Do Penguins Have Knees?

by David Feldman

  In New York, dance studios are invariably on the second floor as well. Not on the twenty-seventh floor. The second.

  The best explanation we could figure out is that rents must obviously be cheaper on higher floors. Dance studios presumably have little walk-in, impulse business. Even folks with happy feet are unlikely, on the spur of the moment, to decide they instantly must have tango lessons. All of our sources indicated that these factors were crucial, but other considerations were important, too.

  We heard from Connie Townsend, national secretary of the United States Amateur Ballroom Dancers Association in Baltimore, Maryland, who “reviewed the many studios with which I am familiar and was somewhat surprised to find that, indeed, most are located on second floors.” Townsend notes that all the exceptions she could think of were built specifically as dance studios by their owners.

  Frank Kiley, a former ballroom dance instructor and former licensee of 1,800 ballrooms nationwide, provides a historical perspective and an architectural answer:

  Previous to 1980, most studio-type ballrooms had to have twelve-foot ceilings to position loudspeakers for maximum effect. Some studios had fourteen- or eighteen-foot-high ceilings for best audio results…

  Most second-floor buildings in major cities had to use special curtains to subdivide ballroom classes and higher floors tended to have larger windows and smaller pillars in their structural design.

  Kiley’s reasons were echoed by Vickie Sheer, executive director of the Dance Educators of America, but she added several others as well:

  When I taught for thirty-seven years, my studios were always located on the second floor. My reason was to deter anyone from coming in from street level. If people climbed a flight of stairs, there must be [genuine] interest. Also, the second-floor placement kept out annoying children opening and closing doors and being pests.

  In winter, the heat in a building goes up and the cold air does not blow in, as on street level. Usually there is more square footage on a second-floor than a street-level…

  Kiley, still a major copyright owner in the ballroom industry, notes that dance studios are invading shopping malls, where many have landed on the ground floor.

  Submitted by a caller on the Carol Hemingway show, KGIL-AM, Los Angeles, California.

  Why Are 25-Watt Light Bulbs More Expensive Than 40-, 60-, 75-, and 100-Watt Bulbs?

  The old rule of supply and demand takes effect here. You don’t always get what you pay for. Richard H. Dowhan, manager of public affairs for GTE, explains:

  The higher-wattage, 40-, 60-, 75-, and 100-watt light bulbs are manufactured in huge quantity because they are in demand by consumers. The 25-watt light bulb has limited uses, therefore fewer bulbs are manufactured and you don’t get the inherent cost advantage of large productions runs.

  Secondly, in order to make it worthwhile for the retailer to stock a slow mover, which takes up shelf and storage space for longer periods of time, you increase the profit margin. These two factors result in a higher price.

  Submitted by Alan Snyder of Palo Alto, California.

  Why Are Water Towers Built So High?

  We have passed through small towns and cities where the water tower is by far the highest structure in sight. The name of the city is often emblazoned around the surface of the mighty edifice.

  But why are the water towers necessary anyway when most communities have reservoirs? And why are they so tall?

  We got our answer from Dr. Paul J. Godfrey, director of the Water Resources Center at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst:

  The task of providing water through a municipal distribution system requires both sufficient volume to meet normal consumption, emergency consumption (such as for fighting major fires), and sufficient pressure to operate household and industrial devices.

  The water tower provides, by its volume, a reservoir that can meet short-term needs during periods of high water use, usually in the morning and around dinner time, and allows the various sources of supply, reservoirs, or wells, to catch up during lower demand. The volume chosen for a facility usually assumes that a sufficient volume must be available to meet simultaneous demand during the high consumption period and a major fire. All of these functions do not require a particular water height.

  But water pressure is provided by the height of the tower. Water seeks its own level. For example, if we fill a water hose with water and hold each end of the hose at exactly the same level, no water flows out. But if one end of the hose is raised, water flows out of the other end…. The more water, and hence weight, above the lower end, the greater the force of water flowing out of the hose. The role of the water tower is to provide an elevated weight of water sufficient to provide adequate pressure at all outlets in the system.

  The alternative would be to install electrical pumps to force water out of other reservoirs, but this is an inefficient technology. As peter Black, president of the American Water Resources, told Imponderables, with a pump system “You would have to activate the pump every time anybody wanted any water.”

  The water tower may be lower tech than an electrical pump, but with the precautions outlined by Dr. Godfrey, it does the job well over any terrain:

  To create adequate pressure for all parts of a municipality, the water tower must be higher than all the municipality’s water taps, sufficiently high to create fire-fighting pressure at all hydrants. In some cities, the municipal supply does not provide enough pressure for tall buildings, so booster pumps and another storage tank on top of the building supplements pressure. [In New York and other big cities, standpipes are placed in front of tall buildings to insure that water can be delivered to the top of the building.]

