You might recall the scene in the 1983 movie A Christmas Story where a young boy puts his tongue on a frozen metal pole and becomes stuck. This has been a dare among kids for as long as anyone can remember, and is called "tundra tongue." Norwegian graduate student Anders Hagen Jarmund remembers when he did it, along with many of his friends. It was such a common experience that Norway outlawed bare metal on playgrounds in 1998.
Jarmund turned his experience into a scientific study that resulted in two papers. One was a review of the literature abut such cases. They found newspaper stories of tundra tongue going back to 1845, with cases ranging from the mundane to the terrifying, and the various methods used to get tongues un-stuck.
The second paper came from an experiment to determine what happens when a tongue comes in contact with frozen metal. What's the most likely temperature to induce freezing? How much force does it take to detach it? And how much damage is done? You'll be glad to know that they didn't use their own tongues, or anyone else's. They used tongues from recently-slaughtered pigs. Read what they found at Ars Technica. -via Metafilter
I had heard from somewhere (probably my stupid brother) that we should never touch our tongue to metal when it was cold out for fear of becoming stuck and eventually dying of starvation. I mentioned this to Linda (my friend) and as we walked down the road passing parked cars at the curb she decided to prove that caution false. So she stuck out her tongue and touched it to the side of a car and she got stuck.
It was fascinating to watch her go through the motions of trying to un-stick her tongue. Pulling away didn't work. Crying didn't help. Neither did screaming. However, drooling worked along with very heavy breathing onto the cold metal of the car. Linda yanked her tongue off the car, wiped her mouth of the bloody spit and we continued on our way to school. She would live to see another day.
All I could think of was 'better her than me'.