Why does ketchup dissolve aluminum foil? June 1982 http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a1_121a.html
Try putting some ketchup on aluminum foil. It doesn’t dissolve the foil. (Well, I tried this for a few days and it didn’t dissolve.)
Now try putting a meatloaf in a steel pan, then covering this pan with aluminum foil so that the foil touches the top of the meatloaf. (Or instead of a meatloaf, try using wads of paper towel soaked with salt water.) Wherever the aluminum foil touches the meatloaf (or touches the wet paper,) the foil is dissolved into grey mush after a couple of days.
See what’s happening? The steel and aluminum form the two plates of a shorted-out battery, with the meatloaf as the electrolyte. As the charges flow, the aluminum plate corrodes.
Now place a layer of plastic wrap along the edge of the steel pan and replace the aluminum foil. The foil must not touch the steel (but it should still touch the meatloaf.) Watch for a couple of days. The foil is no longer dissolved where it touches the meatloaf. Now connect a wire between the steel and the aluminum foil. Within a few hours you’ll see corrosion holes in the foil.
In physics demonstration community, this is known as the “lasagna cell” effect, since it’s usually noticed with wide steel lasagna pans. To avoid the problem, just cover your lasagna with plastic wrap.
This one’s pretty obscure, so it’s not amazing that they didn’t hit on the right answer. Eerily they mentioned foil-on-amalgam tooth fillings, which is the answer to the meatloaf problem! So close! But there’s no mention of meatloaf electrolysis, or the need for a steel meatloaf pan.
Oh yeah? Then why does my wife’s potato salad in a plastic bowl dissolve aluminum foil? (I know, I know, I just wanted to plug my wife’s potato salad. It’s the I’ve ever had but you definitely need to insulate it.)
Are you saying that you don’t believe all those people really saw it, because of snopes’ comment that the show had not been rebroadcast? Or that they seemed to describe the couple as black? Although the wife looks “white,” the husband looks kind of swarthy. He’s probably not of pure African descent, but I can see how someone would call him “black.” I think many of these people did see the show rebroadcast, and possibly many others just thought they did because they heard about it.
A friend had been looking for some smoke for some time (it was long ago I will not make up or pretend to remember how long - it does not matter).
He finally got his hands on some and began to de-seed some of the smoke on the newspaper ad, laughing and suggesting that I take a picture of him with his own sign that reads NOT ALL THAT DRY.
This person had failed to pay for a ticket he had received and the police were looking for him. While he was playing with his smoke, on the news paper ad in question, the police come to his door.
Another person at the house answered the door and told the cops he was not there and they left without coming in.
It was about 1989, and the paper was probably The Washington Post. It was the only time I had ever heard of such a thing until I saw the bill board thing on snopes so I had not been influenced by any thing other than my own experience!
samclem Perhaps there are lots of tough guys around and such an experience would not be memorable, but all I could think was oh great, I’m going jail because of my jackass friend. There is no mistake here.
It seems a waste to ask why would I make this up - but there are so many trolls that seem to derive some strange pleasure or satisfaction in purely fabricated stories???
Can we ask the Post? Has anybody even tried to locate the source beyond an internet search? I doubt the paid ads are searchable - especially from the late 80’s. Perhaps a micro film search in a University library? Since it was such a large ad, it should be easy to scan the film file. Make it worth my while and I’ll look for it.
I beleive the DEA message was alluding to their attempts to “dry” up the community of its MaryJane supply.
If the message was seen in the paper in June, the add would read “If you think it`s dry now wait untill October. DEA” Or something to that effect. Letting people in that community know that they are actively persuing dealers and users and will be making some progress in that area. This is most likely a scare tactic.
There have been threads in the SD about this if you care to search.
“Ohio
I live in the Ohio area and off I-75 just N. of Dayton and up towards a smaller town called Sidney & St.Mary’s the DEA or someone in the police force put up billboards that say’s " If You Think It’s Dry Now…Wait Till’ Next Month!”
Have they ever been wrong?
Yes.
I wrote them about this article on their site about the use of crusie control in the rain and sent them my response to this thread.
I got a e-mail back that is so many words said yeah you are correct, but your answer is more than one page so we are not going to use it.
::: shrug:::
If I understand the situation correctly, you’re the one who has something to gain from turning this up - you’d be a celebrity in the UL community. I’m not about to go spend several hours in a library doing your research, which I fully expect to be fruitless.
Curt, you are wrong. Especially since I do not really care that much.
“be a celebrity in the UL community” - LOL So what? That might hold water if I started the UL or was the first to make the claim but I’m not that person.
Actually, the Washington Post, The New York Times, The Wall Stree Journal, and myriads of other newspapers are digitized these days. They are fully searchable by people who have access to them. And that includes ads.
There are no such real billboards that anyone has ever found. We’re still waiting for proof. But it’s not likely to be found.
CurtC. I don’t think we are disagreeing about “up the butt.”
The show was probably filmed about 1987. It was NOT broadcast at that time. It possibly was shown as an outake sometime in the late 1980’s at the earliest. Certainly it was broadcast as an outake in the early 1990’s.
***I can’t believe this! My son just flipped to that episode 5 seconds ago as I’m sitting here writing this. Real life.
They’re flat-out wrong about their claim of “False” that “Gore didn’t claim to invent the internet”, and their logic was disturbingly Clinton-ian. At least their supporting data was reasonably accurate.
