Research Project

Publish or Perish!

Seniors eligible for “honors” graduation in Chemical Engineering at Lafayette were required to choose, accomplish, and publish the results of a scientific research project. Mine was “Cathodic Protection of Ferrous Underground Pipelines in Acidic Soils”. I inherited it from Bill Findlay ’68, so I didn’t have to come up with any wacky ideas on my own. Other guys did “Heat Transfer Coefficient of Various Parts of the Human Body” (involving inserting their hands, feet, etc. in an ice bath and measuring body heat with thermocouples) and “Optimal Means of Freeze-Drying Coffee” (involving drinking a lot of really terrible java).

Georg Steinhauser, of the Vienna University of Technology in Austria, exhibited more originality than those Lafayette students of yore. Georg collected 503 pieces of bellybutton junk. Upon elemental analysis, he found that navel lint contains house dust, skin cells and sweat in addition to the fibers of shirts. And they say that there are no new frontiers in science.

Research demands conclusions. Georg concluded that abdominal hair was a prerequisite for accumulating navel lint. He shaved his own torso to prove this. Also, many-times-washed T-shirts were less likely to produce fluff than new clothing. Now we know.

But wait, there’s more bellybutton lint research. Karl Kruszelnicki, of the University of Sydney in Australia, surveyed 4,799 people and concluded that being male, having an “innie” rather than “outie” and older age were all associated with accumulating more lint. Older guys with “innies” have the dirtiest navels. What a surprise.

To be taken seriously, research results need a mathematical basis. K. Patel, of the India Institute of Terchnology, measured the weight and volume of the influx of lint into his test subjects’ navels. His data showed that belly button lint accumulates with mathematical precision. It begins linearly, then grows quadratically after an inflection point. That mathematical equation will get you honors at graduation for sure.

As much as I enjoyed zapping pipe sections with electricity, I wish I had considered belly button lint for my research. It seems like more fun.

By Ed Dufton