Category: Geeking Science

Geeking Science: Fried Chicken

Erin Penn

In March I mentioned if you ever wanted to buy me food, sushi or fried chicken would be best. I should specify good fried chicken, with the meat on the bone. Pieces parts mashed into a “tender” or a “nugget” is not fried chicken. And I am not talking the Tabasco-sauce flavored Bojangles or the overhyped, overspiced Kentucky Fried Chicken. Supermarket versions are dried-out failures dreaming of being true fried chicken but ended up in a nightmare of heat lamps. Church’s and Bush’s are tolerable to very good depending on the day, cook, and my desperation.

If you are in Charlotte, the peanut-oil cooked Price’s Chicken Coop is the best.

I could wax poetic about fried chicken, or you can just listen to Queen’s One Vision – “One flesh, one bone, one true religion.” Hmmm. Fried Chicken.

So why does Price beat out KFC and Bo-time? The perfect crunch.

The perfect cook too. The wonderful nutty, buttery, taste of fat-chained polymers after deep frying. Price’s has it down to a mass-produced science. Price’s fortunately for my waistline is 45 minutes away, awkward to get to, has no parking, and is not a eat-in restaurant.

Inverse Science did an excellent write up about the chemistry of creating Fried Chicken and the biology of why we like eating fried chicken on June 20, 2017: The Noisy Science of Why Crispy Fried Chicken is Delicious. Watch it and geek about science and food at the same time!

Geeking Science: Building Memories

Erin Penn

Image courtesy of Ambro at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Hop on Pop. I read and read and read as a kid. And when I became old enough to babysit, my sisters made me read Fox in Socks over and over and over again. Mostly as a torture because I had problems with the tongue twisters and it would set the three- and five-year olds giggling. The limit imposed was three children books after being tucked into bed, otherwise we would have made the parents read all night. They gave us such power: allowing us to choose two of the books to be read.

In a recent article on Edutopia, The Neuroscience of Narrative and Memory, bedtime stories are linked with memory. Children want to hear the stories over and over again because they learn how to predict things … successfully! Basic scaffolding learning – do something easy, with a good reward, and go from there. Eventually children apply the predictive ability to things they never been exposed to before.

In addition to teaching predictability, bedtime narratives also teach the narrative format, which in turns provides the memory network with an organized frame to remember things: inciting incident, problem, resolution, ending.

“Hey, little Erin, tell grandma about the trip to the zoo.” 

“ummm”

“What did we do first?”

“We gots in the car.”

“Then what?”

“We wented to the zoo. There were elephants and monkeys and a butterfly park where we ran.”

Grandma nods, smiling. “That sounds like fun.”

“It was. Except when I dropped my ice cream. But daddy got me another.”

“Tell grandma why you dropped the ice cream.”

“The peacock scared me.” My eyes grew large. “They have the peacocks in the lunch area!”

Grandma laughs, clapping her hands.

“After that we went home. Oh, and had pizza. It was the bestest day.”

From the narrative format instilled through nighttime story reading, parents teach how to tell stories and share experiences. With a little prodding, children learn how to explain things to others and include all the important details. A very useful skill in adulthood on providing instruction on how to do a task at work, breaking down an accident in the house and how to avoid it in the future, and dozens of other activities where knowing how to arrange things into a beginning, middle, and ending is essential.

Reading to children at bedtime isn’t only about teaching the love of reading, but a host of memory skills as well. That is pretty geeking cool.

Geeking Science: Queuing Theory and Lavatories

Erin Penn

Image courtesy of criminalatt at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Lavatory Science

Why are there always queues for women’s bathrooms but not men? They got the same number of stalls, right? The same equipment? Do women just have smaller bladders and need to go more? And what’s up with that pair thing? You know, women going to the bathroom in pairs.

Answer – Science to the rescue.

Biology of the Bladder – Let’s start with bladder size. Size comparison can be tricky because the bladder is a stretchy bag varying in size from two to more than six inches long with a capacity to hold about three cups (24 ounces) of urine (Healthline). The body gives warning with the bag is about a quarter full. The amount a liquid is about the same for men and women, except when a woman is pregnant. Pregnancy prevents full expansion and signals the need to empty sooner.

