The Floppy Experiment excerpted from ?Syntax Error, Aug. 1990 by
Alma Peterson, Condensed by Cheryn Nunn

[Alma Peterson is the Dayton Area Commodore User's Group C-64 Librarian.  She
carries between 1000 to 1500 disks in her car trunk to and from meetings, hot
weather and cold.  She got to wondering just how much punishment a disk would
take and ran a few experiments.]

The experiment started out rather small, simple, and to the point, but then I
got a little carried away.  Using a disk with data on both sides, I quickly
made up 2 "experimental" copies of the disk, marking one "sun" and the other
"freeze".  That's when the abusive side of me took over.  Happily cackeling to
myself, I cranked out another called "stomp", then one called "kool-aid", and
finally, one called "micro-wave".

My first victim was the "sun" disk.  I threw it out the back door into
full-blazing sunlight, 91 degrees for two hours.  The "freeze" got popped into
my handy kitchen freezer and promptly forgotten.  Two hours later, the "sun"
disk still worked perfectly.  I thought maybe the black vinyl jacket was
enough of a shield to keep the sun's rays from doing any damage, so I took the
jacket apart and put the actual floppy outside for another couple of hours. 
When I brought it back in, I realized I couldn't test it without a jacket.  I
took a "dead" disk, carefully opened the jacket and inserted the "sun" floppy.
Both sides STILL worked perfectly.  As it was too late in the day for any more
sun, I threw the disk in the clothes dryer.  Half an hour later, it came out
looking kinda deformed, so I flattened it out with a rolling pin while still
warm.  AGAIN, the disk worked just fine.

It was getting hard to continue with enthusiasm since I wasn't getting the
expected results.  My husband came in to fix some microwave popcorn, and found
my "freeze" disk.  I thawed it overnite, and the next day it worked perfectly.

Finally, in a last effort to prove the heat-in-the-car-scrambles-disks rumor,
I set the "sun" disk on the dashboard of my car and left it closed up tight
all day long.  After about an hour, that disk had curled up into the shape of
a cereal bowl.  By the end of the day, it was barely recognizable.  The vinyl
jacket had swollen and bubbled up from the intense heat.  There was no way it
could be coaxed back into enough shape to put in the drive, so the floppy
inside HAD to be ruined.  I sacrificed another disk for the jacket, inserted
the "sun" floppy, put it in the drive and...It worked perfectly!

EPILOGUE:  Both sides of the disk called "microwave" were totally zapped in
less than 30 seconds.  When re-formatted, however, the disk worked perfectly. 
The "stomp" disk hasn't been tried yet, and I'm going to change the "kool-aid"
disk to "coke".  I think the acid content of the beverage may have some more
interesting results than plain old sugar-water.  Stay tuned next month for the
gory details; and another report on the "sun" floppy, which, in it's shiny new
sliced-open jacket, has been renamed to "boil in saucepan on kitchen stove as
long as it takes"...wish me luck!

[It may be interesting to note than in all her attempts to ruin a floppy, what
usually got ruined was the label, remarks about which were condensed out of
above version of her article.]
[PRESS RETURN]: