Blog Post Index
51. Amethystic thinking; the origin of homeopathy?
Like artists of all kinds, scientists often toil better in the shadow of the corkscrew (Alan Coren’s phrase, not mine: see Go Easy Mr Beethoven; That Was Your Fifth http://www.amazon.com.au/Chocolate-Cuckoo-Clocks-Essential-Coren-ebook/dp/B002RI9UEU). And it was while...
50. What did Emmy Noether do?
Historic woman scientists are rightly being brought to public attention at the moment, but it isn’t always clear from the publicity just what they were celebrated for. Try this: Emmy Noether was a German mathematician who made groundbreaking contributions to abstract...
49. “Molecular gastronomy” – the true story
The term "Molecular Gastronomy," beloved of journalists, is hated by the serious chefs who use science to expand the range of their creative activities. Yet it all started as a joke dreamed up by the Hungarian low-temperature physicist Nicholas Kurti. Nicholas was a...
48. Teaching calculus to babies
Speaking a language to a baby, even for short periods of time, makes it easier for the child to learn the language later on. Similarly, the ability of a child to use numbers* is enhanced if parents talk to them about numbers to them from a very early age (e.g....
47. On forest fires and the stability of marriages
A forthcoming paper on forest fires in the prestigious Proceeding of the Academy of Sciences of the U.S. (http://www.pnas.org/content/112/8/2378.short) has got me thinking about the subject of marriage and relationships. Fires usually travel at a fairly regular pace,...
Novinophobia
46. On the brilliant Sun, the even more brilliant Spike Milligan, and the supremely brilliant Cecilia Payne
Cecilia Payne was the first woman Professor at Harvard University, although the status of women academics at the time was such that her salary was classed as “equipment expenses.” Her interest was in the composition of the Sun, but the conclusion that she drew from...
45. My great Fermi discovery
The central library in my home town of Sydney is giving away books – not just any old books, but those that have never been borrowed. Sadly, but not surprisingly, many of them are scientific books. Browsing through the heap, I was thrilled to find a copy of Enrico...
44. Richard Feynman, Gertrude Stein, quantum mechanics, and the Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster
According to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster is the best drink in existence, and the effect of drinking one is like having your brains smashed out by a slice of lemon wrapped around a large gold brick. Which is very much like the...
43. Against ‘targeted’ research – it doesn’t work!
When Carl Djerassi was asked how he chose his research problem that led to the birth control pill, his answer would have been surprising to most politicians, and indeed to most people who are concerned with the funding of science. He said: “To be quite honest, at the...
42. Carl Djerassi on the acts of creation and procreation
Carl Djerassi invented the contraceptive pill, which blocks the physical act of creation at the very start. But in other respects he was an extraordinarily creative person, a poet, novelist and art collector as well as a scientist, and in conversation with Lewis...
41. Making an emotional connection: How a physicist thought in poetry.
The Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman ploughed his own furrow. In his second volume of autobiography What Do You Care What Other People Think? he revealed that he sometimes thought, not just in terms of equations or pictures or models, but in poetry,...
On my Mini Stories from Science
The most effective way of teaching and communicating science that I know is to take students, listeners and viewers behind the scenes to share WHY scientists ask the questions that they do and HOW they go about looking for answers. Unfortunately, many teachers and...
40. Loving mathematics: What one fool can enjoy, another can
After my previous post on connecting with mathematics at an emotional level, my friend Roger Bridgman, former curator, communications at the Science Museum in London, sent me this: “I learned to love maths when we had a teacher (we were doing elementary calculus) who...
39. Thinking mathematically
Few of us are gifted with strong mathematical talent. But then, few of us are gifted with musical talent or mathematical talent or literary talent. So how come we can enjoy music or art or writing, even though we don’t have much talent for these activities ourselves,...
38. Dispassionate observation or judgment: which is better for science?
Scientists should be dispassionate observers, not letting their personal beliefs prevent them from seeing facts as they are. Oh, yeah? Consider the story of two scientists from the early twentieth century. One was American, the other Austrian. One faithfully recorded...
37. Give peas a chance
How do you use a packet of frozen peas to catch a polar bear? There’s a science to it. You cut a hole in the ice, distribute the peas symmetrically around it, and hide. Then, when a bear comes up for a pea, you kick him in the icehole. Ok, maybe that’s not very...
