scientific research is usually aimed at solving something important though that's not always the
case there's a growing body of research being conducted just because the researchers had
nothing better to do that day many of these elaborate yet useless studies are funded by
taxpayer money to release money that could have gone towards other more practical endeavors
10. how uncomfortable is wet underwear in cold weather a study titled impact of wet underwear on
thermoregulatory responses and thermal comfort in the cold was published in the journal ergonomics
in 1994 which remained the most exhaustive scientific work in the field of wet underwear
research to date it wasn't inherently useless as the study genuinely made an effort to analyze the
science behind how wet underwear affects everyday well-being and comfort levels for everyday people
apparently walking around in wet underwear most of his findings however failed to go beyond the
obvious eight subjects were made to wear wet underwear of different varieties and sit in a
room for stretches of 60 minutes and then asked a variety of questions about how they were feeling
the researchers concluded that wet underwear does have a significant cooling effect on
thermoregulatory responses and thermal comfort which is just a fancy way of saying something
that everyone already knew wet underwear feels uncomfortable in the cold shocking number 9.
what is naval fluff made of we'll notice a bit of fluff in our belly buttons from time to time
which is usually a harmless collection of stray fibers from our clothes dirt and body hair this
has never really been a mystery though still no one knows exactly what's in there due to lack of
proper research on the topic as this isn't the sort of thing most scientists usually bother
with but george steinhauser a researcher at the vienna university of technology though naval flint
represented the very frontier of human knowledge for four years steinhauser collected 503 pieces
of fluff from his belly button and examined its true nature he also asked a bunch of his
friends for feedback on their own fluff likely making for some rather awkward conversations
most of the study's findings were exactly what you would expect it is after all mostly loose
fibers from your clothes that make up the fluff and it's possible to collect less of it if you
keep your abdominal hair shaved number eight how to smash someone's head with a beer bottle
if you've ever been in or near a bar bro you'll know that beer bottles are pretty much the only
real weapon it's always good practice to know how to protect yourself against them as well
as use them for defense in case things turn ugly for you though we wouldn't go so far as doing a
full-fledged study on the topic as then seems well rather unnecessary however a group of scientists
at the university of bern strongly disagreed and decided to apply some science to the whole thing
they set out to find out whether it's better to smash someone's skull in with an empty bottle
rather than a full one complete with equations and formulas that just don't look necessary
whatever they mean after rigorous research they determined that an empty bottle releases
about 30 joules of energy when smashed against a skull-like surface compared to the 40 jewels of
energy released in the case of a full bottle not a very surprising and a wholly unnecessary finding
7. how different are apples and oranges really we've all heard the phrase like comparing apples
and oranges it's usually used to compare things that can't be compared we're not sure how far back
its usage goes though considering how different apples and oranges are in terms of taste color
texture and other parameters it seems like a fair uncontroversial comparison to most people
all that however wasn't enough for one james e barone a surgeon at the university of new england
he carried out research and wrote an entire paper on the subject concluding after hours
of carefully measuring details like sweetness weight shape etc of different types of oranges
and apples that apples and oranges are actually quite similar to each other 6. what makes us cool
what exactly makes someone cool you might say that it's subjective and it depends on the observer
what's cool for you might be totally different to someone else based on factors like where you
grew up your current social surroundings whether you can play the guitar really fast and so on
most people would leave it at that though that wasn't enough for ian hansen and
ian dar nimrod two researchers from new york who decided to explore the question further the study
involved students from different colleges coming up with words they associate with
coolness and then ranking their friends on those traits the findings were published in the paper
coolness an empirical investigation in the aptly named journal of individual differences though
none of them are very surprising our idea of coolness as it concluded is highly associated
with traits like attractiveness sociability friendliness and intelligence number five do
chickens like attractive people chickens are one of the most common livestock animals found
around the world though there's still a lot we don't understand about the little birds for one
do they have the same parameter of attractiveness for human faces as ourselves
some might say that's completely irrelevant and any effort wasted in answering it should be spent
on other more practical scientific pursuits other more inquisitive minds however would
want to explore the matter further for the sheer sake of knowledge that's exactly what
three researchers from stockholm university believed who went ahead and carried out an
entire study on it they trained hens to look at female faces and vice versa for cox and then
recorded their responses fascinatingly at least for them the birds overwhelmingly chose the more
attractive faces over the others now we can't say that this was entirely useless as the study does
find some similarities between how people perceive attractiveness among each other and chickens
it suggests that our parameter of attractiveness comes from inbuilt responses in our nervous system
rather than external factors like facial symmetry it would be an interesting point to make though
only if it didn't come from a study conducted on a few chickens and well 14 people 4.
projectile trajectory of penguin poop penguins are undoubtedly interesting creatures though
a couple of scientists from japan have taken that rather too far their paper titled projectile
trajectory of penguins feces and rectal pressure revisited is easily the most detailed academic
work on the physics of penguin pope we won't go into the details as we don't get most of
them the paper uses complicated equations and advanced level physics to analyze the projectile
trajectory of all kinds of penguin poop by the professional look of the whole thing it might even
be accurate the safest distance to maintain from a pooping penguin according to the study at least
is 1.34 metres that's about 4.4 feet it's useful information that again there was no need for such
a study in the first place as penguins pooping on people is not exactly a widespread problem 3.
how to minimize coffee spillage it's common to spill your coffee while walking though most of
us don't consider it a problem fit for rigorous scientific research it's really just coffee after
all as you'd expect from the general theme of this video though that simply wasn't enough
for the scientists jawan han a researcher from south korea extensively studied the different
properties of coffee and other similar beverages to understand how they spill while walking it is
perhaps the most phenomenal work on the advanced principles of fluid mechanics and walking even
if still quite unnecessary the paper concluded that the best way to avoid coffee spillage is
by walking backwards as it significantly changes the frequency characteristics of our hand motion
that or holding your carp in a weird claw-like manner though walking backwards is still the
preferred option if it can be managed number two can spider-man really exist is it possible
for spider-man to actually exist in real life spider-man fans as well as experimental military
scientists have been interested in answering that for a while though it's not the type of question
that should be answered by science spider-man is after all a fictional character and movies and
comic books are meant to be fantasized inaccurate versions of reality that's what makes them fun
some researchers though weren't convinced by fun and they set out to decisively answer the question
the best way researchers know how by writing an elaborate paper with complex equations in the
end they found that even if we were bitten by a radioactive spider and even if it does give us
spider-like powers they'd be useless in order to climb walls like spiders and other similar insects
would need about forty percent of our whole body or eighty percent of the entire front part to
turn into sticky pads number one skrillex versus mosquitoes we've all got our own take on whether
skrillex's work qualifies as what most people call sick music though if one study out of malaysia is
to be believed it can at least help us ward off some mosquitoes and maybe that's the only thing we
should be using his music for published in 2019 is actually based on a rather practical premise that
sounds or other types of frequencies could be used to check the spread of mosquito-borne diseases the
scope of the study however was limited to just one of his songs they played skrillex's scary
monsters and nice sprites at mating mosquitoes and recorded how it affected them as it turns out
the song does have a significant effect on their mating patterns and could even be systematically
used to keep mosquito populations in a particular area under control what they failed at explaining
however is why this happens or what parts of the song did the mosquitoes have a problem with
they make no further attempts to try the experiment with other songs or artists
either which makes us question if they were even serious about the whole thing in the first place
you