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Rising Golf Ball

What You Need

Golf ball
Clean, empty glass jar and lid
Uncooked rice

What to Do
Place the golf ball in the bottom of the jar, then fill the jar with the uncooked rice, stopping 1-1/2 inches from the top of the jar. Close the lid. Shake the jar back and forth vigorously (not up and down).

What Happens
The golf ball rises to the surface.

Why It Works
No two pieces of matter can occupy the same space at the same time. As the jar is shaken, the grains of rice move closer together, settling in the jar and pushing the ball upward.

Bizarre Facts

More people play golf than any other outdoor sport.
The nearly 11,700 golf courses in the United States occupy land valued at about $4.5 billion.
In 1457, the parliament of King James II of Scotland banned golf and soccer because the popularity of the two sports threatened the practice of archery for national defense. The ban lasted until 1502, when England and Scotland signed a treaty of "perpetual peace."
The "birdie"—the term for scoring one stroke under par on a hole - probably got its name from the "feathery"—the name for the original golf ball used until 1848, which was made from leather and stuffed with feathers.
At the center of most golf balls is a sac filled with a liquid substance, usually castor oil and liquid silicone.
The original Uncle Ben was a black rice farmer known to rice millers in and around Houston in the 1940s for consistently delivering the highest quality rice for milling. Uncle Ben harvested his rice with such care that he purportedly received several honors for full-kernel yields and quality. Legend holds that other rice growers proudly claimed their rice was "as good as Uncle Ben's." Unfortunately, further details of Uncle Ben's life (including his last name) were lost to history.
Frank Brown, a maítre d' in a Houston restaurant, posed for the portrait of Uncle Ben.
In the 1980s, the portrait of Uncle Ben was dropped from the rice boxes for two years. Sales plummeted, and the company quickly reinstated Uncle Ben on the boxes.
Rice is thrown at weddings as a symbol of fertility.
The world's leading producer of rice is China. The world's second leading exporter of rice is Thailand, followed by the United States. The world's leading importer of rice is Iran.
Rice, grown on more than 10 percent of the earth's farmable surface, is the mainstay for nearly 40 percent of the world's population.

Top Secret Rice
During the processing necessary to produce white rice, the bran layer—containing a large part of the nutritive value of rice—is removed.
In England, scientists discovered a special steeping and steaming process to force the bran nutrients, under pressure, into the rice grain before the bran is removed, locking the nutrients inside the grain.In the early 1940s, George Harwell, a successful Texas food broker, received permission to introduce the process developed in England to the United States—but only if he could build a plant immediately. Because the new process improved the nutritional, cooking, and storage qualities of a food that had remained unchanged for more than five thousand years, Harwell convinced the United States government that this unique product merited war priorities.

In 1943, Harwell and his partners shipped the first carload of Converted Brand Rice to an army quartermaster depot. Until the end of World War II, Converted Brand Rice was produced for use solely by military personnel. Then, in 1946, Harwell's company, Converted Rice, Inc., brought this special rice to American consumers for the very first time using the familiar portrait of Uncle Ben as its trademark. Consumer response was so great that in just six years Uncle Ben's Converted Brand Rice became the number one packaged long grain rice sold in the United States.

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