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Ivory Toast
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Beware, I'm stooping to sensationalist science for this journal entry.
Well, now I know what happens when one puts a bar of Ivory soap in the microwave, and sets that household appliance on high for about three minutes. It's a thing of consummate weirdness.
Last night Kyle and I went over to Aaron's place for our bi-weekly game night. When we arrived, however, our host announced to us that he wasn't so much interested in competition as in irradiation. He and his wife had a ten year-old microwave that they no longer needed, and before he let the machine go, he wanted to put a block of Ivory soap in it and watch the mayhem he expected to ensue.
Sounded good to us...and in three minutes and an extremely aromatic room later, that one bar of soap had turned into something billowy, like a puffy cumulonimbus cloud or a lemon-pie merangue. About thirty seconds into the "experiment" the "soap that floats" started inflating, eventually expanding to fill almost the entire interior of the microwave. (Aaron's original five minutes probably would have been a bit too much.)
Once extracted from the microwave and allowed to cool for about as long as it cooked, the "soap" firmed up but still had a not unexpected fluffiness and pliability. It's shape, though, reminded me a little of the spray-foam insulation that my parents had "injected" into the house back in the 80s to fill up the space between vinyl siding and original wood exterior. (IVORY would have been a better solution -- I doubt the soap is nearly as carcinogenic.)
The marshmallows we tried as an encore weren't nearly as entertaining...
***
Original link for text below:
The September 1995 SCIENCE SCOPE magazine described a demonstration experiment in which one regular-sized bar of Ivory Soap was placed in a microwave oven for two minutes. The soap forms a rigid, irregular, "cumulus" extrusion approximately 3X in size. Ivory provides a more dramatic effect compared to other brands.
Proctor and Gamble advertises Ivory Soap to be 99-44/100% pure. It contains vegetable oils, animal fats, fragrance and, of course, the whipped air that provides its famous buoyancy ("The soap that floats!").
Well, now I know what happens when one puts a bar of Ivory soap in the microwave, and sets that household appliance on high for about three minutes. It's a thing of consummate weirdness.
Last night Kyle and I went over to Aaron's place for our bi-weekly game night. When we arrived, however, our host announced to us that he wasn't so much interested in competition as in irradiation. He and his wife had a ten year-old microwave that they no longer needed, and before he let the machine go, he wanted to put a block of Ivory soap in it and watch the mayhem he expected to ensue.
Sounded good to us...and in three minutes and an extremely aromatic room later, that one bar of soap had turned into something billowy, like a puffy cumulonimbus cloud or a lemon-pie merangue. About thirty seconds into the "experiment" the "soap that floats" started inflating, eventually expanding to fill almost the entire interior of the microwave. (Aaron's original five minutes probably would have been a bit too much.)
Once extracted from the microwave and allowed to cool for about as long as it cooked, the "soap" firmed up but still had a not unexpected fluffiness and pliability. It's shape, though, reminded me a little of the spray-foam insulation that my parents had "injected" into the house back in the 80s to fill up the space between vinyl siding and original wood exterior. (IVORY would have been a better solution -- I doubt the soap is nearly as carcinogenic.)
The marshmallows we tried as an encore weren't nearly as entertaining...
***
Original link for text below:
The September 1995 SCIENCE SCOPE magazine described a demonstration experiment in which one regular-sized bar of Ivory Soap was placed in a microwave oven for two minutes. The soap forms a rigid, irregular, "cumulus" extrusion approximately 3X in size. Ivory provides a more dramatic effect compared to other brands.
Proctor and Gamble advertises Ivory Soap to be 99-44/100% pure. It contains vegetable oils, animal fats, fragrance and, of course, the whipped air that provides its famous buoyancy ("The soap that floats!").
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