disappointed with this one. The results are a little
underwhelming, but hey, that's what experimental
"science" is all about. Sometimes a result is great,
and sometimes all you can do is poke at it with a
stick. So with that in mind I present The Golf Ball.
The back-story is kind of funny: we were outside
burning stuff with the Solar Death Ray, and as
usual a random person stopped by to ask what we
were doing. This time, a guy hung out for about
half an hour, then he disappeared. He came back
with a golf ball and said "Here, try this." This guy
was in his forties and was wearing the orange and
reflective outfit I associate with road construction,
so I'm not sure why/how he had a golf ball. For all
I know he's an avid golfer, but he didn't look like he
was going to play the back nine later that day.
Maybe he went looking for stuff on the ground, or
maybe it was something random in his car. In any
event, it seemed a little bit odd. So we did like he
said, and strapped that ball to the Solar Death
Ray. I used a marker to darken one side of the
ball to insure good photo-thermal conversion (i.e.
make ball hot). The golf ball started to smoke, and
then it started to stink. I mean, really stink. A lot.
The hot side of the ball started to bulge out a bit
and some goo formed, but the main event was the
stink. Under the dimpled plastic skin, golf balls
appear to be made of solid stench. Under
increasing olfactory pressure, the Solar Death Ray
was shut down with the golf ball still largely intact.
There wasn't much else to do but poke at it with a
small "science stick." As you can see, the melted
surface layers were goo.
