Somewhere Between A Bottle Of Nail Polish And A Can Of Soda
August 17, 2016 5:06 PM   Subscribe

FiveThirtyEight's "Science Questions from a Toddler" series aims to "use the curiosity of kids ages 5 and younger as a jumping-off point to investigate the scientific wonders that adults don’t even think to ask about. The answers are for adults, but they wouldn’t be possible without the wonder only a child can bring." Their most recent article is "How Big is a Fart?"

The stellar "Why do Boys Have Weiners?" delves into gender vs. sex, proto-weiners, and the sort of information discussed previously.
posted by chainsofreedom (39 comments total) 27 users marked this as a favorite
 
“How Meta is MetaFilter?”
posted by Fizz at 5:51 PM on August 17, 2016 [2 favorites]


Have to admit - I have wondered how big farts are.
posted by pompomtom at 5:54 PM on August 17, 2016


gas expands to fill whatever it's contained within, why are babies so ignorant
posted by poffin boffin at 6:00 PM on August 17, 2016 [13 favorites]




Like most 538 science articles, I found this a bit fluffy (no pun intended). While they present measurements of fart volume, they make only the most handwavey attempt to acknowledge the fact that the volume of a gas changes based on the pressure at which it is stored. I've seen Metafilter posts that treat scientific subjects more thoroughly than this article does, many times. It's a few hundred words of not-actually-answering-the-question, and reads as if the writer just did a bit of cursory googling and then hacked out the article an hour or so before the deadline.

If you're going to do it, do it right dammit! I demand more rigor in my fart science journalism!
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 6:02 PM on August 17, 2016 [4 favorites]


What is typical colon pressure anyway?
posted by mr_roboto at 6:07 PM on August 17, 2016 [2 favorites]


gas expands to fill whatever it's contained within, why are babies so ignorant

Yeah, so what's the internal pressure? How big does the fart get at 1 atm?
posted by pompomtom at 6:08 PM on August 17, 2016


How long does a fart in space take to become the size of the earth? The sun? The solar system?

Would it not coalesce due to its own gravity? There's presumably some equilibrium point, no?
posted by pompomtom at 6:10 PM on August 17, 2016 [3 favorites]


Well, humans are slightly pressurized. Blood pressure is very roughly about 2 psi above atmospheric, but that's in the arteries. I imagine abdominal pressure varies a lot based on how full the gut is and whether or not you're sucking it in. And how many farts you have in you.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 6:12 PM on August 17, 2016


Would it not coalesce due to its own gravity?

It depends on the total mass of the fart.
posted by mr_roboto at 6:19 PM on August 17, 2016 [4 favorites]


Would it not coalesce due to its own gravity?

It depends on the total mass of the fart.


And how much dark matter it contains.
posted by Greg_Ace at 7:12 PM on August 17, 2016 [5 favorites]


... and reads as if the writer just did a bit of cursory googling and then hacked out the article an hour or so before the deadline.

"This part of your question took me from a simple Google search to sitting on the telephone with a planetary scientist while we both made thinking sounds and waved our hands around in an attempt to gesture our way through logical speculation about gravitational physics."

So see? They did do proper research!
posted by Greg_Ace at 7:26 PM on August 17, 2016 [2 favorites]


It depends on the total mass of the fart.
posted by mr_roboto at 9:19 PM on August 17 [2 favorites +] [!]


"Total Mass of the Fart" sounds like what would happen if Weird Al did a parody of a Bonnie Tyler song.
posted by 4ster at 7:58 PM on August 17, 2016 [25 favorites]


Well, more accurately, it sounds like something you'd see misattributed to Weird Al on Napster
posted by DoctorFedora at 8:04 PM on August 17, 2016 [4 favorites]


Normal colon pressure is highly variable.

Sometimes the cave inhales.
posted by yesster at 8:28 PM on August 17, 2016


VFart = Ass X Acceleration
posted by Kabanos at 8:41 PM on August 17, 2016


Total Mass of the Fart" sounds like what would happen if Weird Al did a parody of a Bonnie Tyler song.

Total Eclipse of the Heart has always been my go-to karaoke song - now I have a new special song.
posted by bendy at 10:33 PM on August 17, 2016


As a kid, I imagined that if you could see a fart, it would look like broccoli: a sort of cartoon jet-with-a-cloud-on-the-end shape.
I never wondered about their size.
posted by Mister Moofoo at 11:29 PM on August 17, 2016


It depends on the total mass of the fart.

It seems supremely apropos that a discussion of farts would somehow include the phrase "jeans instability".
posted by Greg_Ace at 11:29 PM on August 17, 2016 [2 favorites]


Would it not coalesce due to its own gravity?

It depends on the total mass of the fart.


