Do Penguins Have Knees?

by David Feldman

  Richard Williams, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service, explains that published times are only approximations of what we observe with our naked eyes:

  The time of sunrise and sunset varies with day of the year, latitude, and longitude. The published sunrise and sunset times are calculated without regard to surrounding terrain. That is, all computations are made for a sea-level horizon, even in mountainous areas. Thus the actual time of sunrise at a particular location may vary considerably from the “official” times.

  When we observe sunset, the Sun has already gone below the horizon. The Earth’s atmosphere “bends” the Sun’s rays and delays the sunset by about three minutes. Likewise with sunrise, the sun makes its first appearance before it would on a planet with no atmosphere. We actually get five to ten minutes of extra sunlight due to this effect.

  Submitted by a caller on the Larry Mantle show, Pasadena, California.

  Why Is Pubic Hair Curly?

  In Why Do Clocks Run Clockwise?, we discussed why we have pubic hair. But you weren’t satisfied. So we will continue our nonstop exploration of what seems to be an insatiable North American interest in body hair.

  If you want to know the anatomical reason why pubic hair is curly, we can help you. Dr. Joseph P. Bark, diplomate of the American Board of Dermatology, explains:

  Pubic hair is curly because it is genetically made in a flat shape rather than in a round shape. Perfectly round hair, such as the hair seen on the scalps of Native Americans, is straight and has no tendency to curl. However, ribbonlike hair on the scalps of blacks is clearly seen to curl because it is oval in construction. The same is true with pubic hair….

  But answering what function curly pubic hair serves is a much trickier proposition. Some, such as Samuel T. Selden, a Chesapeake, Virginia, dermatologist, speculate that pubic hair might be curly because if it grew out straight and stiff, it might rub against adjacent areas and cause discomfort. (Dermatologist Jerome Z. Litt, of Pepper Pike, Ohio, who has been confronted with the question of why pubic and axillary hair doesn’t grow as fast as scalp hair, facetiously suggests that “not only wouldn’t it look sporty in the shower room, but we’d all be tripping over it.”)

  Before we get carried away with our theories, though, we might keep in mind a salient fact—not all pubic hair is curly. Early in puberty, it is soft and straight. And Selden points out that if this book were published in Japan or China, this Imponderable likely would never have been posed. The pubic hair of Orientals tends to be sparser and much straighter than that of whites or blacks.

  Submitted by Suzanne Saldi of West Berlin, New Jersey.

  Why Are There Tiny Holes in the Ceiling of My Car?

  For the same reason there are tiny holes in the ceiling of many schools and offices. They help kill noise. Chrysler’s C. R. Cheney explains:

  The headliners in some automobiles and trucks have small perforations in them to help improve their sound-absorbing qualities. The perforated surface of the headliner is usually a vinyl or hardboard material and it is applied over a layer of foam. The holes serve to admit sound from inside the vehicle and allow it to be damped by the foam layer to promote a quieter environment for passengers.

  To some, the patterns made by the tiny perforations were also pleasing to the eye, so perhaps the perforations served double duty.

  Let’s not stretch it, C.R.

  Submitted by Garland Lyn of Windsor, Connecticut.

  What Does the “YKK” Emblazoned on My Zipper Mean?

  It means that you are the proud possessor of a zipper made by YKK Inc. (That is why you bought that pair of pants, isn’t it?) Now perhaps YKK’s emblem is a little less picturesque than an alligator or a polo player, but then, who except Imponderables readers busy themselves by reading their zippers, anyway? And the subdued logo hasn’t seem to hurt YKK’s business; Izod and Ralph Lauren would kill for the 75+ percent share of their market that YKK commands.

  YKK, the largest zipper manufacturer in the world, stands for Yoshida Kogyo Kabushikikaisha (now you know why they call themselves YKK). Yoshida is the last name of the founder of the company, Tadao Yoshida. In English, YKK is translated as Yoshida Industries Inc.

  Submitted by Juli Haugen of West Boothbay Harbor, Maine. Thanks also to Gwen Shen of San Francisco, California; M. Sullivan of Miami, Florida; Becky Wrenn of Palo Alto, California; Tisha Land of South Portland, Maine; Anne Daubendiek of Rochester, New York; Chris Engeland of Ottawa, Ontario; and many others.

  Why Do VCR Manuals Advise You to Disconnect the Machine During Storms?

  If lightning strikes your home and your antenna or AC power line is not properly grounded, you can find yourself with a busted VCR. William J. Goffi, of the Maxell Corporation, explains:

  …the electrical surge will find its way through your home’s wiring and into your VCR, and consequently cause much damage to your unit. This is true, however, for any electrical appliance you have. A surge of lightning can blow out your television monitor, your stereo, etc.

  Purchasing a surge protector will protect your investments.

  As Mark Johnson, a spokesperson for Panasonic, points out, an electrical surge can blow out an electrical appliance even if it is off, which is why the manual recommends disconnecting the plug.

  Another potential threat to a connected appliance is a sudden surge of power from the local electric power utility. Surge protectors will also usually solve this problem.

