Hypothesis + Experiment + Conclusion = Science

[cdave]

1) Hypothesis: You should chew your food thirty times before swallowing.
Experiment:
Split a bottle of sink de-clogger between 4 glasses, and cut a steak into bite sized chunks and split between 4 bags.
i) Empty 1 bag into a glass.
ii) Hit 1 bag with a tenderiser 10 times before emptying it into a glass.
iii) Hit 1 bag with a tenderiser 30 times before emptying it into a glass.
vi) Hit 1 bag with a tenderiser 50 times before emptying it into a glass.
After 4 hours sieve and weigh the remaining solids.
Expected Results:
i) Lots left.
ii) Some left.
iii) Little left.
iv) Not too different from iii)

2) Hypothesis: People can't divine for metal.
Experiment:
Stolen from Dawkins.
Experimenter 1 places a metal object under a small fraction of a number of buckets, records this, and leaves.
Experimenter 2, without meeting Experimenter 1 leads the diviner into the room, and lets them test each bucket with divining sticks, and records the result.
The experimenters results are compared.
Expected results:
The number of buckets whose contents are correctly identified is not significantly higher than would be expected if the selection was at random (this number to be determined before the experiment starts).

[Poll #1486717]

Comments

[del-c.livejournal.com]

What if the beneficial effect of chewing a lot is to get lots of saliva in contact with a large area of steak? Then the tenderizer mallet isn't a fair test, because it only simulates chewing with a very dry mouth. In the spirit of using household cleaning materials to simulate human digestion, you could spray enzymatic stain remover on 2cm, 1cm, and 0.5cm cubes of steak and test their subsequent attack by the acid. (if the effect of stain remover sprays is similar to the effect of saliva)

Aren't there marinade enzymes one can buy? You could use those and vinegar, and still have something edible after the experiment. The biologist Steven Vogel in, I think, Life's Devices ends a discussion of the mechanical properties of collagen with a complete recipe for beef heart vindaloo.

[cdave]

There's only one way to test that.

Make a grid of volume / type of liquid against number of simulated chews

HIT MORE THINGS WITH A HAMMER!