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Everyday science

Everyday science

Yo-Yo Ma serenades the LHC, frozen poo knife is a bit crap, when nature calls in space

20 Sep 2019 Hamish Johnston

CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is currently being upgraded, which means that for the lucky few it is possible to go down into the tunnel and have a look round. Physics World’s Tami Freeman was there last week and has posted some photos in her blog “Photogenic physics: CERN opens its doors to the masses”.

The virtuoso cellist Yo-Yo Ma also visited the LHC tunnel, where he did a solo performance that you can enjoy in the above video.

In his 1988 book Shadows in the Sun, the Canadian anthropologist Wade Davis recounted a story about an elderly Inuit man who fashioned a knife from his own frozen excrement. Apparently, the man’s family had taken away his tools to make him abandon his traditional way of life on the ice and join them in a permanent settlement. Instead, he created the knife and used it to make more equipment to facilitate his escape onto the ice.

Wade admits that the story could be apocryphal, but there is a similar story about a knife-making Norwegian explorer.

Now, Metin Eren and Michelle Bebber have tested the idea in the lab at Kent State University. Using their own poo, the anthropologists fashioned knives and tested their cutting abilities on several different materials. As Jennifer Ouellette reports in Ars Technica, the blades are a bit crap.

From poo knives to pee rainbows, astronaut Mike Massimino  has some practical advice for budding space travellers in “How to go to the bathroom in space”. Expect to train for the tasks here on Earth, with a camera in the toilet bowl to make sure you are positioned properly.

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