Do Elephants Jump?

by David Feldman

  The restaurant doing this is likely to have had problems with men who do not want to touch the handle on the flush valve. To use ice in such volumes is expensive. They would save quite a bit in a short time by installing our sensor-operated flush valves, which need no touching, flush effectively after every use, are conservative with water, and create the image they seek in keeping their rest rooms clean for their customers.

  Sometimes you can’t get a good answer without a commercial plug!

  Some folks argue that ice provides a pleasing target for men. Men can’t resist target practice. Some men try to melt as much ice as possible, or to create mini-ice sculptures. Holland’s Schiphol Airport installed urinals with small “targets,” life-sized sculptures of flies (these can be seen at http://www.urinal.net/schiphol/), that according to a Wall Street Journal article, reduced spillage as much as 80 percent.

  But even when men manage to hit the target, urinals will smell unless there is a steady stream of water to remove urine. Automatic-flush urinals are probably the best answer, but many establishments are saddled with old plumbing. The salt, sulfur, and other minerals contained in urine both harden in the trap and constrict the available “throat” of the trap of the urinal. This plumbing equivalent of “hardening of the arteries” can cause problems even on those rare occasions when men actually do flush voluntarily, creating dreaded backsplash.

  But the slight inconvenience to customers or the long-term plumbing problems are unlikely to be what motivates the dumping of ice in urinals. As one bartender put it: “It’s the smell, Dave. It’s the smell.”

  Submitted by Judith and Paul Dahlman of New York, New York.

  Why Do Auto Batteries Lose Their Charge When Left on a Concrete Floor?

  It’s probably not a coincidence that the two readers who posed this Imponderable come from cold-weather climates. It turns out that car batteries seem to like the same temperatures we do when we’re in our shirtsleeves, as Celwyn Hopkins, executive secretary of the Independent Battery Manufacturers Association, explains:

  A lead-acid storage battery loses its capacity at any temperature lower than 80 degrees Fahrenheit, since the electrochemical action is slowed down. At 32 degrees Fahrenheit, the battery is only 65 percent efficient, and at zero degrees Fahrenheit, it is only 40 percent efficient. When warmed back to 80 degrees, it would be 100 percent efficient, or fully charged.

  Hydrometers used for checking the specific gravity of battery electrolyte (state of charge) have a temperature compensation chart to arrive at the correct figure. If you took a fully charged battery at 80 degrees and gave it a hydrometer test, it would read 1.265, but at 30 degrees, it would read 1.245.

  Hopkins adds, ominously: “There have been a lot of arguments on this subject and I usually don’t win.” Not exactly what we want to hear from a knowledgeable source!

  A concrete floor in a garage is no colder than a wooden one, but it feels colder, mostly because concrete’s greater density conducts cold (and heat) more efficiently. The naysayers concede that batteries don’t thrive in cold weather, but argue that the differences in conductivity between concrete and wood floors or shelving are not sufficient to explain what they consider to be a long-held myth about batteries. Most agree with Gale Kimbrough, the technical services manager of Interstate Batteries, that although the premise of this Imponderable is no longer true, it does have a historical basis:

  Many, many years ago, wooden battery cases encased a glass jar with the battery inside. Any moisture on the floor could cause the wood to swell and possibly fracture the glass, causing it to leak. Later came the introduction of the hard rubber cases, which were somewhat porous and had a high carbon content. An electrical current could be conducted through the container if the moist concrete floor permitted the current to find an electrical ground. The wise advice of the old days to “keep batteries off concrete” has been passed down to us today, but it no longer applies because of the advanced technology of today’s batteries.

  Modern auto batteries are now encased by polypropylene, which insulates the battery much more effectively than rubber. Even so, Kimbrough points out that even at the ideal 80 degrees, “some lead acid batteries discharge 4 to 8 percent per month, and can lose even more in very hot weather. In fact, some garages have been known to put batteries in hot climates on concrete floors during the summer, just to keep the batteries cooler and retain their charge better.”

