When Tiger Woods took his unfortunate turn into the rough last week, you can bet he wasn't thinking about physics. 

But as his SUV careered wildly into the bushes, off the curb, and into the fire hydrant before finally coming to rest on a tree, a copy of John Gribbin's Get a Grip on Physics was tossing around inside the vehicle. News outlets subsequently published a photograph of the book lying on the floorboard, reports The Wall Street Journal, and its Amazon sales ranking soared an astronomical 394,000 spots. 

Mr. Gribbin, a science writer who teaches at Sussex University, tells the Guardian that while he's glad that people are reading any of his books, "I just wish it was one that's still in print." 

He tells the British newspaper that his latest book, In Search of the Multiverse, might be of more use to the beleaguered golf pro.

"Perhaps Woods will see if he can find a universe...

The University of Cambridge had to pay thousands of pounds to hire workers to remove Santa caps from each of the 150-foot Gothic spires of King's College Chapel after unidentified pranksters scaled the towers and placed the hats there, reports the Telegraph.

The end-of-term prank required 80 feet of vertical climbing, and undoing it was a time-consuming process for the workers, called steeplejacks. University officials wanted the hats removed before the chapel's Christmas Eve service, which is broadcast around the world. 

"We get a lot of odd requests," said a spokesman for the workers, "but we've never been asked to retrieve Santa hats before." —Don Troop

Ambitious young British women are flocking to America's Ivy League universities in hopes of meeting dashing, successful men like Barack Obama, Jake Gyllenhaal, and Theodore Kaczynski.

OK, we made up the part about Kaczynski, but The Times of London says that more British women are applying to elite American institutions not only because of prospects for a better social life but because of increased financial incentives and educational opportunities. Yale University, the article says, reported a 20 percent rise in applications from British students in 2009. 

"According to the Ivy League admissions teams, the men they admit are not mere loveable geeks, preppy poseurs and library fanatics," the article says. "They must be confident, successful, driven and outgoing."

But goal-oriented American men have a downside as well.

"Ivy League men are highly intellectual," says Corey Burnett, a...

In 1953, Henry Gustav Molaison agreed to undergo experimental brain surgery in hopes of stopping the epileptic seizures and blackouts that had plagued him since age 10. The neurosurgeon William Beecher Scoville, at Hartford Hospital in Connecticut, suctioned out most of Molaison's hippocampus.

"The seizures largely stopped," writes Scott Lafee in the San Diego Union-Tribune, "but so too did Molaison’s ability to form new memories, though he could recall parts of his life before the surgery, a condition called severe anterograde amnesia."

Molaison, who was known only by his initials, "H.M.," became the world's most famous amnesiac and an invaluable research subject for scientists looking for clues to how memory works.

Scoville co-wrote a paper on Molaison which, Mr. Lafee writes, "led to the startling realization that memory is not a generalized brain function, but rather is controlled...

You've seen the dubbed parodies of the scene in Downfall where Hitler goes into a spit-flying rage upon learning that Germany has lost? This time a reviewer has rejected der Führer's research paper, with predictable results. (Spotted on DrugMonkey.)

The science-art blog Bioephemera reports that every year at this time, Google sees a spike in the number of searches for a certain word, as represented on the chart above. For the grand prize, round-the-world trip to grandfather's house, what is that word? (Tired of trying to figure it out? Click here for the answer.)

Happy Thanksgiving, readers of Tweed!

Last week's death of Uga VII has prompted People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals to propose that the University of Georgia replace its line of bulldog mascots with an animatronic dog.

"It is time for the university to put an end to the cycle of suffering endured by dogs who are brought into the world solely to represent the school's 'brand,'" says PETA Assistant Director Kristie Phelps. "By choosing a humane alternative to the use of live animals as school mascots, UGA can show that compassion always wins."

May we suggest Boston Dynamics' "Big Dog" (below), the four-legged robot financed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency for future use as a sort of pack mule for soldiers in rugged terrain? (Boston Dynamics' two-legged "Petman" robot was the subject of a post a few weeks ago in this space.) We can't imagine any creature more intimating than the beast in this video. —...

BoingBoing likens Brian Malow's standup routine to "science-based Vaudeville," which is pretty accurate description of his schtick at this month's Wonderfest science festival in the San Francisco Bay area.

A few months back, someone sent us the video below of Tim Lee, a Ph.D. in ecology and evolution who uses PowerPoint to wax funny about "the banalities of biology." 

Know of any other great academic comedians? Drop us a line at tweed@chronicle.com, with "Tweed comedian" in the subject line.

Writing in Wired Science, Reed Timmer describes driving into a tornado west of Aurora, Neb., in June to collect data for his Ph.D. in meteorology at the University of Oklahoma at Norman.

Mr. Timmer, who records dispatches for the Discovery Channel's Stormchasers series, drives a specially designed vehicle he calls the Dominator (above), a Chevy Tahoe equipped with bulletproof Lexan windows, a roll cage, and an armor exterior. The shell has a rubber sheath beneath it and can quickly be dropped to the ground to prevent wind from getting underneath and flipping the vehicle.

A Stormchaser video of his encounter with a tornado near Kirksville, Mo., can be seen on YouTube.

If you've ever wondered what college students do when they're bored, click through to this series of videos that Ed Comeau, a former fire investigator and the founder of the newsletter Campus Firewatch, compiled from YouTube.

Mr. Comeau sat down for a Q&A with our colleague Eric Hoover to talk about campus fire safety and why so many young men still think it's cool to play with matches.