Can You Spot Ringo In This Water Droplet?
Physics World's take on Duke engineering research: It's for the Beatles
Friday, November 6, 2009
Durham, NC -- In what is certainly one of the more unusual takes on recent Duke research, a reporter for Physics World, a leading professional science journal, is claiming that he can see Beatles drummer and Thomas The Tank Engine narrator Ringo Starr in the face of water droplets photographed by Jonathan Boreyko, a third-year graduate student at Duke’s Pratt School of Engineering.
Boreyko, who works in the laboratory of Assistant Professor Chuan-Hua Chen, took the photos while exploring micro-scale interactions of droplets. The research suggested that the same phenomenon that occurs when it’s time for certain mushrooms to eject spores also occurs when dew droplets skitter across a surface that is highly water repellant.
Physics World reporter James Darcy wrote up a story about the research when he found himself staring at Ringo Starr's face in Boreyko's high-speed images. "Bizarrely, everybody’s favourite mop-topped Liverpudlian seems to reveal himself in the high-speed photo images of water-droplets being ejected from the leaf surface," Darcy wrote. He called it "The Starkey Effect," using the drummer's real last name.
Darcy's discovery has been echoed in the pages of the Telegraph, a leading British newspaper. Readers have had other suggestions, stating that some look more like Pete Townsend of the Who and another claiming it was Zordon of the Power Rangers, whoever that is. But most people were in the agreement that the nose was very Starr-like.
Does it look like Ringo? Pete Townsend? Someone else? Send us your comments at duketoday@duke.edu
The full-image can be found below.
