by Alice Shirrell Kaswell, Improbable Research staff



The nagging question “Which is better, Coca-Cola or Pepsi-Cola?” sprang from an earlier, more basic question: “Can anyone tell the difference?”

Professor Nicholas H. Pronko and colleagues at the University of Wichita, Kansas, conducted a series of experiments in the 1940s and 1950s. They wrote five studies that brought rigor, sophistication, and cachet to the testing of Coke/Pepsi taste- discrimination.

Pronko’s final Coke/Pepsi paper appeared in 1958. In the ensuing half- century, other investigators have digested and challenged his methods and findings.

Advances in technology led, many years later, to investigation of the brain activity of
Coke and Pepsi drinkers. Here is a look back at the early work, the foundation upon which rests so much later planning, effort, and thoughtfully sipped cola.

This history is in some ways emblematic of experimental psychology as a whole—of its maturation and growth as an academic discipline.



Vess Cola, an obscure competitor to both Coca-Cola and Pepsi-Cola, was included in Pronko’s first “taste this and tell us what kind of cola it is” experiment. The test subjects could not reliably distinguish its taste from those of Coke, Pepsi or Royal Crown Cola.

Enter Pronko
Pronko’s first study asked not just one, but a series of complex, interrelated questions. Volunteer drinkers, some of them habitual cola drink drinkers, some of them not, tasted samples of four different kinds of cola: Coca-Cola, Pepsi-Cola, Royal Crown Cola (a brand that at the time was, like Coke and Pepsi, widely popular), and Vess Cola. Vess Cola was then (and remained) little known.

“Identification of Cola Beverages. I. First Study,” N.H. Pronko and J.W. Bowles, Jr.,
Journal of Applied Psychology, vol. 32, no. 3, June 1948, 304–12.

108 college students tasted and named four different brands of Cola beverages.... From one third to over two thirds of the responses were incorrect on the basis of the subjects’ likes and dislikes. It is concluded that the identification response of Cola beverages is not a function of the physico-chemical properties of the stimulus objects, but a matter of using an available tag or label for it based largely on familiarity.

Pronko and collaborator J.W. Bowles drew several conclusions. One—the most enduring—was that people cannot reliably identify the taste of Coke from that of Pepsi. A billboard advertising Pepsi-Cola.

Pronko Two

The second study came out a mere six months after the first. Spurred and stimulated by criticism—mostly about the way they had labeled the cola  glasses (the labels were W, X, Y and Z)—Pronko and Bowles simplified the experiment. This time there were three, rather than four different cola drinks, and the glasses were labeled X, Y and Z:

“Identification of Cola Beverages: II. A Further Study,” N.H. Pronko and J.W. Bowles, Jr., Journal of Applied Psychology, vol. 32, no. 5, October 1948, 559–64.

156 students in elementary psychology served as subjects in a taste experiment with three colas. When presented in random order and also when only one cola was given for an entire series, the results are comparable to a chance distribution and support the hypothesis that the pattern of naming responses was a function of the subjects’ familiarity with cola brand names.

Pronko, Without Coke or Pepsi
Pronko and Bowles then embarked on their third set of experiments. They began by reminding themselves that “when subjects were asked to identify the three leading brands of Cola, they might just as well have drawn their names out of a hat.” So this time, Pronko and Bowles used only obscure brands of cola.

Sipping three kinds of cola that they had probably seldom or never tasted before, almost everyone nonetheless said they were drinking Coke, Pepsi or Royal Crown, the USA’s three most domestically popular cola brands:

“Identification of Cola Beverages. III. A Final Study,” N.H. Pronko and J.W. Bowles, Jr., Journal of Applied Psychology, vol. 33, no. 6, Dec 1949, pp. 605–8.

60 subjects tasted samples of Hyde Park Cola, Kroger Cola, and Spur Cola. No correct identifications were made. Almost all responses identified the beverages in order as Coca Cola, Pepsi Cola, or Royal Crown Cola.

(YouTube link)

Sixty-year-old Hiromitsu Shinkawa was found floating on the roof of his house ten miles from the coast of Japan, two days after the tsunami hit his town of Minami Soma.

