Frogs in Scientific Demonstrations
Frogs have been featured in studies of diamagnetism in biological organisms. As such those organisms were submitted to a large magnetic field (several teslas) produced by a Bitter electromagnet and found levitating due to the diamagnetic features of water (as well as any other substance that is). Apparently a frog was used for the following reason as described by a researcher: "We were amazed to find out that 90% of our colleagues did not believe that we were not joking that water can levitate. It became obvious to us that it was important to make scientists (as well as non-scientists) aware of the phenomenon. We levitated a live frog and other not-very-scientific objects because of their obvious appeal to a broader audience and in the hope that researchers from various disciplines, not only physicists, would never ever forget this often neglected force and the opportunities it offers." Frog levitation plays an important part in the novel Science Fair by Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson. Frog levitation also guaranteed the 2000 IgNobel prize in physics to Michael Berry and to 2010 Nobel Laureate in Physics Andre Geim.
Further information: Magnetic levitationRead more about this topic: Frogs In Popular Culture
Famous quotes containing the words frogs in, frogs and/or scientific:
“Concord is just as idiotic as ever in relation to the spirits and their knockings. Most people here believe in a spiritual world ... in spirits which the very bullfrogs in our meadows would blackball. Their evil genius is seeing how low it can degrade them. The hooting of owls, the croaking of frogs, is celestial wisdom in comparison.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The standards of His Majesty’s taste made all those ladies who aspired to his favour, and who were near the Statutable size, strain and swell themselves, like the frogs in the fable, to rival and bulk and dignity of the ox. Some succeeded, and others burst.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)
“Men, forever tempted to lift the veil of the future—with the aid of computers or horoscopes or the intestines of sacrificial animals—have a worse record to show in these “sciences” than in almost any scientific endeavor.”
—Hannah Arendt (1906–1975)