Therefore the queues in the bathroom are not from women needing to go more.

Sociology of Public Bathrooms – Therefore sociological factors may be impacting. A lot of the “long lines” can be seen at retail establishments. Women tend to be the primary shoppers in the United States. With a disproportionate ratio in the retail environment, queues will be created if male and female bathrooms are created with the same amount of stalls.

Sociology of Additional Tasks – Raising the stakes higher, women disproportionately take children to the bathroom with them. These lengthen the queue beyond what a single small body would indicate because part of the process of a bathroom run with the child is teaching them the etiquette of public bathrooms as well as guiding the child into a better understanding of their body through constant questions like “Do you need to pee or poop? Can it wait?”

Finally, for the public environment, women are usually the ones changing the diapers. This crowds the bathroom further, interfering with the flow of people in and out.

But queues also occur where the ratio of men to women are more balanced, or even skew to male heavy. For example, restaurants and sports functions. The only time I’ve experienced no line and saw a long line for the men’s side was at a computer sale in a convention center where the ratio was eleven to one male to female (I counted the crowd because I had been amazed).

Mechanics – One of the verifiable differences between men and women during a bathroom run is disrobing. For urination, men only need to unzip, not drop, pants. They can keep things fairly private even with a public urinal as no clothing needs actual removal. Further advantages in time are created by the public urinal, which does not require entering a stall and closing a door. Each step takes times. Women need to walk further, turn around, close doors, then disrobe below the waist, and reverse all this for both defecation and urination.

Since healthy humans should urinate on average six times a day (with four to ten being well within normal depending on food intake and activity level) and defecate once per day (with three times a day to three times a week being normal range (Hansen 2018)), that mean only one in six times is a male doing the full stall dance (turn around, sit down, wipe) compared to a woman. Since a urination stall visit takes about one and a half minutes versus a urinal visit, which is just shy of a minute, a man urinating vs. a woman urinating time in process is about half again as long.

Mechanics of clothing in relation to the body and mechanics of architecture both increase toilet time for women.

Architecture – Speaking of the building itself, I’ve said a couple times “same number of stalls” implying same number of relief stations. The thing is, that actually isn’t the case. Most architecture plans set aside the same space for men and women bathroom. Since three urinals take the space of two stalls, most male bathrooms actually have more relief locations than women’s areas.

Tossing in the need for changing stations for infants, which only recently started being included in the men’s bathrooms, women have significantly less stations for the lavatory tasks while also needing half again more time.

Mathematics – Simple math indicates women need larger bathrooms than men. They need more space to have equal number of relief stations as well as needing more stations than men since the mechanics take longer. Using the same space model, the average bathroom wait is half-a-lifetime for a woman during heavy time use (like between panels at a convention) versus eleven seconds for a man. 

The science of queuing indicates changes need to be made. Men don’t like waiting outside the bathroom like a creep for their ladies, and women don’t like waiting in line when needing to pee.

Fixes need to be done. Potty parity is an actual political hot-potato (Wikipedia).

Geeking Science – Mathematics, Architecture, Biology, Mechanics, Politics. Bathrooms runs touch so much.

But how about that “woman in pairs” thing. Is it because of the line wait? I got a theory that I made into a flash last October – see Pairs. (10/29/2017)

 

Bibliography

Bladder & Bowel Community. “Urinary Frequency.” (undated) https://www.bladderandbowel.org/bladder/bladder-conditions-and-symptoms/frequency/ – last viewed 12/5/2019.

Dawe, TJ. “Why Women Have to Pee So Often.” Beams and Struts. (undated, maybe 2012 based on blog comment). https://beamsandstruts.com/bits-a-pieces/item/928-pee – last viewed 12/5/2019.

Ghent University. “Researchers study lengths of restroom queues.” phys.org. 2017 July 17. – last viewed 12/5/2019.

Hansen, Alexandra. “The ‘Three and Three’ Rule of Pooping Tells if You’re Normal or Not.” Vice. 2018 September 11. https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/j54xv7/how-often-should-you-poop. – last viewed 12/5/2019.

