My brother told me about a device that messes up people’s balance by using coffee stirrers in a cup held up against the ear. He says it throws off the person’s inner ear and disrupts their balance. The coffee stirrers he was thinking of are the littel red ones that look like skooshed straws. Would such a thing actually work?
Thanks!
Yeah, when you put the cup with the coffee stirrers up to the ear, the scalding joe that pours out makes them fall down! It’s hilarious!
Sorry.
Ha.
I mean like a cup packed with them.
I think he’s probably thinking about this effect here, only here it’s demonstrated with a chopstick instead of a coffee stirrer thingie.
…near the bottom, under the heading “When will I learn”.
And while we’re at it, when will I learn to stop hitting the “Post reply” button when I mean to hit the “Preview reply” button?
He says he thinks he read it in the Anarchist’s cookbook or a similar publication. And I need an excuse to bump this.
Well, dang, I can’t find it. I sort of remember hearing that, too, and IIRC the way it was supposed to work was that on some people, it momentarily disrupts the sound feedback you get from the rest of the world from that side of your head and you can feel dizzy for a moment. A cup full of plastic coffee stirrers is supposed to block out the sound waves differently than, say, a book held up to your ear. Or something like that. That’s all I remember.
Shoot.
It sounds like it’s kind of the same thing as in Cecil’s linked column, about the intersection of two wavefronts.