Uncle John’s 24-Karat Gold Bathroom Reader® (20 page)

4.
Tokyo-X

4 DEFUNCT BOY SCOUT MERIT BADGES

1.
Taxidermy

2.
Invention

3.
Blacksmithing

4.
Beekeeping

THE 10 PLAGUES OF EGYPT

1.
Blood (the waters of the Nile turned into blood)

2.
Frogs

3.
Lice

4.
Flies

5.
Diseased livestock

6.
Boils

7.
Hail (mixed with fire)

8.
Locusts

9.
Darkness

10.
Death of the firstborn (of all Egyptians
and
their livestock)

3 NICKNAMES FOR THE DEVIL

1.
Old Scratch

2.
Hornie

3.
Father of Lies

5 MOST COMMON TRANSPLANT SURGERIES

1.
Cornea

2.
Muscle graft

3.
Kidney

4.
Liver

5.
Skin graft

8 ASIAN FLAVORS OF DORITOS

1.
Coconut Curry

2.
Tuna and Mayo

3.
Fried Chicken

4.
Winter Crab Pizza

5.
Winter Cheese

6.
Rock Taco

7.
OIive

8.
Corn Soup

SNOOPY’S 7 SIBLINGS

1.
Andy

2.
Belle

3.
Marbles

4.
Molly

5.
Olaf

6.
Rover

7.
Spike

World’s largest mall: the South China Mall, with space for 1,500 stores. (It’s 99% vacant.)

DO TRY THIS AT HOME

We were saving this article about home science experiments for our next
Bathroom Reader for Kids Only
, but then we thought, why should the kids have all the fun?

P
OTATO-POWERED CLOCK
What You Need:
2 fresh, raw potatoes; 2 shiny pennies;2 galvanized nails; 3 short pieces of insulated wire with small alligator clips at each end; 1 battery-operated LED clock (with battery removed); and 1 black Magic Marker. You should be able to get almost all of these items at any hardware store.

What to Do:
Use the Magic Marker to mark the potatoes “1” and “2.” Push the pennies edgewise into each potato, leaving some of each penny exposed. Stick the nails partway into each potato. Using the first wire, attach one alligator clip to the penny in potato #1 and the other to the positive (+) terminal in the clock. Using the second wire, connect one clip to the nail in potato #2 and the other to the negative (–) terminal in the clock. Take the third wire and clip one end to the nail in potato #1, and the other end to the penny in potato #2.

Result:
Take a look at your clock. It’s running...on potato power.

Explanation:
What you’re witnessing is an
electrochemical reaction
, or a chemical reaction that produces electricity. In this case, the zinc coating on the galvanized nails and the copper in the pennies are reacting with chemicals in the potato, resulting in the movement of electrons—that’s electricity!—through the potato, the wires, and the clock. Bonus: You don’t need potatoes. You can use lemons, apples, or bananas.

EGG IN A BOTTLE

Warning:
Kids, this experiment uses fire—so don’t do it in a barn full of hay. Or at a gas station. Or, more importantly, without a responsible adult present. (And don’t be sneaky: It has to be an
awake
adult.)

What You Need:
1 hard-boiled egg; 1 glass bottle that’s dry on the inside and has a fairly wide opening (like a fruit juice or iced tea bottle), but not wide enough to let the hard-boiled egg fall into it; a little vegetable oil; a small piece of paper (3 inches square); and a match or lighter.

First airport: College Park Airport in Maryland, founded by the Wright brothers in 1909.

What to Do:
Rub a little bit of oil around the inside of the lip of the bottle. Fold the piece of paper into a strip that can be easily dropped into the bottle’s opening. Ignite one end of the strip of paper and drop it into the bottle. Set the egg on the opening of the bottle while the paper is still burning.

Result:
You’ll be amazed...as the egg starts to wiggle...then squish...and squeeze through the opening, falling into the bottle.

Explanation:
What you’re seeing is a demonstration of how temperature affects air pressure. Before you drop the burning paper into the bottle, the temperature in the bottle and in the surrounding air are the same—so the pressure is the same, too. But when you drop the burning paper in, the heat from the fire causes the air in the bottle to expand—or increase in pressure. (That’s why the egg wiggles: air was escaping.) After the fire goes out (because the egg blocked oxygen from getting in), the air in the bottle cools down and contracts—or decreases in pressure. The air outside the bottle is now more highly pressurized than the air inside. High pressure naturally flows toward low pressure, so the air outside the bottle is drawn into it, and squishes the egg into the bottle in doing so. Once the egg is out of the way, the air pressure in and out of the bottle are equal again.

CABBAGE-JUICE pH TESTER

Warning:
If you’re not allowed to use the stove by yourself, find someone to supervise.

What You Need:
Stove; pot; a head of red cabbage; white vinegar; baking soda; pencil and paper; and assorted things from around the house

What to Do:
Chop up the cabbage and boil it in a mediumsized pot for 20 minutes. Pour the liquid into a measuring cup and let it cool. Use a spoon and put a little bit of the purple-blue cabbage juice on a white surface, or in a white cup, or just a glass if that’s all you have handy. Now add a tiny bit of vinegar to it. Now start over, and add some baking soda to the cabbage juice instead.

