Drenched Duck

SCIENCE

Sulphonated castor oil, the sodium alkyl sulphates, and the sodium salts of sulphonated alkyl naphthalenes are "wetting agents." As explained last week in Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Review, wetting agents reduce the surface tension of water (which makes it contract into drops), thus enable it to penetrate and soak water-resistant substances. Wetting agents are now used in laundries, in dyeing and tanning, in medicine (increasing the efficacy of antiseptic solutions), in tooth paste, in metalworking.

The Review then told discreetly of an unnamed scientist who decided to pit a modern wetting agent against that anciently proverbial shedder of water--the plumage of a duck. He added a small amount of a wetting agent to a bath, put a duck in the tub. The duck, quickly soaked to the skin, became waterlogged, sank to its neck, floundering ignominiously. Reflecting that the duck might have caught a bothersome chill from this unprecedented experience, the scientist mercifully dispatched it, served it for dinner, with Burgundy and applesauce.

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