April Fool’s Day is not just about harmless and jovial pranks like having your uncle call you at 11:50 p.m. on a weekday to tell you his kittens have just died and he needs the number of an animal hospital that does cremations. No, it’s also a holiday ripe for talking about stupid and irresponsible science, much of it funded by your tax dollar. Enjoy! —Ed.

Snot Problem Set

Be careful when you blow your nose, especially if you have ever hit your head. You could end up expelling more than you expected.

In a report to the Royal Society of Medicine last year, doctors told of a man who suffered “persistent watery nasal discharge” after vigorously blowing his nose. It turns out that the man’s nose blowing had cracked a part of his skull that had been injured in childhood, allowing cerebrospinal fluid to leak out. Surgeons repaired his skull and sent the man home “with strict instructions not to blow his nose.”

What’s toast? Your research grant

In the European Journal of Physics, a 1995 paper related the tendency of falling toast to land butter-side down to fundamental physical properties.

By analyzing the dynamics of falling toast, the author calculated that a kitchen table would need to be over three metres high to ensure that toast falling from it could complete a full rotation, to land butter-side up.

However, based on the known physical constants that govern motion, the maximum safe height for humanoid creatures is also about three metres, making tables of such heights impractical. Thus, all humanoids on all planets experience falling toast which tends to land butter-side down, perhaps confirming “the innate cussedness of the universe.”

Asinine amphibian alchemy

In a 1997 issue of the same journal, Dutch physicists explained how it is possible to levitate some non-magnetic objects, including live frogs, inside superconducting solenoid coils.

In theory, the strong magnetic field in such a coil can induce enough diamagnetism in some materials to counteract the force of gravity. The authors did experiments showing that a live frog can indeed be levitated in a solenoid coil. Noting that the frog suffered no “noticeable biological effects,” they suggest that since flesh is levitated more readily than bone, such devices could inspire a new form of non-surgical, age-defying face-lift.