  Submitted by Richie, a caller on the Dan Rodricks show, Baltimore, Maryland.

  In Baseball, Why Is the Pitcher’s Mound Located 60′6″ from Home Plate?

  The answer comes from Bill Deane, senior research associate of the National Baseball Hall of Fame:

  The pitcher’s box was originally positioned 45 feet from home plate. It was moved back to 50 feet in 1881. After overhand pitching was legalized, it was moved back to 60’6” in 1893.

  Why was the mound moved back? For the same reason that fences are moved in—teams were not generating enough offense. Morris Eckhouse, executive director of the Society for American Baseball Research, told Imponderables that around the turn of the century, batters were having a hard time making contact with the ball.

  But what cosmic inspiration led to the choice of 60′6″ as the proper distance? Deane says there is evidence indicating that “the unusual distance resulted from a misread architectural drawing that specified 60′0″.”

  Submitted by Kathy Cripe of South Bend, Indiana.

  Why Does Grease Turn White When It Cools?

  You finish frying some chicken. You reach for the used coffee can to discard the hot oil. You open the lid of the coffee can and the congealed grease is thick, not thin, and not the yellowish-gold color of the frying oil you put in before, but whitish, the color of glazed doughnut frosting. Why is the fat more transparent when it is an oil than when it is grease?

  When the oil cools, it changes its physical state, just as transparent water changes into more opaque ice when it freezes. Bill DeBuvitz, a longtime Imponderables reader and, more to the point, an associate professor of physics at Middlesex County College in New Jersey, explains:

  When the grease cools, it changes from a liquid to a solid. Because of its molecular structure, it cannot quite form a crystalline structure. Instead, it forms “amorphous regions” and “partial crystals.” These irregular areas scatter white light and make the grease appear cloudy.

  If grease were to solidify into a pure crystal, it would be much clearer, maybe like glass. Incidentally, paraffins like candle wax behave just like grease: They are clear in the liquid form and cloudy in the solid form.

  Submitted by Eric Schmidt of Fairview Park, Ohio.

  Why Is the Skin Around Our Finger Knuckles Wrinkled When the Skin Covering Our Knees Is Not?

  We received this Imponderable about three years ago, in a stack of letters from Judith Bambenek’s South St. Paul High School class. No doubt, her students were bludgeoned into writing us, but we were nevertheles
s impressed by the quality of the questions. By now, we’re sure that Chris Dahlke is on the way to becoming a Rhodes Scholar.

  Dr. Harry Arnold, Jr., a distinguished dermatologist from the land of Rice-A-Roni, was happy to solve the Imponderable troubling the youth of South St. Paul:

  In extension, the knuckles need enough skin to permit flexing the joint roughly through 100 degrees, so there is excess skin when the joint is fully extended.

  The knees require much less skin but there is wrinkling there too, over a much larger area, so it is less obvious. Even with the extra skin, we get “white-knuckled” when the joints in the knee are fully flexed.

  We’re sometimes amazed at the lengths to which our sources will extend themselves for the sake of science and the vanquishing of Imponderability. In the case of Chesapeake, Virginia, dermatologist Samuel T. Selden, it included disrobing. Selden has a speculative but fascinating anthropological theory to explain the knee-finger disparity:

  I had to take off my shoes and socks to check, but interestingly, the skin over the knuckles of our toes is not very wrinkled either. The skin over our elbows is corrugated, but not to the degree that the skin over the finger knuckles is wrinkled.

  My theory for the wrinkling is that our ancestors, the apes, walked on their fingers, as we probably did prior to becoming upright beasts. The wrinkles are most apparent over the middle knuckles, the proximal interphalangeal joints, where apes place most of their weight when walking. Some individuals, through heredity, have thickened skin in this area known as “knuckle pads,” and they are probably even more of a throwback to their ape ancestors.

  We’re sure they’ll be thrilled to hear that.

  Submitted by Chris Dahlke of South St. Paul, Minnesota. Special thanks to Chris’s teacher, Judith Bambenek.

  Where Does All of the Old Extra Oil in Your Car’s Engine Lurk After an Oil Change?

  Our befuddled correspondent, Victor Berman, elaborates:

  Just before you change your oil you can check the dipstick. The oil level is “full.” You then drain the oil and change the filter, put in the recommended amount of oil, and check the dipstick. The level is “full.”

  Now you go to dispose of the old oil from the crank case and the filter and, lo and behold, there is less than five quarts. More like three to three and one-half quarts. I know that even after turning over the filter and letting it drain there is some oil left in the filter, but not one and one-half quarts. Is my car’s engine storing an extra quart and a half every time I change the oil?

  We were intrigued with this mystery, so we contacted several auto manufacturers, who had no explanation for the case of the missing oil. So we persisted, engaging in two long conversations with oil specialists: H. Dale Millay, a research engineer for Shell Oil, and Dan Arcy, a technical service representative for Pennzoil Products Company. After much soul-searching, all of us decided we still had an Imponderable, bordering on a Frustable, on our hands.

  Some questions don’t yield one simple answer. So the experts ventured several possible explanations:

  1. If the oil change is conducted while the engine is cold, the oil will be thicker and tend to sit on the motor’s surface and coat internal surfaces. Even hot oil will wet the internal surfaces and result in some oil loss.