The breadth of the musical art
That beans can often impart -
How does it end?
That usually depends
On the total mass of the fart.
posted by Greg_Ace at 11:40 PM on August 17, 2016 [1 favorite]


You can't measure farts by mass or volume. The true magnitude of a fart is measured by its area of effect.
posted by ryanrs at 11:57 PM on August 17, 2016 [2 favorites]


Did no one fart in a swimming pool too answer this question, and then check against blowing different lungfuls of air or soda bottles of air brought carefully down to the bottom of the pool to compare the relative size of the bubbles? That was an enjoyable afternoon as a kid, literally farting around in the pool.
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 12:13 AM on August 18, 2016 [3 favorites]


How big is a fart?

Well now little fella (examines fingernails) it kinda depends on the farter.
posted by GallonOfAlan at 1:18 AM on August 18, 2016 [1 favorite]


The key to potent farts is a mixture of oligosaccharides and sulfur compounds. The complex sugars provide the propellant, and the sulfur supplies the potency.

There's a real science to farts, if you take the time to study it. Have you ever wondered why burning hair smells so bad? Hair contains a lot of disulfide bonds, which give it strength, in exactly the same way sulfur vulcanization strengthens rubber tires. And like burning tires, when you burn hair, you're burning sulfur, thus the smell.

Eggs, too, contain a lot of sulfur, because baby chicks need the sulfur to grow feathers, which are made of keratin, just like hair and fingernails. That sulfur is why eggs create such strong farts.
posted by ryanrs at 2:29 AM on August 18, 2016 [6 favorites]


Wow am I glad I read that article. I KNOW Mike Levitt. I work with him, tangentially (he's the former head of research at the Minneapolis VA, and is still pretty active for a guy who's supposed to be mostly retired). I had no idea he worked on flatulence. Now I want to ask him in person and see his take on this...
posted by caution live frogs at 5:53 AM on August 18, 2016 [1 favorite]


Would it not coalesce due to its own gravity?

What are the implications of direct collapse brown holes on this theory?
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 6:13 AM on August 18, 2016


Even in humans, wiener ownership isn’t as simple as “boys have this; girls have that.” That’s because humans have both gender and sex, and those two things don’t always match. Somebody can be born with a wiener, but not be a boy. Somebody else can be a boy, but not have a wiener. Some people are born with reproductive anatomy that is neither wiener nor hoo-ha (technical name: vagina). There is a lot of diversity out there.

Well, that was simple; why do so many adults have trouble with the concept?
posted by TedW at 6:14 AM on August 18, 2016


“How does one collect a fart?”
Having recently read Walter the Farting Dog, I know this is done with balloons.

Each spot shows up in the scans as an obese teal blob...
I always wondered what would happen if farts were in color.
posted by MtDewd at 6:42 AM on August 18, 2016 [1 favorite]


Well, that was simple; why do so many adults have trouble with the concept?

It's not simple at all.

Let's take sex, for instance, which seems the simpler of the two concepts. We know it's not defined by having/lacking a weiner. We know it's not defined by XX or XY chromosomes, because XXY is a thing (as is XYY, X, XXX, and so on).

And we haven't even gotten to gender yet...
posted by splitpeasoup at 6:48 AM on August 18, 2016


Pretty sure Maggie Koerth-Baker used to run something in my RSS feeds. I'm glad to see her name pop up again. (now... is there an RSS feed from 538?)
posted by DigDoug at 7:27 AM on August 18, 2016


fyi: http://fivethirtyeight.com/contributors/maggie-koerth-baker/feed
(kudos to fivethirtyeight)
posted by DigDoug at 7:36 AM on August 18, 2016


I must admit that I read both the fart question and the weiner question out loud to my husband while we were eating dinner at IHOP. We were both impressed at the trivia we learned!
posted by chainsofreedom at 7:47 AM on August 18, 2016


What is the preferred method for evaluating the volume of flatus? Is it measured at STP? Room temp? Body temperature? Do farts obey the ideal gas law? I smell a PhD thesis in there, for some graduate student just waiting to make his mark in life.
posted by TedW at 8:13 AM on August 18, 2016


I smell a PhD thesis in there

I see what you did there
posted by Greg_Ace at 8:21 AM on August 18, 2016


> Pretty sure Maggie Koerth-Baker used to run something in my RSS feeds.

She was (is?) a regular at BoingBoing.

Why Am I Right-Handed? is pretty deep and What If The Moon Were Bigger? is not bad either.
posted by RedOrGreen at 9:15 AM on August 18, 2016


"Total Mass of the Fart" sounds like what would happen if Weird Al did a parody of a Bonnie Tyler song.

I'm partial to a "A Good Fart These Days is Hard to Time" by Feargal Sharkey myself. It works so perfectly.
posted by srboisvert at 10:39 AM on August 18, 2016


I smell a PhD thesis in there

I see what you did there


You missed this shart of the pun "just waiting to make his mark"
posted by srboisvert at 10:40 AM on August 18, 2016 [2 favorites]


Damn, you're right.
posted by Greg_Ace at 1:05 PM on August 18, 2016


What is typical colon pressure anyway?

$20, SAIT.
posted by Thorzdad at 7:45 PM on August 18, 2016


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