Incredibly, he was spotted by a maritime self-defence force destroyer taking part in the rescue effort as he clung to the wreckage with one hand and waved a self-made red flag with the other. He had been at sea for two days.

Reports said that on being handed a drink aboard the rescue boat, Shinkawa gulped it down and immediately burst into tears. His wife, with whom he had returned home as the tsunami approached, is still missing.

He was quoted as saying: "No helicopters or boats that came nearby noticed me. I thought that day was going to be the last day of my life."

Officials said Shinkawa was in good condition after being taken to hospital by helicopter.

Link -via Arbroath

It took a while, but now I like dog. http://www2s.biglobe.ne.jp/~circus/nanicolle/dog.swf -via the Presurfer

We haven't heard much from Neatorama author StacyBee lately. A new baby takes up a lot of your life, but Stacy managed to find the time to run the Disney Princess half-marathon at Walt Disney World in Florida. The event raised money for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.

Yeah, ignore that time. It's awful. But I finished!

And I had a good time - I got to run through the Magic Kingdom before the park opened. I got to limp through Epcot before it opened. I got to gaze at 17,000 women (and some men... really, I saw a very hairy Cinderella) in tutus, tiaras and even nude-colored leotards with shell appliques over the boobs (an homage to Ariel, of course).

And she got a tiara! Way to go, Stacy! Link

Now that Generation X is moving into middle age, they are leading a resurgence of the game Dungeons & Dragons. The game that "taught millions of geeks to socialize, empathize, level-up (in game and in real life) and emerge from the dungeons of their solitude to tell heroic stories" is being taught to second generation players and celebrated by those who grew up with it -and who credit the game with helping them to grow up.

Looking at PlaGMaDA, I remember how D&D taught me to love maps and hand-draw them myself. In that trove of old gear I found at middle age, I had discovered my beloved backdrops for heroic stories and imaginary derring-do: the Craggy Hills, the Untreaded Lands, the Lorsearch Plains. Mountains called Ramen-Nashew I'd painstakingly scribed with a blue quill pen. Here, an evil wizard's lair etched in Magic Marker. There, an underground labyrinth guarded by traps and monsters, with rooms numbered from 1 to 37, which I had drawn on aqua-lined graph paper, now smudged, almost sepia-tinged with age.

But by playing RPGs (role-playing games), I was not only teaching myself shoddy draftsmanship. I also learned to be confident and decisive, and to feel powerful. Even feel cocky. Some of the guts and nerve I role-played began to leak into the real world. By the time I graduated high school, I had transformed. I had used escapist fantasy to gather strength for later, when I was ready to come out of my shell. In this sense, the wave of nostalgia I've felt also springs from a desire to pay tribute to D&D. To thank the game for the gifts of creativity and self-actualization it bestowed upon us.

Author Ethan Gilsdorf relates his experiences and those of others in this article at Salon. Link -via TYWKIWDBI

(YouTube link)

Vi Hart, who knows more about math than I ever will, made a video and two pies especially for Pi Day, which she says we should call Half-Tau Day. She lost me when she said a pie is really 2pi, because I never took that class. I will take a slice of cherry, if you don't mind. Link -via The Daily What

Modernist Cuisine is a six-volume set of cookbooks that goes on sale today. The $625 set isn't for those of us who use a microwave for most meals. This cookbook looks into the science of cooking and the ultimate methods of getting to the ultimate results. For example, this hamburger take a total of 30 hours to make!

Take the book's hamburger. Prepping the lettuce and tomato requires a vacuum sealer. The cheese is restructured—heated with ingredients like carrageenan and cooled in a mold—for a gooier texture. And making the burger itself requires hand-grinding the beef and using half-cylinder molds to catch the strands and gently form the patties.