  Submitted by Frank Buller of Brewster, New York. Thanks also to Michael Javernick of Colorado Springs, Colorado.

  Why Does Gum Get Hard When You Drink Water While Chewing?

  Most food softens when moistened, but chewing gums stiffens. What’s the deal?

  Calling chewing gum a “food” is a stretch. Until about sixty years ago, most gum base was made from the sap of a Central American sapodilla tree — that sap was chicle (of Chiclets fame). In essence, folks were chomping on rubber.

  By the 1950s, most major gum manufacturers replaced chicle with an artificial gum base made from a synthetic plastic-rubbery substance that chemically resembles the chicle it replaced. Although there are other ingredients in gum (sugar or artificial sweeteners, natural flavorings, glycerin to preserve moistness, etc.), it is the gum base that gives gum its characteristic elasticity and softness.

  Chicle and the artificial gum base that was designed to mimic chicle share one important characteristic — they soften and harden over a small range of temperature. When moist gum cools, it hardens. When moist gum is warmed, it softens. When you stick a thermometer in your mouth, it registers 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit on your thermometer (give or take a degree or two or a hospital visit or two). When you chew gum, your near-100-degree saliva moistens the gum, and that rigid stick quickly softens.

  When we drink water, it’s usually cold. But even room-temperature water is cold enough to give our gum rigor mortis. Drink some hot water and the gum will magically soften up again.

  This is not a chemical reaction. The gum doesn’t care whether the cold liquid is Coca-Cola, water, ice, or malt liquor. And this is true of all rubber — pour some cold water on a rubber eraser and it will harden, too. In fact, as fans of Heloise know well, applying ice is the classic home remedy for removing dried gum from clothing — once you’ve hardened the gum, it is much easier to remove.

  For the sake of research, we tested various water temperatures on a stick of Wrigley’s Doublemint gum, and we found we could achieve stasis. When we opened the hot water faucet and the water was warm but not hot, we could drink it without the gum softening or hardening — the Golden Mean.

  Submitted by Jill Clay of Pleasant Prairie, Wisconsin. Thanks also to Matt Weatherford of Arvada, Colorado.

  Why Is There a Dot on Billiards and Pool Cue Balls?

  You mean you didn’t know that the dot was to cover up the nerve canal of an elephant? Doesn’t anyone receive a proper liberal arts education anymore?

  The earliest billiard tables and balls, created during the Renaissance in England, were made out of wood. Sometime during the seventeenth century, ivory balls were introduced. The British were already importing tons of ivory from Africa every year, and billiards players found the new ivory balls much more pleasing in weight, appearance, and sound (the lovely clicking noise when two balls collided).

  But there was a serious problem with making a ball out of an elephant’s tusk. Elephants have nerve canals running through the middle of their teeth, just like we do. To achieve an even, “honest” roll, the craftsmen who carved the balls so that the nerve canal ran straight through the center, creating dark imperfections at opposite ends of each ball. The ball crafters would usually plug the ball with something to assure even weighting. In the early days of billiards, ebony was often used to plug the canals, so that the holes appeared to be black dots.

  By the early seventeenth century, ivory balls were more popular than wooden ones in England, and became the only balls used in serious competitions. But there were problems associated with these
ebony-stuffed ivory balls. In his article in Amateur Billiard Player magazine, Peter Ainsworth explains:

  Holes created by the nerve would usually be plugged with ebony and become the “spot.” Due to the general inconsistency of the spot ball and the tendency for it to “kick” when the ebony contacted the ivory of the object ball, it was considered to be a disadvantage to play with it.

  In addition to these problems, the porous ivory could also change shape during the course of a game as it absorbed moisture from a humid atmosphere. It was therefore common to see players when shooting from the balk [the line behind which you place the cue ball after an opponent “scratches”], carefully placing their ball so that the “poles” of the central nerve were exactly horizontal.

