[lightarrow]

My father worked as policeman (now retired from ~ 30 years) and he told me that once, many years ago, someone made pee from a bridge down to a railway, touching one line with that water. The electricity could so reach the ground, and he died.

[Bored chemist]

I thoughht they tested that onmythbusters and it didn't really work.
Also, I note with mild amusement that everyone seems to have forgotten question 2 et seq which probably answers it.

[paul.fr]

I thoughht they tested that onmythbusters and it didn't really work.
Also, I note with mild amusement that everyone seems to have forgotten question 2 et seq which probably answers it.

I never read any of the question, i just saw the post by Karen. I may be having one of my "thicker" than normal days, but having read q2 i don't see how it gives the answer. []

[lyner]

Q5: What makes Super Glue so strong?

I have never found super glue to be all that strong, actually. The good thing about it is that it goes hard very quickly.
If you want strength, you can't do much better than good old araldite (not the rapid) well mixed and cured at about 60^oC.

[Alandriel]

Q4: Why do mints make your breath feel cold?

The sensation of coolness is the major effect of menthol when it is applied to the skin or mucosal surface. This is a specific action of menthol on the sensory nerves as menthol alters the movement of calcium. Menthol also acts as an irritant and as a local anaesthetic. The anaesthetic response is probably also caused by menthol’s effect on calcium movement in the sensory nerves, but the irritant response is most likely a nonspecific action.

Menthol’s effect on calcium transport is probably responsible for the fact that menthol can be used to treat the spasming of the smooth muscle large bowel as observed with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS).

Menthol has a complex sensory effect in the mouth as it influences both taste and temperature receptors as well as smell. Prolonged exposure of the taste receptors to menthol anaesthetised them. While the nerve response after a dose of menthol lasted 2.5 seconds, the tongue receptors remained insensitive to menthol for up to 10 minutes. This was not observed for salt (NaCl) or other solutions.

No - I'm not THAT clever but I found this really good ref:  http://cdavies.wordpress.com/2006/07/06/is-menthol-a-cold-treatment/


What a cool thread!  [] literally!!

Must read back more when I have more time on my hands.

[lyner]

Can anyone tell me about this 'question of the week' thing?
I am sure I miss a lot of good comments and posts in it but it is such a pot-pourri  and un-structured that I can only browse and dip in here and there.  It must be the same for other people.
What is really needed is individual threads with titles - and we have that already- outside Q of the W.

[chris]

Hi Andrew

this is a vestige of an older initiative we had at the naked scientists. The new QOTW is featured as part of the podcast and the threads are labelled as such and discussed individually - they're in the feedback section. Here's an example:

http://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?topic=11159.0

Maybe we should think about moving those threads to here, although I worry that it might become cluttered...

A board all to itself right at the top of the forum might be the best best - what does everyone think?

Chris

[Alandriel]

It wouln't become cluttered / inaccessible if you index reference the threads.  []
E.g. have a 'master' thread somewhere as a sticky on top of the forum that then indexes all the other threads you want indexed. That way, people could just browse the 'master' thread and then find the individual threads by clicking on their crossreferenced links.

Quite a bit of work, I know - but do-able and very user friendly in the end  []
[hope I'm making sense here]

[paul.fr]

A separate board is a fine idea, so is that of alandriel's, i do think the QOTW needs its own identity, that way there just may be more in the way of participation.

[BenVitale]

Could you create a forum for mathematics?

[lyner]

Hi Chris
For someone who is looking all the time there is no problem - finding what you want is a problem, if you only look now and then. 
Perhaps it would be better to put all posts in the relevant forum and have a copy / link to them in qotw. That way, people could either browse qotw  or find the discussion on their favorite forum, depending on the way their mind works.

[kdlynn]

chris that sounds like a good idea

[lyner]

Perhaps the board should be, literally, just this week's posts. It would die after a week or be moved to an appropriate forum by our dedicated moderators

[paul.fr]

I did just notice this:
http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/content/qotw/

How long has that been there, dave?