Where do all the spoons go!?600,000 tons PA!

[Michaelangelica]

This series of articles tickled me I hope you enjoy.
The amazing thing is the care with which the experiment was designed and set up! (and printed in the BMA)
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems...2/s1537135.htm
"
Missing spoons stir scientists into action

Australian scientists have proved what is common knowledge to most people - teaspoons appear to have minds of their own.

In a study at their own facility, a group of scientists from the Macfarlane Burnet Institute for Medical Research and Public Health in Melbourne secretly numbered 70 teaspoons.

They then tracked the movement of the spoons over five months.

Supporting their expectations, 80 per cent of the spoons vanished during the period."

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/ss/...s/s1601446.htm
"The disappearing teaspoons
Saturday 1 April 2006
Summary
Three researchers from the Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health Research at Melbourne’s Macfarlane Burnet Institute conducted a study into the disappearance of teaspoons. Their paper was published in The British Medical Journal and has attracted international attention. One respondent believes that purloining of teaspoons may be a significant contributor to the financial problems of Britain's National Health Service."

"One reader considers the problem globally. ‘The population of the Earth is approximately six billion,’ they write. ‘If we assume that only two-thirds of those are working at any one time, the other third being children, retired people and executives with seven-figure incomes, then our best scientific estimate would approach 600,000 tons of spoons disappearing each year. The mining, transport and ultimate disposal of this material can then be quantified as a contributing factor to global warming.’"

And finally from:
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/ockham/

"David Fisher: One reader in England writes: ‘This valuable piece of research will be circulated as urgent reading around my primary care trust where institutional tea spoon attrition may be a factor in the ongoing financial crisis for the NHS. Congratulations on an excellent study on this important topic.’

And another response from England: ‘I keep my teaspoon in a locked drawer in my office.’

Then there’s the spoon version of osmotic pressure with one reader writing: ‘The greater the number of spoons collected in one locale, the greater the observable increase in spoonification. A flow of spoons from high density spooniquaries to regions low in spoon density.’

And it’s a truly international problem with a reader in France reporting the loss of 1800 spoons over a five-month period in a French workplace."

So how is it in your neck of the woods?
Is it a world wide phenomenon?
Where do they go?

michael

[Jay-qu]

I would say socks have a mind of their own in my house - seriously you cant ever find a pair when you especially need to find one!

[Michaelangelica]

Originally Posted by Jay-qu

I would say socks have a mind of their own in my house - seriously you cant ever find a pair when you especially need to find one!

I aways buy black socks and although I can never find a truely matching pair;(they all have different patterns textures etc.) No one ever notices that they don't match.

I suspect the washing machine. . .
but. . .the drier has been looking shifty lately.

Do you really think this issue is more important than the missing spoons?
After all people have been damaged by lack of spoons (pouring coffee from jar, jar slips. . . artery severed etc
stiring hot tea with finger. . .third degree burns etc et

Michael

[Michaelangelica]

;bump:
I still love this "pure research"
Who knows what scientific doors -or puzzles- it may open up?

[Moontanman]

I think the underwear Gnomes figure heavily into this problem. No telling what the little buggers are stealing now days, spoons, socks, stashes. They exchange them with gnomes from other world lines to get a net gain in energy by violating conservation laws with the exchange.

[Michaelangelica]

Originally Posted by Moontanman

I think the underwear Gnomes figure heavily into this problem. No telling what the little buggers are stealing now days, spoons, socks, stashes. They exchange them with gnomes from other world lines to get a net gain in energy by violating conservation laws with the exchange.

Excellent, perspicacious, insightful, hypotheses

Terry Pratchett has a book where this is a sub-(?)-plot to his story.
They say (science) fiction writers have to imagine it before we discover/develop it !
I can't remember the title, but read them all, you'll find it
There are worse things to be done with a life

[lemit]

I have experienced the problem with spoons and--when I was working--mechanical pencils.

I welcome light being shed on the massive coverup of the supernatural forces behind these disappearances. I wonder if spoons are more likely to disappear in certain areas, say the Atlantic Ocean around the tip of Florida and, um, let's see, oh yeah, BERMUDA!?

When I was working, I labeled several mechanical pencils with my name. They disappeared just as quickly as they had without my name. I should have got some of the wildlife biologists I worked with to install tracking devices on them. But really they reminded me more of a Disney movie. After a year or two they would reappear, bedraggled, their lead jammed, their clips awry, my nametags barely readable. I'm not sure I would want to know all they had been through. Still, I cherished them, carefully watched over them, and brought them home with me when I retired. I haven't seen them since.

--lemit

[Donk]

It's all a capitalist plot!

... an ingenious scheme for increasing the sale of potato peelers. Although potato peelers "never wear out," enough are sold in two years to put one in every home. What happens to them? They get thrown away with the potato peelings!! All we have to do is help along this throwaway process.

They proposed that their company paint its peelers a color "as much like a potato peeling as possible." However, a potato-colored peeler wouldn't have much eye appeal on the sales counter, so they displayed the peeler on a colorful card. Once the housewife got the peeler home and removed the bright card, the chances that she would lose the peeler were excellent. "As most people wrap their peelings in newspaper . . . we figure that if they once lay the knife down, it will disappear and be thrown out. Next year we expect to double our sales."

Vance Packard, The Waste Makers, 1960

I have a possible solution to the sock problem: a while back I was redecorating a former student house. I dropped a radiator to paint behind, and found 15 odd socks. Dropping the other radiators increased the yield to 78 - and not a pair amongst them!

[Michaelangelica]

Originally Posted by Jay-qu

I would say socks have a mind of their own in my house - seriously you cant ever find a pair when you especially need to find one!

If you seach the entire voting/census/telephone records of Australia, you will only find ONE Mr. Sox
(That is true!)

I welcome light being shed on the massive coverup of the supernatural forces behind these disappearances. I wonder if spoons are more likely to disappear in certain areas, say the Atlantic Ocean around the tip of Florida and, um, let's see, oh yeah, BERMUDA!?

lemit finally, the scientific mind at work. Like a magnifying glass concentrating the power of the sun, you are concentrating thought processes into finding a solution to this baffling, world-wide problem (and probably also the MAJOR cause of Global Warming! --all that wasted energy in production!) The mind boggles at the enormity of this cover up. Big Oil do you think?
Didn't Zafod Beatlebrox make his extreme, unprecedented fortune--some time in the future- by solving this Quintessential Conundrum?

lolol