36. All you need is love – mathematical style
Valentine's day, 2015: According to legend, the three saddest mathematical love stories concerned the tangent lines who had just one chance to meet, and then parted forever; the asymptotes who became ever closer but could never get together; and the parallel lines who...
35. Don’t become a scientist – or maybe you should.
Are you thinking of becoming a scientist? Do you want to uncover the mysteries of nature, perform experiments or carry out calculations to learn how the world works? Forget it! … If you go to graduate school in science it is in the expectation of spending your working...
34. The science of vaccination and the vaccination of science
Vaccination – or the lack of it – is big news, and impinges on the age-old philosophical question of the rights of the individual vs the security of the community. But I am not concerned with philosophy here, or even with medicine. What interests me, and what I hope...
33. Two great amateur scientists you have probably never heard of.
Everyone has a talent, and a particular way of thinking, that can find a place in science. It’s not always the way that you might think. Take the case of the Rev. Robert Evans, a minister of the Uniting Church in Australia. Not a scientist in the conventional sense...
Letter in “Nature”: More than 70 ways to show resilience
My letter "[Handling crises:] More than 70 ways to show resilience" has appeared in "Nature" (Vol. 518, p.35). Here it is, followed by the original unpublished 2013 paper on which it was based: Corres Fisher revised And here is the earlier unpublished paper: We need...
32. Why do people become scientists?
I thought that this would be an easy post to write. Just scour through some scientists’ autobiographies (I have around a hundred on my shelves), pick out some quotes, and the post would write itself. I couldn’t have been more wrong. Because scientists love talking...
31. How do scientists communicate with each other? IV: The cruel scientific put-down.
I once attended a talk by the former British parliamentarian Gyles Brandreth, who made the sartorial error when first elected of wearing a pullover to the House. An opponent pointed and jeered: Woolly pully, woolly, pully.” Brandreth had the presence of mind to remove...
30. How do scientists communicate with each other? III: Put-downs at talks and conferences
Some people think that put-downs on the sporting field represent the apotheosis of the art. One is reminded of the famous occasion on the cricket field when a wicket-keeper, hoping to put a batsman off, asked loudly “Why are you so fat?” The batsman replied, quickly...
29. How do scientists communicate with each other? II: Talks and conferences
The scientific talk, either as a seminar or at a conference, is usually the place where scientists provide an early-warning sign and lay claim to a new idea or a new area of research. For a young scientist, it can be a terrifying experience. The senior people in his...
28. How do scientists communicate with each other? I: The casual conversation
When scientists share their how they are thinking, the first steps are usually very informal – the ‘drop in’ conversation, coffee room, the excited email, the pub. The eccentric biologist Lewis Wolpert, well-known outside science for his scornful dismissals of...
27. Curious letters to scientists IV: To Julian Huxley from his grandfather
Julian Huxley, grandson of the famous Victorian biologist T.H. Huxley (aka “Darwin’s bulldog”) was a famous scientist in his own right. Apart from being the founding director of UNESCO, he was also the first person to interpret the apparently random and erratic...
26. Curious letters to scientists III: Agnes Pockels, urine streams and the modern inkjet printer
One of the most famous English physicists of the late nineteenth century was John William Strutt, aka Lord Rayleigh. He discovered argon, an inert gas that makes up nearly 1% of our atmosphere, and made many other discoveries besides. None were as wonderful, though,...
25. Curious letters to scientists II: Surprises from amateurs
There are some very interesting and touching stories of famous scientists receiving letters out of the blue from people whom they had not heard of, but which went right to the heart of the problems that they were working on. One well-known example concerns the letter...
24. Curious letters to scientists I: Cast your bread upon the waters …
Before the days of the Internet, letters were the most common form of communication, and scientists received some very curious letters from people whom they did not know and who they had never heard of. I have myself received some beauties, especially after I received...
23. Internet woes
Readers of these stories will have noticed something of a hiatus in the last few days. The reason (or sequence of reasons) is simple: I am in Australia; I live in a rural community; the broadband signal comes down the telephone line; the telephone lines are made of...