Healthline. “Bladder.” healthline.com. (undated) – last viewed 12/5/2019

Jones, Val. “The Bladder: Gender Differences & Problems Peeing.” edocamerica. 2017 May 5. https://www.edocamerica.com/health-tips/bladder-gender-differences-problems-peeing/ – last viewed 12/5/2019

“Why do women pee more often than men?” Quora. (answers provided 2017) https://www.quora.com/Why-do-women-pee-more-often-than-men?redirected_qid=20088773 – last viewed 12/5/2019.

Wikipedia. “Potty parity.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potty_parity – last viewed 12/5/2019.

Geeking Science: Nori

Erin Penn

Image courtesy of KEKO64 at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

My love of sushi and my budget are often at odds now my favorite sushi chef has retired from the local buffet. He was amazing, offering dozens of versions of fresh sushi, and snuck me sashimi on the side. Three plates of sushi for all-you-can-eat buffet prices. The new guy isn’t nearly as good; now the sushi is worth what I pay for it with no sashimi at all. The result is still better than pre-made grocery-store-bought crap so when I need a fix I return to the buffet.

(If you ever want to buy me food, fried chicken and good sushi – at different meals – are the way to my heart.)

Today’s geeking science is about how the sushi craze nearly didn’t happen, how science discoveries belong to the entire world, and how strange and wondrous life forms are.

The full article is available on Ars Technica: “How an unpaid UK researcher saved the Japanese seaweed industry” by Esther Inglis-Arkell, posted November 19, 2017.

Nori, wonderful, tasty seaweed – perfect straight or wrapped around vinegar-soaked rice with a bit of fish, was impossible to cultivate. Japanese farmers every year would put out bamboo and rope frames and wait for filaments to form and grow into large plants. No seeds, no flowers, no saplings, no transplants. Spontaneous generation, or so it seemed. Some years were better than others.

In 1951 production stopped. Spontaneous generation no longer occurred.

Americans didn’t feel the pinch since the Kawafuku Restaurant in Los Angeles, CA didn’t put sushi on the map until the 60’s, where it spread first throughout the urban centers by the 80’s, and finally to Chinese buffets in small Southern cities by the 90’s. But the Japanese lost a favorite food.

On the other side of the world, Kathleen Drew-Baker just completed a path to discover something wondrous. Fired from her teaching job because of the sin of marriage, she became a research assistant (in modern speak, unpaid intern). Common practice of the day required women to be released when they marry so they could pay proper attention to their husband’s careers instead of a day-job; more accurately women were expected to resign and then, if teachers, continue to work unpaid. But that is a different post not related to the scope of this blog.

Back to the amazing Kathleen Drew-Baker. She was poking around with a seaweed that grew in Wales used by locals for bread and soup. The seaweed grew during the winter months, seemingly by spontaneous generation. She looked for spores, thinking fungi. But the spores she found led to a pink sludge growing inside shells during the summer months.

The seaweed led a double-life, during the winter as a leafy green seaweed and the summer as a pink sludge hanging out inside a shell. Like a caterpillar and butterfly without cocoon stage to mark the difference.

Being a scientist she published the discovery in Nature on October 29, 1949 through a paper entitled “Conchocelis-Phase in the Life-History of Porphyra umbillcalis (L. Kutz)“. (Yes, she was allowed to publish under her own name. She wasn’t living in medieval times; she just wasn’t allowed to make a living at being a scientist or teacher.)

In Japan, a scientist ran across it and thought, maybe that applies to the Japanese seaweed too. He looked. It did.

No longer restricted by unpredictable spontaneous generation, the Japanese farmers have gone big business, industrialized farm on the seaweed. Temperature control, testing different shells, maximizing light. Each and every stage of the double-life growth cycle tested and maximized for production. Production on a scale large enough to feed not only a growing Japan, but the rest of the world’s love of sushi.

Cool side note: Every year Uto City holds a festival honor of Kathleen Drew-Baker.

