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Whatever happened to banana peels and the very real tripping hazard? (lemmy.world)
submitted 7 months ago by to c/nostupidquestions@lemmy.ca
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Feels like its gone the way of caves. Cars used to be decliffed from an unfortunately placed banana peel (see Billy Madison)

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[–] 5 points 7 months ago (3 children)

Urban myth, nobody has ever been tripping on banana peels. They are not psychoactive. 🧐

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago (2 children)

    They are radioactive though!

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    K-40!! Naturally occurring radioactive ⁴⁰ K decays with a half-life of 1.248×10⁹ years. 89% of those decays are to stable ⁴⁰ Ca by beta decay, whilst 11% are to ⁴⁰ Ar by either electron capture or positron emission.

    Obligatory XKCD File: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Radiation_Dose_Chart_by_Xkcd.png Which shows the Banana Equivalent Dose.

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    • [–] 4 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (4 children)

    Turns out they aren't that slippery. I think MythBusters did an episode on it and in order to slip on a banana peel you need to have a lot of them and some lube.

    They even have the episode on YouTube

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hP9QUQCd_Jc

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  • [–] 3 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    You are correct, I recently watched this one. A single banana peel just doesn’t do what you saw in films and slapstick routines. I think that had a load on the floor and got the same result. It wasn’t until, like you said, that they engineered a floor and surface so slippery that it was more than just the bananas causing the slipping.

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  • [–] 5 points 7 months ago

    What if the reason was because the type of banana that was prominent when this trope became popular was different than the one that is popular now?

    Not the most likely explanation but I wonder if people have considered it.

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