Friday, April 14, 2006

Marshmallow Peeps: A Scientific Model


I discovered this silly website a couple of years ago. It's still hysterical and especially appropriate for Easter week-end. It seems that some scientists (apparently with some time to kill in the lab) are conducting laboratory experiments on marshmallow peeps. They have an entire website devoted to their studies.

One particularly cute experiment was "the effect of alcohol and smoking on marshmallow peeps."
http://www.peepresearch.org/smoking.html

First, the peep was exposed to alcohol and did exhibit s
ome signs of inebriation, such as bumping into the walls of the swimming vessel:



Then, the peep was permitted to select a brand of cigarette and smoked without apparent ill effects:


However, when smoking and alcohol were combined, the effects were catastrophic:

Their conclusions: "The synergistic effect of smoking and alcohol in Peeps produces a rapidly exothermic oxidation reaction, leading to a chemical and morphological divergence from the wild-type Peep phenotypes."

The marshmallow peep appears to be an excellent experimental model for the synergistic effects of smoking and alcohol!

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

That explains what happened to me last weekend....

not_over_it said...

You can't eat them, so you may as well perform experiments on them!

*throws peep into microwave*

eyedoc333 said...

Not a PEEP out of you!!

Anonymous said...

That goes without saying.

*says without going*

eyedoc333 said...

http://www.peepresearch.org/vacuum.html

Check out the low pressure experiments! I think they've got some future peepstronauts!

not_over_it said...

Awwww! They're not so bad!

*puts one in mouf*
*spits it out*

*kills remaining peeps with methylene chloride*

Fantod said...

And so the myth of Spontaneous Peep Combustion is exploded...

eyedoc333 said...

Take them to Studio 54??

KEvron said...

"The synergistic effect of smoking and alcohol in Peeps produces a rapidly exothermic oxidation reaction, leading to a chemical and morphological divergence from the wild-type Peep phenotypes."

in laymen's terms: "who wants s'mores?!"

KEvron