devices that mixed different colored liquids...
Please help metamoderate.
This is slashdot, I don't think 0 gravity is the problem...
This is slashdot, I don't think 0 gravity is the problem...
the part about this comment that i found funniest is the fact that it was rated "insightful" and not "funny."
Those of us who think they know everything annoy those of us who do.