  Water pressure in all areas of the municipality must be carefully controlled. Low pressure will be dangerous in a serious fire and will produce complaints from those who like brisk showers. High pressure will wear out valves and gaskets faster and cause excessive system leakage. Towns with high hills will often have squat water tanks on the highest hill and install pressure regulators to reduce pressure in the valleys. Towns with no hills must compensate by building an artificial hill, the water tower, which is higher than the tallest building.

  So those water towers aren’t so high just to serve as a monument to the ego of the mayor. The tall water tower ends up saving energy and money. But as Jay H. Lehr, executive director of the Association of Ground Water, explains, even our hero, the water tower, isn’t perfect: “Of course, there is no free lunch, as electrical energy is used in pumping the water into the storage tower in the first place.”

  Submitted by Cheri Klimes of Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Thanks also to George Armbruster of Greenbelt, Maryland; Gary Moore of Denton, Texas; and Jason and Bobby Nystrom of Destrehan, Louisiana.

  Why Are Some Watermelon Seeds White and Some Black?

  Most of you probably think all watermelons contain black and white seeds. It’s time for some serious consciousness raising. And Gary W. Elmstrom, professor of horticulture at the Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences at the University of Florida, is just the man to do it:

  Different varieties of watermelons have an array of different-colored seeds. Color of mature seed can vary from almost white to black depending upon variety. A watermelon variety named “Congo” has white seeds and “Jubilee” has black seeds. There are also genes for red-colored seeds in watermelons such as in a variety called red-seeded citron…. Seed color in watermelons is genetically determined, just as eye color is in humans.

  So is one melon bearing both white and black seeds the equivalent of a human with one blue eye and one brown eye? Not quite. Professor Elmstrom explains: “Just as blue-eyed babies turn into brown-eyed children, so do white seeds, barring pollination or fertility problems, end up as black ones.”

  Submitted by John K. Aldrich of Littleton, Colorado. Thanks also to J. R. Shepard of Plantation, Florida.

  What Is the Purpose of the Holes Near the End of Electric Plug Prongs?

  Mo
st of our hardware sources knew the answer to this Imponderable, which, judging by our mail, is high in the consciousness of the spiritus mundi. Ed Juge, director of market planning for Radio Shack, provided a succinct answer:

  The holes near the ends of AC plug prongs are there to mate with spring-loaded pins found in some of the better wall sockets, to help make a good connection, and to keep the plug from falling out of the socket.

  Submitted by Venia Stanley of Albuquerque, New Mexico. Thanks also to William C. Stone of Dallas, Texas; George A. Springer of San Jose, California; Barry Cohen of Thousand Oaks, California; Jesse D. Maxenchs of Sunnyvale, California; and Rory Sellers of Carmel, California.

  Why Do Paper Mills Smell So Bad?

  Rose Marie Kenny, of Hammermill Papers, properly chided us for posing the wrong Imponderable. Paper mills don’t generate offensive odors, she reminded us. Pulp mills do.

  You’re right, Ms. Kenny. Excuse us if we were too busy holding our noses to notice that rotten eggs were emanating from a pulp mill, not a producer of finished paper products.

  We asked Stephen Smulski, a professor of wood science and technology at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, to explain how lovely-scented trees turn into foul-smelling pulp:

  Paper is a thin sheet of tangled wood fibers, each of which is like a long, hollow straw with tapering, closed ends, and about ½ inch in length. In the standing tree, wood fibers, which consist mainly of cellulose, are held together by and embedded in an adhesive-like material called lignin.

  In order to isolate the individual wood fibers needed for making paper, chips of solid wood are treated with chemicals that selectively dissolve only lignin in a process called pulping. Of the several wood pulping processes, only the kraft sulfate process emits the rotten cabbage smell associated with pulp mills.

  In this process, sodium hydroxide (NaOH) and sodium sulfide (Na2S) are used to dissolve lignin. Though these chemicals are recovered and reused in a closed cycle, and the gases vented from the process scrubbed clean with state-of-the-art pollution control technology, tiny amounts of sulfur still escape into the air.

  Unfortunately for all of us, not least the citizens of the towns in which the pulp mill is located, you don’t need to be a dog to sniff out the scent of sulfur compounds. Doug Matyka, a public relations manager at Georgia-Pacific’s Tissue, Pulp and Bleached Board division, told Imponderables these chemicals are “readily noticeable even at levels far below one part per million.”

  But if a paper company decides to locate a plant in your town, don’t despair before you ferret out a few facts. Not all paper plants make their own pulp; many buy their pulp from a pulpmaking facility or from a free-standing mill that makes only pulp.

  Also, many papermaking methods don’t require these sulfur compounds. The olfactory culprit is the kraft-pulping process (“kraft” derives from the German term meaning “strong”). Kraft paper is best known for making supermarket shopping bags and corrugated cardboard boxes. If the other pulping processes were capable of producing the strength performance of kraft paper at a decent price, don’t you think that companies would employ them? After all, even executives of paper companies have to smell the stuff, too.

