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Killer Straw

What You Need

Raw potato
Two plastic drinking straws

What to Do
Place the potato on a table. Hold the first straw at the top (without covering the hole) and try to stab it into the potato. Hold your thumb over the hole in the top of the second straw and try to stab it into the potato.

What Happens
The open-ended straw bends, and only a little bit of the straw penetrates the potato. The closed straw cuts deeply into the potato.

Why It Works
The air trapped inside the straw gives the straw enough strength to penetrate the skin of the potato. As the straw enters the potato, the potato plug compresses the air inside the straw, increasing the air pressure, and strengthening the straw.

Bizarre Facts

During colonial times, New Englanders, convinced that raw potatoes contained an aphrodisiac which induced behavior that shortened a person's life, fed potatoes to pigs as fodder.
After serving as ambassador to France, Thomas Jefferson brought the recipe for French-fried potatoes to America, where he served them to guests at Monticello, popularizing French fries in the United States.
The potato originated in South America, where the Incas cultivated and crossbred it. In the 1500s, while Spanish explorers introduced the potato to Europe, English explorers brought the potato to the United Kingdom, where it became the principal crop of Ireland. Today, Russia grows nearly 30 percent of the world's potatoes, more than any other country.
Dan Quayle, vice-president of the United States under George Bush, corrected a student in a spelling bee, insisting that the word potato is spelled potatoe. It isn't.
George Gershwin wrote the famous lyric, "You like potato, and I like po-tah-to" in his 1937 hit song "Let's Call the Whole Thing Off."
The phrases "That's the last straw" and "That's the straw the broke the camel's back," originated with Archbishop John Bramhall, who, in 1655, wrote: "It is the last feather that breaks the horse's back."
Straw and hay are not the same thing. Straw is the dried stems of grains such as wheat, rye, oats, and barley. Hay is dried grasses or other plants.

Small Potatoes
When Pope John Paul II visited Miami, Florida, a local T-shirt maker translated the phrase "I Saw the Pope" into Spanish by incorrectly using the feminine la papa instead of the masculine el papa, which made the T-shirts read: "I Saw the Potato."

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