Watching Mythbusters episode about making an earwax candle inspired by Shrek made my ears itchy. So (TMI) naturally I buried my finger in there, and dug up a healthy amount of ear wax (since I didn’t do my routine after shower qtip search in a couple days [what you think I’m some kind of beast here?}). Anyway, I rolled the payload between my fingers until it formed tiny Cheetos-like structures and I dropped them into the toilet. Now, here’s the catch: due to surface tension the Cheetos float on the water (as expected). But! But, what I didn’t expect was for the Cheetos to… Um… Snap, crackle and pop? Not acoustically speaking but, positionally speaking. The little suckers seemed to move randomly on the water! Until they sank a minute later.
So, question: what are the mechanics of this. And where is the PhD dissertation explaining this phenomena?
This is borderline MPSIMS, but I actually want an explanation for this. At the very least I would like experimental confirmation of the phenomena from the qualified doper ear canals.