22. Benjamin Franklin’s missed chance
Science is everywhere. All you have to do is to keep your eyes open, and retain your childhood sense of wonder (the French poet Arthur Rimbaud defined genius as “the recovery of childhood at will”). Which is just what Benjamin Franklin did when he was travelling from...
21. An interlude with Vestal virgins
Before going on with the story of oil on troubled waters, we might consider the plight of the vestal virgins of ancient Rome. These were a group of six hand-picked girls from noble families, whose duty was to maintain the sacred flame in the temple of Vesta. The...
20. Oil on troubled waters
The connecting link between all of the stories in this series is that they illustrate the myriad approaches to scientific thinking. Another connecting link is that each story has suggested others to me, so that the stories constitute a random walk through my own...
19. The UNscientific method: Part 2
The unscientific method is particularly prevalent in advertising. I suppose that I have always been aware of this in a vague sort of way, but it really came home to me at a time when I had my fifteen minutes of fame after using physics to work out the optimum time to...
18. The UNscientific method: Part 1
I am often asked the question “Is there a scientific method?” If the question means “Is there just one method that all scientists accept and use by consensus?” then the answer is clearly NO. As this series has shown, and will continue to show, there are many, many...
17. Bacon and eggs
The sixteenth-century Elizabethan courtier Sir Francis Bacon proposed a “scientific method” that still holds some sway in the popular imagination. His idea was to collect as many facts as possible, and then look for some sort of order or guiding principle. One has to...
16. Making sense of the world
A lot of things that seem to make sense are just plain wrong. The Greek philosopher Aristotle, for example, thought that it made perfect sense to assume that men had more teeth than women. He was married twice, but he never thought to look and check his assumption....
15. The uncommon sense of science.
The great Victorian biologist Thomas Henry Huxley, aka “Darwin’s bulldog” once defined science as “applied common sense”. It was probably the silliest thing that he ever said. Because, as the behaviour of light shows, many aspects of the universe do not obey...
14. Science, like sex, thrives on diversity
Science, like sex, thrives on diversity. I can start the New Year no better than by offering you the thoughts of the late Sir Peter Medawar, biologist, Nobel Laureate and raconteur, on the subject, presented in an article in the Times Literary Supplement: There is no...
13. An experiment with Christmas cheer
Take a wine glass, filled with white wine if you like, or water if it’s too early in the day or you don’t drink wine. Shine a bright light from one side (in the pictures here it’s an LED torch; you can see the reflection of its multiple elements near the bottom left)....
12. Newton and the cat flap
In the last post I gave a brief list of Newton’s achievements (except for one, which I discuss below), but failed to fulfil my self-imposed obligation to say just how he came up with his ideas. In fact, it’s a difficult question to answer, because Newton himself gave...
11. The greatest person born on Christmas Day? My vote goes to Newton!
Christmas Day is, of course, the Christian celebration of the birth of Jesus. Isaac Newton, who was born on the same date, spent a great deal of attempting to decipher the Christian scriptures. He wrote much more about this than he did about science, and boy is it...
10. How many critics does it take to change a theory?
I’m getting a bit carried away with Einstein here, but he is one of my heroes, and the Special Theory of Relativity was only a start. Eleven years later, he completed his General Theory of Relativity, based on another very simple, but very deep, “What if?” question....
9. Einstein’s toolkit
The trouble with you, Mr. Einstein, is that you don’t know how to count. Einstein’s childhood violin teacher The calculations that Einstein performed to draw his conclusions from the simple initial “what if?” assumption needed a new sort of mathematics. Just as he...
8. What if? How the Special Theory of Relativity was discovered.
Einstein developed two theories of relativity - the Special and the General. This post is about the Special Theory of Relativity, and how Einstein came to think of it. The post is longer than usual but, according to the Special Theory, things get shorter when they...
7. Einstein’s socks: a clue to his thinking about relativity
Albert Einstein not only fitted the stereotypical image of a scientist - he helped to create it, and also played up to it. With his old rumpled clothes, his shock of hair, and a violin case under his arm, he was a journalist’s delight, just as Stephen Hawking is in...
6. Tibetan medicine and the passage of light
I once visited the Hospital for Traditional Medicine in Lhasa, where the walls are lined with 76 huge thangkas – pictures that illustrate the processes by which the body is supposed to work, and which are used as an aid in diagnosis and treatment. The head of the...