To read the full article (explaining the controls used to maximize nori growth – because who wouldn’t want to know that?!?) go here: https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/11/how-an-unpaid-uk-researcher-saved-the-japanese-seaweed-industry/

Geeking Science: Bystander Effect

Erin Penn

I’ve set up a lot of tents in my day. Nearly all in existence take more than one person for the poles. I’ll like to think I would have popped up quickly and helped, but in the video people had also been assigned a task and I always attempt to complete my personal tasks before helping others. I mean, they assigned me a task for a reason.

One of my science loves is sociology, how groups of people interact. Knowing about the bystander effect gives a person the ability to avoid it within themselves and work around it in other circumstances.

CPR classes teaches the participants to point to individual bystanders in an emergency and give them tasks; untrained people don’t know how they can help but when asked to do a simple task, will jump on it.

WRITING EXERCISE: Have something happen with a large group of people present, it doesn’t need to be an emergency. Choose one person from the group; how long does it take for the person to stop being a bystander and what is the tipping point?

***

Inheritance

Everyone was home for Thanksgiving. Grandma making deliciousness in the kitchen with mom, my two sisters, and a cousin who worked in a restaurant relegated to making the gravy. Dad and the rest of the gang snacked, watching the game after the quick touch football game in the backyard ended up being a leaf fight. Twenty-three people in all, fifteen staying overnight, made a very crowded house.

Perfect.

I love my family.

Even Zelda’s two rescue greyhounds which she refuses to board. To grandma pets are family too, so Oil Slick and Leaping Lance shared floor space with the crawler and the two toddlers while grandma’s Princess and Sir Claws-a-lot, Santa for short, laid across the back of the sofa to avoid the tail pullers. Frozen Kitty wasn’t a fan of large groups and hid back in the guest room with Evan, helping the boy read the most recent Lunar book.

I had stolen a chair from the two tables set up yesterday and stuck it between the sofa and recliner to watch the game. My boyfriend leaned on the back. I mean, not my boyfriend, we are roomies, not romantic. He is a friend, who is a boy, and had no one to eat thanksgiving dinner with since his family lives in Florida. When I told grandma, well, you can guess what she said. We both are on the biology track, working towards pre-med research, and the apartment is right next to the Nibset Lab. God, I don’t know how many times I repeated that explanation this weekend. It’s still better than him staying at the apartment staring at the empty walls for the four-day break. Yes, we have pictures, we just haven’t put in the nails between TA, lab work, and classes, so they lean on the walls at floor level where we plan to put them up. Maybe next year.

So Malik bent down a bit to whisper in my ear, “When dinner?” like six million dozen deviled eggs, a vegetable platter, and four types of chips weren’t on the coffee table in front of us.

“Four.”

“Okay.” He stood straight a moment and then leaned back down. “Anything I can do?” tickled my ear.

Not a fan of football I guess. Actually, I know. Basketball he could tolerate, but any other sport bored the crap out of him. For me I watch football one day a year, well, three – Thanksgiving, New Year’s, and the Superbowl – because of school. I played until high school, when the boys got too big for me to tackle. I still miss being a defensive end.

I turned my head to the side to whisper back at him, lips skimming across his shaved cheek. “Do you want to brave the kitchen?” 

He snorted, pulling his head back a little to speak against my neck. “How about set the table?”

“Hm. Aunt Judith usually does that.”

“Which one is Aunt Judith?” 

I really couldn’t say why we were whispering, between the game and the shenanigans the noise approached hazardous levels. But for this answer, my voice became even quieter. “She died of cancer in the spring.”

“Oh.”

Two plays and one commercial break later, the heat from Malik’s body shifted when he leaned down again. “It’s three. Shouldn’t we … I mean, the table needs setting.”

I looked around the room. I saw Dad and Uncle Derek and a couple other adults glance toward the bare tables, quickly bringing their eyes back to the game. The children tumbled and crawled over everything, unknowing and uncaring.

Aunt Judith would normally be putting the finishing touches on the center pieces just about now.

“Yeah.” I stood up and inherited an annual Thanksgiving task.

(words 621, first published 2/20/2018)