The human body glows in the dark, but the light emitted is too dim for our eyes to see it.

Results:
When you add vinegar to the cabbage juice, it turns bright red. When you add baking soda, it turns green.

Explanation:
The reactions that you are witnessing are the result of the substances’
pH level
, or how
acidic
or how
basic
(or
alkaline
) they are. PH is measured from 0 to 14: Water is neutral, with a pH of 7. Anything less than 7 is an acid; the lower the number, the more
acidic
the substance is. Anything above 7 is a base; the higher the number, the more
basic
it is. (For “The ABCs of pH,” go to
page 496
.) Acids cause the cabbage juice to change toward purple, pink, and red; bases make it change toward blue, green, and yellow. And you can now determine, pretty accurately, the pH level of anything you can dissolve in water, using the chart below, with the approximate pH level on the top, and color on the bottom.

Go ahead, test some other things: beer, yogurt, maple syrup, shampoo—whatever you like. Any colors you get, just try to place them where you think they belong on the chart.

You now have a simple, homemade pH-level testing system, useful for a variety of purposes. Extremely acidic or alkaline foods, for example, will be very sour or bitter, respectively. And, more importantly, the water in your hot tub should have a pH level of between 7.2 and 7.8.

Extra:
Cut some white paper into strips (coffee filters work well), soak them in cabbage juice for a few hours, take them out, and let them dry. You now have pH-level testing strips that work just as well as the ones you can buy in the store—and they’ll last for months.

A GROANER

Did you hear about the hurricane
that lost its force? It was disgusted.

Bears don’t raid beehives for honey—they’re after the larvae. (But they’ll eat the honey, too.)

SECRET INGREDIENTS

Great ice cream! You can really taste the beaver butt!

I
ngredient:
Sunscreen
Found in:
Salad dressings

Explanation:
Burger King’s Fat Free Ranch Dressing and Wendy’s Low Fat Honey Mustard Dressing both contain
titanium dioxide
. It has several commercial uses: In salad dressings it’s used to create an appetizing, creamy-white color; in beauty products, it’s used as a sunblock.

Ingredient:
Pepper juice

Found in:
Healthcare products

Explanation:
Oleoresin capsicum
is the active ingredient in pepper spray—when you spray the stuff in a bad guy’s eyes, oleoresin capsicum is what makes his eyes burn, swell, and redden. That same ingredient is present in personal products that create a warming sensation to let you know they’re working, like pain and itch creams.

Ingredient:
Sheep oil

Found in:
Multivitamin tablets

Explanation:
If you take a multivitamin supplement that contains Vitamin D3—and most commercially available adult vitamins do—you’re also consuming a byproduct of wool. The vitamin contains a chemical called
cholecalciferol
, a derivative of lanolin, a waxy oil that is extracted from sheep’s wool.

Ingredient:
Insect attractant

Found in:
McDonald’s cilantro-lime and orange glaze dressings

Explanation:
These salad dressings and sandwich glazes contain
propylene glycol alginate
. It’s considered safe for human consumption in small doses...but it’s illegal to use in cat food, because the FDA doesn’t think it’s safe for cats. Propylene glycol is also used as an agent in bug traps because it both attracts and traps beetles.

Banana split: In a traditional Hawaiian burial, the body is wrapped in banana leaves.

Ingredient:
Nuts

Found in:
Artificial fire logs

Explanation:
If you have a peanut allergy, you might want to stay away from light-and-burn artificial fireplace logs. The composite quick-burn material contains peanut shells and skins, which burn and become airborne in the smoke, and then can be inhaled.

Ingredient:
Beaver secretions

Found in:
Ice cream

Explanation:
The male North American beaver marks its territory by urinating on things. Along with the urine, it secretes a liquid called
castoreum
, which gives off a sweet scent. Castoreum also enhances the intensity of vanilla flavor, which is why this extract, made in the beaver’s anal glands, is used to flavor vanilla ice cream. (It’s not listed in the ingredients—it’s one of the “natural flavors.”) Trappers harvest the scent glands and sell them to additive companies.

Ingredient:
Animal fat

Found in:
Those ubiquitous thin plastic shopping bags

Explanation:
Plastic grocery bags are manufactured with an innate
slipping agent
to reduce friction, allowing the bags to be grabbed easily and opened without sticking to each other or themselves. What makes the best slipping agent? Animal fat.

Ingredient:
Hair remover

Found in:
McGriddle sandwiches

Explanation:
Both the maple syrup-flavored “griddle cakes” and the egg patty of this breakfast sandwich contain
sodium acid pyrophosphate
. Generally regarded as safe by the FDA, it’s used to maintain color and moisture in protein-heavy products (like eggs) and acts as a cheap alternative to yeast in manufactured baked goods: Coupled with baking soda, it makes bread rise. Elsewhere, sodium acid pyrophosphate aids the removal of hair, dandruff, and feathers in hog and poultry processing. It’s also an effective stain remover, particularly when applied to leather goods.