5. Light Relief
Deviating momentarily from our theme of light, and the famous scientists who were involved in figuring out its properties, here is some light relief, concerning scientists who never actually existed: The Italian Stronzo Bestiale appeared as a co-author in many erudite...
4. History’s most boring scientist makes waves.
Some scientists capture the imagination, often because of a single quirky image. Newton under his apple tree; Galileo dropping cannon balls from a tower; Einstein playing the violin. In fact, these particular scientists are even more interesting because of the things...
3. Newton’s Missed Chance
The story of light is still going, with some very surprising twists, as later posts will show. Light itself can even be twisted, like the fibers in a rope, and also used to lift small objects and move them around. When Newton published his book Opticks in 1704,...
2. Two Fingers to Newton
If you want to repeat one of Isaac Newton’s most significant experiments, try holding your index and middle fingers up to the light (don’t do this, as I once did, in a train full of drunken football supporters!). With the tips of the fingers just touching, there will...
1. Why Newton Added Two Colors to the Rainbow
When Isaac Newton allowed the sunlight passing through a hole in his blind to hit a glass prism that split it into different colours, he wasn’t the first to see such colours. In fact, he’d probably seen them as a child, reflected from the bubbles in his bath, and of...
Renaming the comet lander
My suggestion for renaming the Philae comet lander after the ancient Greek marathon runner Pheidippides (Nature 515 (2014) 492) (http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v515/n7528/full/515492f.html?WT.ec_id=NATURE-20141127) The Rosetta spacecraft's Philae probe, which...
Biscuit dunking on ITV Weekend!
http://youtu.be/4g6zpkoG3a8 Watch me biscuit dunking on ITV Weekend!
Fair enough?
Ockham's Razor, ABC Radio In Australia the topic of fairness is often discussed. For example we ask questions whether it's fair to raise the retirement age, we question whether our electoral system is fair, whether it's fair to allow racial abuse for the sake of...
Radio Interview with John Petrozzi on Game Theory in Real Life
89.7FM Eastside Radio, Sydney, Australia and www.livingiseasy.com.au In this interview John Petrozzi's speaks to game theorist Len Fisher who describes life as ‘One Big Game’ and he teaches how you can break down any decision you ever have to make in life by applying...
Making Science Accessible
Interview on BBC Radio Wiltshire
How To Dunk a Biscuit
Live appearance (and demonstration) on BBC TV "One Show" by Skype from my kitchen in Australia, and went without a hitch!
Letter to “Nature”: “Shaping policy: Science and politics need more empathy”
Nature Vol. 481 (2012) 29 Some important pointers for improving communication between scientists and politicians (Nature 480, 153; 2011) emerged from a meeting last year between the two groups, organized by the International Risk Governance Council. Support for...
Wrong Turns and Dead Ends
A review of "Brilliant Blunders" by Mario Livy (published in Physics World, December 2013) Brilliant Blunders: From Darwin to Einstein, Colossal Mistakes by Great Scientists That Changed Our Understanding of Life and the Universe by Mario Livio (2013 Simon &...
Podcast: “How to Bake Bread in a Microwave Oven”
(with Jeremy Cherfas) It CAN be done – so long as the dough is held in a suitable earthenware or ceramic vessel. Watch the podcast on "Eat This Podcast"
Letter to Radio Times re Uri Geller
Radio Times, July 27 – August 2 (2013) A one-hour homage to Uri Geller? With no sceptical comment, and no reference to the number of times that this fake has been exposed on television and elsewhere? Shame, BBC, for so tarnishing your image, and shame especially to...
Review of “Ona’s Flood”
(Bradford-on-Avon Tithe Barn, July 12-13, 2013) Bath Chronicle, July 17 (2013) A new suite of song texts performed in a Wiltshire tithe barn by an inexperienced community choir and a group of schoolchildren? Why should you be interested? Even when it is played as a...
Shaken, not Stirred: The Story of Mixers and Mixing
Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery, St Catherine's College, Oxford, July 5-7 (2013) A talk in which I dressed up as James Bond to deliver a stirring message, with co-author Janet Clarkson playing the part of "M", and third author Alan Parker staying safely away in...
