The World's Fair

Today sees the reprinting of a classic textbook piece at the Science Creative Quarterly. It's actually a rebuttal written by a friend to an earlier piece, but basically does an awesome job discussing the various characteristics of fat (particularly as it relates to the hot dog). Here's how the rebuttal begins:

"Although your scientific curiosity is to be applauded, your experimental methodology seems exceedingly limited, and lacks many important details. Your report describes only a single experiment, with no repetition or statistical analysis, and no meaningful description of the nature of the sample (beef or pork? smoked or unsmoked? jumbo or regular?). Similarly, your description and discussion of results is purely qualitative and exceedingly terse. What mass of fluid was extracted from the hot dog? What was the initial mass and volume of the sample? The fluid is characterized solely as "fat", but no analytical details are provided to support this conclusion. Your characterization of the final product as "literally, a stick" was met with particular disbelief from one reviewer, who points out that a microwave-induced transformation of protein to cellulose would defy all known laws of chemical and biochemical reaction. Finally, your conclusion seems to be little more than "hot dogs have a lot of fat in them", a conclusion of little or no scientific merit in that it would be immediately apparent to any numbskull who reads a nutrition label.

"In conclusion, we feel that your experimental design and implementation would rank well below par at any high school science fair, and recommend that for your next project, you try building a trebuchet. Because trebuchets are freaking cool."

To read more (and learn a few things along the way), click here.