By Long Him Cheung
張朗謙
The Banana Peel Trap
香蕉皮陷阱
Banana skins, a slapstick staple and
Elmer Fudd’s worst nightmare. We’ve all
watched with anticipatory amusement
at the impending doom of a banana
sk i n t rap fo r t he unwa r y ca r toon
antagonist – and we al l know what
happens next.
The banana skin possesses
deep-rooted entrenchment in our psychology as
a weapon of mass slippage, but its history as a
hazardous booby trap actually began in the mid-
19
th
century by American authorities to avoid street
littering, bringing us to question whether there
is any inkling of truth in this centuries’ old belief.
Fortunately, Japanese scientists Mabuchi and his
group have performed the Ig Nobel Prize winning
science necessary to bust this unusual myth once
and for all.
Using Cavendish bananas, the researchers
placed peels on a linoleum plate with the inner
香蕉皮是經典喜劇的武器，當我們看到它
的出現，都會不自覺地期待著不幸的角色出
現，然後……哎呀!
香蕉皮在我們的意識中根深蒂固
地與滑倒掛鉤，然而這個“常識”其實是19世紀中期美國當
局為了防止人們隨地拋垃圾而提出的。究竟這個百年概念
孰真孰假?日本學者馬淵與其科研團隊破解了這個迷思，並
獲得了搞笑諾貝爾獎的榮譽。
科研人員把香芽蕉的皮內層朝下放在油氈板上，之後模
擬踩蕉皮的情況，鞋底與之接觸並向前滑動擦過蕉皮。固
定在油氈板下的力傳感器便會測量多方向的力度，從而計
算出蕉皮對應油氈板的摩擦系數。摩擦系數愈小就意味著
表面愈滑。經過五次實驗，用了十二根香蕉，團隊發現蕉皮
把表面的摩擦力降低了80%，摩擦系數只剩下0.066，比一
般表面要低得多，可與潤滑過的表面比擬(0.1)。簡單點說，
踩蕉皮就跟溜冰差不多，這也證明了香蕉皮就如眾所週知
是滑的。
This article may be useful as supplementary reading for
physics classes, based on the DSE syllabus.
根據物理課文憑試課程，本文或可作為有用的補充讀物。