How can I Trust You? Encounters with Carl Rogers and Game Theory
Chapter in Jeffrey Cornelius-White et al (eds) "Interdisciplinary Handbook of the Person-Centered Approach" (Springer, 2013) On how game theory can provide new insights into the processes of personal counseling, and how Carl Roger's "person-centred" approach may...
Risk and Resilience
Opening address to IRGC Expert Workshop "Governance of Slow-Developing Catastrophic Risk", Swiss Re Centre for Global Dialogue, June 27-28 (2013)
Planning for Future Crises: Governance Principles for Slow-Developing Risks That May Have Potentially Catastrophic Consequences
European Society for Risk Analysis 22nd Conference, Trondheim, June 17-19 (2013) (with Marie Valentine-Florin) Many of the serious problems that we face today follow a similar pattern, where the effects of slow, imperceptible change go unheeded until they bring us to...
Letter to “Nature”: “Scientific genius will continue to thrive”
Nature Vol. 494 (2013) 430 Dean Keith Simonton's contention that scientific genius is extinct (Nature 493, 602; 2013) invites comparison with Lord Kelvin's famous speech to the British Association for the Advancement of Science in 1900, in which he remarked, "There is...
Preparing for Future Catastrophes
International Risk Governance Council Report, February 2013 (http://www.irgc.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/CN_Prep.-for-Future-Catastrophes_final_11March13.pdf ) Executive Summary: Many of the serious problems that we face today follow a similar pattern, where the...
Risk Governance of Slowly-Developing Catastrophic Risks
European Society for Risk Analysis Annual Conference, ETH Zurich, 18-20 June (2012) (with Marie Valentine-Florin) Read the first public summary of my report "Preparing for Future Catastrophes" Preparing for Future Catastrophes International Risk Governance Council...
All Wrapped Up – A History of Mummy Eating
Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery, St. Catherine's College Oxford, July 6-8 (2012) (with Janet Clarkson) Now published in the proceedings of the symposium, and also available as a video showing me delivering part of the talk dressed as a mummy. From the abstract:...
Talk: Humour In Science
Cambridge University Scientific Society A funny thing happened on the way to the lab...It would be more correct to say that a funny thing happened IN the lab, because jokes (practical and otherwise), facetious suggestions and general playfulness have been the...
Humour in Science
An "Ockham's Razor" talk delivered on April 1st, 2012 (for audio version check out http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/ockhamsrazor/humour-in-science/3919798) I have twelve minutes to convince you that scientists have a sense of humour, and that humour is an...
Handling Complex Situations in Real Life
Heron Island Complex Systems Summer School, 16–27 January, 2012 (Heron Island, Queensland, Australia) "Business is arguably the human enterprise that drives our use (and abuse) of natural resources more than any other activity. Business and the biosphere are therefore...
International Research Governance Council
At an International Research Governance Council meeting on “Slow moving risks with potentially catastrophic outcomes”, held in Venice from 26–28 August 2011, a group of senior politicians and scientists (myself among them) met to consider the advice that we could best...
Letter: How Should You Cook Boxer Shorts?
Guardian Physicist and U.K. Guardian correspondent Jim Al-Khalili has offered to eat his boxer shorts if it turns out that neutrinos can actually travel faster than light, as recent experiments suggest. In this letter to the Guardian (publisher on November 26th) I...
Letter to Guardian re “faster-then-light” neutrinos
Guardian, 26.11.11 A well-known scientist had suggested that he would eat his boxer shorts if this "discovery" turned out to be true (it didn't). In my letter I suggested how the shorts could best be cooked if they need to be eaten.
Book Review: Marten Scheffer “Critical Transitions in Nature and Society”
American Journal of Psychology Vol. 124, 365 – 366 (2011) Psychologists and sociologists have long been concerned with how human relationships and social institutions can suddenly collapse or otherwise "flip" from an apparently stable state to a completely different...
Game Theory in Real Life
Regensburg, Germany, 29–30 September 2011 Introductory Talk at Interdisciplinary Symposium “Ultimate and proximate determinants of aggression in man (and other primates)”
The Great Aussie Barbecue
Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery, Oxford U.K., 8–10 July, 2011 The Aussie barbecue is a unique celebratory institution. From humble beginnings, with meat cooked on a ploughshare over an outback campfire, or on a shovel in the firebox of a steam locomotive, the...
