Science Sunday: Fools for Science Some of the best April Fool's
Day pranks and hoaxes have been based in science and math.
Discover magazine fooled numerous readers with its April 1999
article by Tim Folger about the recently discovered bigon
particle, which appears and disappears within millionths of a
second—and is the size of a bowling ball. And Google has become
well known for its annual hoaxes, such as last year's Gmail
Motion Beta, a program enabling you to control Gmail with body
gestures. Fake discoveries and inventions have sucked in the
public as far back as 1878, when the New York Graphic announced
Thomas Edison's new device that could convert soil into cereal
and water into wine. Newspapers across the U.S. gullibly
reprinted the story as fact. Other pranks are pulled off to make
a point, such as the article in the April 1998 New Mexicans for
Science and Reason newsletter, NMSR Reports, in which Mark
Boslough reported that the Alabama legislature had passed a law
rounding the value of pi to 3, in k