Originally Posted by Karen Whitehair

Unexpected Science Experiment? by K. Whitehair

Thanks to an unintended science experiment, I recently discovered that popcorn will pop in a clothes dryer. After learning this amazing fact, I was curious to see if I could have confirmed this phenomenon without conducting the experiment at home.

First I tried Ask.com (formerly Ask Jeeves). No luck.The results pages did mention popcorn and dryers, but not popcorn popping in the dryer. MyChattyFeet’s Myspace blog looked promising in the results list. However, I couldn’t view it because MyChattyFeet didn’t want random people (me) reading the blog and set it to private. Most results were trying to sell me popcorn and were totally unrelated to my quest. With no answer, I continued my search. Next I tried Google.com. After refining my search multiple times I determined that Google failed me. Sure there were pages where the words popcorn and dryer appeared, but the sites weren’t talking about popping popcorn in the dryer. And I had to wade through too many pages trying to sell popcorn and popcorn poppers. Then I turned to the search engine Scirus: For Scientific Information Only (Scirus.com). I tried numerous search terms, trying to find out if others had noted the phenomenon of popcorn popping in the dryer. Still no answer to my question. However, no results were trying to sell me popcorn. There was actually information about popcorn, although not about popping popcorn in clothes dryers. [Note: At this point in my search I had learned that some electric roasters are considered a hybrid of a clothes dryer and popcorn popper. Useless and totally irrelevant to my quest.]

Frustrated, I turned to LexisNexis, the subscription database notable for covering major news outlets. I didn’t find my answer there either, nor any advertisements luring me into buying popcorn. I did find a guide to popping popcorn from December of 2006 in the Sacramento Bee that I will soon be putting to good use. So I haven’t found my answer yet, but will continue my search. Was what happened in my clothes dryer an anomaly? Or is it a documented scientific fact? I have no answer. But what I did learn is that it can be hard to find actual research about some topics in general search engines like Ask.com and Google.com. This is because they are loaded with commercial pages. However, databases and specialized search engines at least take you straight to technical research and related information.