  2. The amount of oil unleashed depends to a great extent upon the location of the plug on the drain. Dan Arcy points out that Ford, for example, manufactures several models with two drain plugs—one needs to pull both plugs to get rid of all the oil.

  3. In some cases, the slant of the car may inhibit or promote freer flow of oil out of the drain. Any flat reservoir has to be tipped over to spill out all of the contents.

  4. Are you sure you drained the oil filter adequately? Millay thinks the oil filter, which is built to hold up to two quarts of oil, is the most likely hiding place for most of the missing oil.

  5. Oil will continue to drizzle out of the plug a long time, often an hour or more. This doesn’t explain the loss of a quart and one-half, but then every drip counts when trying to solve this Imponderable.

  6. A significant amount of oil may be left on your oil pan. Not a quart, perhaps, but a half-pint or so may be underestimated if spread around a pan with a large circumference.

  7. Not to challenge your dipstick-reading acuity, Victor, but our experts wanted to ask you if you are sure you were really checking the oil directly before changing it. All engines are designed to consume some oil when operating.

  8. How about a mundane reason? A leak? Arcy relayed an astonishing maxim of the industry: The loss of one drop of oil every fifty-five feet is equivalent to the consumption of one quart of oil in 500 miles. Of course, the leak theory doesn’t explain why the oil shortfall occurs only when changing the oil.

  Any readers have a solution to this greasy Imponderable?

  Submitted by Victor Berman of East Hartford, Connecticut.

  Why Do Fish Float upside-Down When They Die?

  Imponderables cannot be held responsible for the consequences if you read this answer within thirty minutes of starting or finishing a meal. With this proviso, we yield the floor to Doug Olander, director of special projects for the International Game Fish Association:

  Fish float upside-down when they die because internal decomposition releases gases that collect in the gut cavity. Anyone who’s ever cleaned a fish knows the meat is on top (dorsally) and the thin stomach wall on the bottom (ventrally). So as gases accumulate, the dense muscle mass of the top of the fish is positioned down and the gas-filled stomach up.

  Fishes with swim bladders already have gas inside, which tends to make them at least neutrally buoyant. Benthic fishes, lacking swim bladders (flatfishes, for example) would not float upon death.

  Deepwater fishes float high atop the surface when pulled rapidly upward, a common angling experience, because the gas trapped inside their swim bladder expands at the reduced pressure of the surface.

  Dr. Robert Rofen, of the Aquatic Research Institute, adds that since so much of a fish’s body weight is concentrated along the bone structure of the back and skull, it is not uncommon to find dead fish floating with heads down.

  Submitted by Melissa Hall of Bartlett, Illinois.

  Why Do Some Companies Use Mail-In Refunds Rather Than Coupons?

  Applying our usual paranoid logic, we always assumed that more people will redeem coupons at a grocery store than will bother tearing off proofs of purchase and mailing in forms to receive a refund. Therefore, a mail-in refund’s purpose in life was to seduce you into buying eight cans of tuna but then being too lazy to ever send in the proofs of purchase and cash register receipt to receive the rebate.

  We remember once soaking pineapple cans in hot water, trying to peel labels off to send as proofs of purchase, and wondering: “Is this why we were put on earth? There must be a better way.” But there is logic in marketers’ refund nonsense.

  F. Kent Mitchel, chairman of the Marketing Science Institute, confirmed our conspiracy theory:

  Mail-in refunds are generally less expensive largely because of lower usage by the public, yet they protect existing brands about as well as coupons in a competitive situation.

  What does Mitchel mean by “protect”? In many cases, coupons are used to promote items that consumers consider as commodities, with insubstantial differences in quality, and where brand loyalty may not withstand a pricing differential. Pepsico and Coca-Cola wage perpetual price wars in the stores and through coupons. A similar skirmish invades the detergent and coffee aisles. Coupons and mail-in refunds, then, are often used to “protect” one brand against price cuts by competing brands.

  In many cases, the cash reward for mail-in refunds is higher than those for coupons, but the lower redemption rates make mail-ins cheaper in the long run. As Robert A. Grayson, publisher of The Journal of Consumer Marketing, told Imponderables, “the promotion looks as big but doesn’t cost as much,” particularly if consumers purchase the goods and neglect to ever send fo
r the rebate.

  But cost isn’t the primary consideration in implementing a mail-in rather than a coupon campaign. The choice is really a strategic decision dictated by whom the marketer is trying to attract. Thomas L. Ruble, consumer response manager of the Louis Rich Company, explains:

  Coupons are used to stimulate new business—to encourage first-time buyers. Mail-in refunds, on the other hand, encourage continuity among the established customer base. Mail-ins also encourage established customers to purchase multiple packages.

  Mail-in refunds are also most effective for products, including foods, sold outside of grocery stores. Supermarkets are geared for the paperwork involved in processing coupons. But a family-run hardware or camera store might not know how to receive compensation for the refund on a package of batteries or be willing to put up with the nuisance of doing so.