Get a closer look at the burger at the Wall Street Journal's interactive feature. Link to article. Link to hamburger. -via Nag on the Lake

Do you remember the Swedish bookstore scene in the movie Top Secret! that was obviously filmed backwards? The magic of shared online video brings us the scene reversed, which is to say. the way it was originally recorded. See both versions (from the movie and the reversed-engineered forward version) at The Litter Box. Link

Strange things happen to your body when you are pregnant. Since new mothers tend to worry, experienced women and medical professionals tend to gloss over the things you shouldn't worry too much about. Oddee tells you some of the things that might surprise you. For example:

Most pregnancies last for about 9 months and doctors are likely to induce labor if pregnancy goes on too long. That being said, it is possible to be pregnant for a whole year. The world's longest pregnancy lasted 375 days, strangely, the baby was only a little under seven pounds.

It certainly puts a whole new perspective on being a few weeks late, doesn't it?

If you are pregnant, ask your doctor before you start to worry about these weird things you just found out. Link

(Image credit: Flickr user ChepeNicoli)

Acronyms and abbreviations in textspeak are getting more convoluted every day. Twitter member @TeenDreaming took it to the level of the ridiculous with a Tweet that was turned into this Twaggie. Link

The following is an article from the book Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Plunges Into the Universe.

In 1872, Leland Stanford offered photographer Eadweard Muybridge $25,000 to perform an experiment. Muybridge wasn't sure he could do it, but with so much money at stake, he took on the challenge.

When a horse is running or trotting, do all four hooves ever leave the ground at the same time? That was the basis of the wager that Leland Stanford, former governor of California and founder of Stanford University, made with some friends. This was the subject of much controversy in horse racing circles at the time. Most people believed that a horse always had one hoof in contact with the ground, but Stanford thought otherwise. Because a horse's legs are moving so fast, it's impossible to tell just by looking, so Stanford needed a way to slow down the movement so it could be studied.

THE CHALLENGE

In 1872, Stanford offered Eadweard Muybridge, a world-famous landscape photographer, $25,000 to find the answer. Muybridge had no idea if he could successfully set up and perform an experiment to settle the dispute, but he figured he'd give it a go.

THE EQUIPMENT

In most 19th-century cameras, the picture was taken when the photographer removed the lens cap for several seconds in order to expose the film and capture an image. The subject had to remain perfectly still during this time or the resulting photograph would be blurred. In order to capture very fast action like a galloping horse, the exposure time would have to be very short.

THE SHUTTER

Muybridge invented a fast shutter mechanism that relied on a small piece of wood with a hole drilled in it that slid past the lens. The wood was positioned so that a pin held it in place, covering the lens. When the pin was removed, gravity would cause the wood to drop and as the hole moved past the lens, the film was exposed for a fraction of a second.

Bibliodyssey has a collection of 22 masks from designer Cornelis Floris and engraver Frans Huys published in the year 1555. Modern Halloween mask designers have nothing on these guys! Link

Theresa Knudson was inspired by Jan von Hollenben's Dreams of Flying photographs and created dream photos of her cat by arranging various backgrounds. Fluffy is a trusting and patient cat! See more pictures at Pawesome. http://www.pawesome.net/2011/03/the-science-of-cat-sleep-favorite-things/

(Image credit: Flickr user Theresa Knudson)

Mark Anderson of Andertoons set out to make a Lego spaceship that resembled each of the 26 letters of the alphabet. It took two years to accomplish this goal, but he did it! Now all those spaceships are posted for your enjoyment. Link -Thanks, Mark!

It's time for the Name That Weird Invention! contest. Steven M. Johnson comes up with all sorts of crazy ideas in his Museum of Possibilities posts. What should we name this one? The commenters suggesting the funniest and wittiest names will win a free T-shirt from the NeatoShop. Put on your thinking cap and leave an entry in the comments.

Contest rules: one entry per comment, though you can enter as many as you like. Please make a selection of the T-shirt you want (may we suggest the Science T-shirt, Funny T-shirt, and Artist-designed T-shirt categories?) alongside your entry. If you don't select a shirt, then you forfeit the prize. Good luck!

Update: Scott-O had a winning entry with the name First Eye'd Kit, and nik said he'd call it the Emergen-See Kit. Both win t-shirts from the NeatoShop!