Can We See the Future? Early-Warning Signs for Critical Transitions in Nature and Society
Plenary Lecture, International Conference on Complex Systems, Boston U.S. Critical transitions occur when slow, sometimes imperceptible, changes in conditions bring a complex dynamical system to a point where runaway processes such as positive feedback take over from...
Radio Interview: The Big Question
Wisconsin Public Radio Hear selected major interviews on Crashes, Crises and Calamities: Joy Cardin Wisconsin Public Radio, “The Big Question”. Listen to podcast
Radio Interview: The Science of Cooking
Resonance 104.4 FM (London), 26 April 2011, 7pm–8pm
Radio Interview: Interview with Jeff Whittington
KERA Radio, with host Krys Boyd Can ecology, biology, mathematics and physics help us avoid (or at least predict) forthcoming troubles of the worst kind? Listen to podcast
In which I learn how to fix a relationship breakdown Interview with Sarah Wilson
Sunday Life "...And so it was that I shared a peppermint tea with Australian-born game theory writer Len Fisher, author of Rock, Paper, Scissors, who explained to me strategies for negotiating through the grimmest of relationship stalemates. So I’m never drafted...
Review: Exciting Structures
Physics World (p. 38) A review of Mark Denny’s exciting new book Super Structures: The Science of Bridges, Buildings, Dams and Other Feats of Engineering. Download review (PDF)
Radio Interview: with Ira Flatow on Using Swarm Intelligence
National Public Radio "Science Friday" Interview with Ira Flatow on how we can use swarm intelligence to make better group decisions. Listen to podcast
Equations for Everyday Life
Cambridge University Scientific Society A decade ago I initiated what has become a rather regrettable trend when I demonstrated that a simple physical equation could be used to understand and optimize the process of biscuit dunking. The media were enraptured by the...
Radio Interview: The Perfect Swarm Interview
Groks Science Show Download and listen to a podcast of my interview on the Groks Science Show about the perfect swarm.
Radio Tour of America: January–February 2010
Hear and read about my interviews on how we can tackle the complex problems of everyday life: San Francisco CA: KVON Morning Edition National Public Radio: Hive Mind New York NY: WNYC Brian Lehrer Show Lifestyle Talk Radio (National) Frankie Boyer Show Columbia MO:...
The Kitchen Thinker: Anosmia
Daily Telegraph (UK) A great summary by food journalist Bee Wilson of a talk that I gave at the 2009 Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery. I described how the sense of smell is unique to each of us, and how this affects our enjoyment of a meal. Here is one example, as...
Radio Interview: New York’s Brian Lehrer Show
As it happens, humans follow some of the same behaviour rules as ants and bees. Len Fisher, author The Perfect Swarm: The Science of Complexity in Everyday Life, discusses what swarms can teach us about parties, traffic and more. Hear Len's interview on New York's...
I’m an IgNobel Prize Winner: Get Me Out Of Here!
BBC Focus Magazine How would you use science to help you escape from a desert island? My solution, which began with using loose change to make a battery, was illustrator James Reekie’s personal favourite. If I were marooned with a group of others, I would set up a...
Conversations with Richard Fidler
ABC Radio, Australia A discussion on how scientists can make science more accessible and meaningful to people. Listen to podcast
Is There Any Point to ‘Frivolous’ Academic Research?
BBC News Magazine Denise Waterman, writing for BBC News Magazine, puts the arguments for and against, with my work on the perfect cheese sandwich as a prime example. My own argument is simple: if I can open a door to the world of science by showing how scientists...
Radio Interview: Junk Maths
BBC Radio 4 On the programme More or Less I debated with Simon Singh (author of Fermat’s Last Theorem) about his assertion that the media are doing severe damage to the image of mathematics through the publication of “junk” equations for such things as the best...
Radio Interview: Advanced Biscuit Dunking
BBC Radio Wales An interview about the new, sweet-potato based, infinitely dunkable biscuit.
A Dunkable Delight, the Sweet Potato Biscuit
Daily Mail (London) (and many other newspapers) Felice Tocchini has created a biscuit which he claims can survive up to a minute in a hot drink before disintegrating into a sodden mess. This smashes the current record of 25.5 seconds for a chocolate digestive…The...