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Post by mcrbluenose on Nov 17, 2016 12:17:47 GMT
Where do tea spoons go?
No matter how many you buy, they always seem to disappear. Knives and forks, got a drawer full of them, but very few tea spoons.
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Post by rugbytoffee on Nov 17, 2016 16:50:17 GMT
Research has proved what restaurateurs have long known. Maya Kessler reports on the phenomenon
Possibly one of the most talked about pieces of research published in the British Medical Journal has surprisingly little to do with medicine… or science… or anything of any particular importance. Entitled "The Case of the Disappearing Teaspoons", the study proves that this is a naturally occurring phenomenon with no apparent explanation.
A research team at the Macfarlane Burnet Institute for Medical Research and Public Health in Melbourne placed 70 numbered teaspoons in various tea-rooms in the institute and tracked them over a period of five months. Eighty per cent disappeared for good. It was calculated they had a half-life (that is, the length of time it took for half of the teaspoons to disappear) of 81 days.
Further calculations produced some interesting data. Based on the rate of disappearance, 252.4 teaspoons would need to be bought each year to supply a working population of 140, with one teaspoon between two people.
This displacement of teaspoons has also been reported in a hospital near Paris. If this is a global phenomenon, then 600,000 tons of teaspoons are disappearing each year. So where have they all gone?
Practical (and mundane) explanations include that of people taking them home, or losing them under piles of work. However, with such a large quantity of teaspoons being lost each year, many feel these explanations are simply not sufficient.
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Post by Avinalaff on Nov 19, 2016 4:03:46 GMT
Where do tea spoons go?
No matter how many you buy, they always seem to disappear. Knives and forks, got a drawer full of them, but very few tea spoons. There must be a few tea leaves about.
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