  Lest we seem to be picking on the pulp industry, a few fun facts from our paper sources will help you understand their dilemma:

  1. You can’t make paper without pulp. According to Kenny, 80 percent of a sheet of paper is made out of pulp.

  2. High-tech scrubbers have diminished the odor problem considerably. And more than many other industries, pulp mills conform to EPA air and water pollution standards. The smell of sulfur compounds is more offensive than dangerous.

  3. Many other things besides pulp mills produce the smell. Doug Matyka notes that exhaust from vehicles with catalytic converters sometimes smells like mini-pulp mills. And the same smell occurs during natural organic decay. After all, Doug reminds us, the original descriptive phrase “you smell like a rotten egg” comes not from pulp mills but rotten eggs.

  Yeah, sure, but it’s more fun to pick on heavy industry than a chicken.

  Submitted by Barry Long of Alexandria, Virginia.

  How Are Lane Reflectors Fastened onto the Road So That They Aren’t Moved or Crushed?

  Most of us, on occasion, have accidentally run over a lane reflector. The little bump is always upsetting. Have we moved the reflector? Have we hurt the reflector? Have we hurt our tires?

  Don’t worry too much about the reflectors, for you are unlikely to dislodge them. A two-part epoxy cement is used to fasten them to the road surface.

  But the nasty little secret of the reflectors’ durability is that they are recessed into the road surface to prevent movement and designed in the shape of a two-sided ramp to avoid getting crushed. George E. Jones, highway engineer at the National Highway Institute, told Imponderables that

  if you will look closely you will notice a groove about a foot long cut at a downward sloping angle in the pavement. The reflector is then cemented flush with the pavement surface.

  Well, not quite flush, and for a good reason. Amy Steiner of the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials explains:

  …they do protrude slightly so that they can catch the light emitted from the headlights. Because of this protrusion, they do sustain damage from vehicles driving over them (particularly from snowplow blades). Reflectors require a fair amount of maintenance.

  As for your tires, our authorities agree they are safe even if you hit twenty reflectors on the center line of the road. Just make sure you stay in your lane, or more than your tires are in jeopardy.

  Submitted by Eric Hartman of Spring Grove, Pennsylvania.

  Why Does Nabisco Put the Tiny Picture of Niagara Falls on Its Shredded Wheat Box?

  At the beginning of the twentieth century, shredded wheat biscuits were produced at the Palace of Light, a ten-acre site bordering Niagara Falls, New York. According to Michael Falkowitz, director of industry and trade relations for Nabisco Brands, The Palace of Light itself became a tourist mecca and served as the marketing image for the Shredded Wheat Company:

  The plant was decked out in marble tile and glass, and was air conditioned. It was visited by more than one hundred thousand wide-eyed tourists every year. The great falls gave meaning to what was billed as “the cleanliest” product—Shredded Wheat (and Triscuit)—produced in the cleanliest food factory.

  When the Nabisco Biscuit Company acquired the Shredded Wheat Company in 1928, it didn’t mess with packaging that was working just fine. It did mess with The Palace of Light, though. No longer state-of-the-art, the Niagara Falls plant was abandoned by Nabisco before World War II.

  Submitted by Sister Anne Joan of Boston, Massachusetts.

  Why Do Automobile Batteries Have to Be So Heavy? Why Can’t They Be Miniaturized?

  Of course, most consumers would prefer car batteries to be AA-size. If a car stalled, a driver could just reach into the glove compartment and pull out a little battery that had been recharged at home.

  Automobile manufacturers also want to downsize batteries. Any heavy material, whether it is the steel in the body of a car or the engine and cylinders, interferes with achieving better gasoline mileage.

  Battery manufacturers have responded. In some cases batteries are half the size they were twenty years ago. But alas, don’t look forward to AA-sized car batteries in the foreseeable future. As Stephen Bomer of the Automotive Battery Charger Manufacturers wrote to Imponderables, high-density lead plates are a major component of a battery: “No substitute for lead has been found that can do the job or generate the voltage required.”

  H. Dale Millay, a staff research engineer for Shell Oil, told Imponderables that the greater the surface area of lead in the battery, the easier it is to generate power. Millay claims that we have already paid the price for downsizing batteries: Although modern batteries are good at cold starts, they have low reserve capacities. Translation: They don’t last as long as they migh
t under strain.

  We received our most emphatic endorsement of the heavy battery from John J. Surrette, vice-president of Rolls Battery Engineering:

  The thinner you make the plates in a battery, the lesser the material inside…. The heavier the material, the more rugged the batteries are and the longer they will last. When you use thinner plates…this lessens the amount of ampere hour capacity. When heavier material is used, like we do in marine and industrial applications, it results in considerably longer life and less exposure [to the elements], which reduces the chance of plates buckling in hard service or the active material shedding from the positive grids.