It is time to sit down to dinner, but first, physics! Sometimes social obligations interfere with time that could be better spent doing physics experiments. That is why I suggest ten experiments you can do at dinner or at a restaurant while out with friends. These are generally quite bad table manners, so I add the word “annoying” to the title. I hope these bring joy to you and calamity to your dining partners.
Oh no, that potato isn’t fully cooked. Not to worry, I have a physics demonstration. Take a plastic straw and put your thumb over one end. Now stab it murderously through the potato. It will go all the way through (Fig. 1). This could teach us that potatoes have inertia, but the demonstration will fail if the thumb does not cover the end of the straw. Why? The straw is a more rigid (less bendable)...
