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Sucking Spaghetti by Jan Sand 2008-01-23 09:53:20 |
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Recently, somewhere on the net, there has been a hectic discussion of the physical impossibility of anyone sucking spaghetti. It is easily accepted that sucking liquid through a straw is explained by the atmosphere pushing on the surface of the liquid in the glass so that the liquid rushes in to fill the low pressure area created in the sucker's mouth.
Scientists around the world, no doubt, have consumed innumerable fizzy drinks and ice cream sodas at NASA's expense to confirm that astronauts (and perhaps even cosmonauts) could feel confident of ingesting liquids through a straw while orbiting the Earth and even on interplanetary expeditions. Although liquids captured in a container perform docilely the astronauts in free fall no doubt have a bit of a problem when their coffee escapes the captivity of a container and bobbles in the open volume of a satellite or spacecraft. Then the free liquid must be assiduously pursued with a straw wielding astronaut sucking wildly before the liquid bubble encounters a piece of valuable equipment that might unfortunately drown in coffee. But spaghetti is another matter altogether. The atmosphere has no problem pushing steadily and with success on the surface of a liquid, but have you ever tried to move the nether end of a piece of well cooked spaghetti by pushing on the other end. The spaghetti cleverly outwits your efforts by transforming the direct push into transverse forces and the spaghetti, chuckling silently, merely buckles. In general, with a soup•çon of hubris, mankind in general and especially those re-enforced with theology reject entirely the concept that the atmosphere has more conscious intellect than the average homo sapiens. So the solution must lie elsewhere. Religious people have always had problems with the average person with a modicum of basic good sense in dealing with miracles. Scientists have, with no exception, shown time and again that all phenomena conform rigidly to known natural laws. When something seems not to perform rationally scientists eagerly leap upon the unexplained phenomena and before you can say Jack Robinson or expialidosis they have shown that either a new law is revealed or some dusty normally ignored law has been re-invigorated and things settle down to normal. But religions have a closet full of historical miracles that they display on celebrated occasions to the supercilious eyebrows of many logical Doubting Thomases. Bits of bone and hair are preserved in the Vatican Museum from acclaimed saints that are sure cures for cancer and warts when a devotee gazes upon them with the proper attitude. Sometimes they seem to work or, like many current Chinese imports these days, simply stare back and do not vacuum the carpet or brown the toast. But when a piece of spaghetti dutifully wags its tail and leaps into your mouth when sucked, that is a solid miracle to destroy all doubts that a superior being exists. Probably, considering the context, it is The Spaghetti Monster. Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster Ovi_magazine Ovi-lehti Technology Science |
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