  As they gained more experience in fashioning ivory balls, craftsmen realized that the ivory taken from near the base of the tusk was difficult to work with, as the nerve hole was wider than those nearer the tip. To assure equal weighting, some ball makers would demand only the center of the tusk in order to line up the nerve canal through the ball’s center. In an e-mail to Imponderables, Peter Clare, whose family owns Thurston, one of the oldest and most respected manufacturers of billiard equipment, noted that top-quality ivory balls of this era had “very small evidence” of the nerve, sometimes insignificant enough to be covered by black dye rather than a solid material.

  But the price of this expertise came high, and not just in terms of money. One tusk could yield material for only two or three balls. Elephants were being slaughtered to provide four or six billiard balls! According to Titan Sports, an English billiard-supply company, in the peak years of production, 12,000 elephants were slaughtered annually just to supply Britain with billiard balls.

  In the late nineteenth century, plastic balls rolled to the rescue to supplant ivory. The first plastic balls were made out of celluloid, and later plastic resins, which, except for inferior acetate balls, are what most pool and billiard balls are composed of today.

  So if modern pool balls are plastic, with no nerve holes in sight, why are there dots on balls today? Actually, not all cue balls do sport dots — not even the majority. But dots still appear on many balls, for a very practical reason. John Lewis, director of leagues and programs at the Billiards Congress of America, the governing body of pocket billiards (“pool”) in the United States, explains:

  Most cue balls in pocket billiards do not have a dot on them. Some cue balls in pool are manufactured with dots, circles, or logos on them, but this is expressly so players can most easily determine which make of cue ball it is…. When dots, circles, or logos are stamped on cue balls, it is because the white surface is ideal for marking a ball with a manufacturer’s identification mark. It has nothing to do with the evolution of the cue ball with the natural dot from ivory times.

  In other words, the all-white cue ball is the best possible “billboard” for an advertisement for the manufacturer, just as the white space on the ace of spades provides the requisite white space for a plug for the card maker.

  The most popular carom billiard games (featuring tables without pockets), such as English billiards and three-cushion billiards, are played with only three balls: one red, and one cue ball for each of the two players. A player is not allowed to shoot the opponent’s cue ball, so it is important that each player be able to easily identify whose cue ball is whose. Usually, one cue ball is pure white; the other has a dot, a colored circle, or a logo to distinguish it from the other. More often than not, there are two dots on billiard cue balls, so that the mark is distinguishable if one dot is flush against the table.

  Anyone who has seen The Graduate or listened to Frank Zappa can attest to the poor public relations that the plastics industry has endured. But the pool and billiards industry is mighty pleased with its adoption of plastic balls, which are cheaper and easier to manufacture. Players are happy with their perfect roundness and true roll. And elephants are downright ecstatic about them.

  Submitted by Patricia Roberts, via the Internet.

  Why Are Some Parts of Our Bodies More Ticklish Than Others?

  In our first book, Imponderables, we explored why we can’t tickle ourselves, and noted that the neural pathways that control tickling are identical to those that cause pain. So the experts who tackled this Imponderable focused on serious benefits that ticklishness might bestow on us mortals, all agreeing that what we now consider a benign tingling sensation at one time in our evolution might have warned us against serious trauma.

  San Francisco biophysicist Joe Doyle notes that some parts of our body are more richly endowed with nerves than others — including such tickling meccas as the bottom of the feet, the under-arms, and the hands and fingers. Evolutionists, notes Neil Harvey, of the International Academy for Child Brain Development, “would say that the reason for the heavier concentration may be whatever survival benefits we derive from being more sensitive in those places.”

  How could, say, the armpit possibly be necessary to survival? “The axilla warns of a touch that might progress to a wound of the brachial plexus, which could paralyze an arm,” answers University of Chicago neurosurgeon Sean F. Mullan. Other sensitive sites such as the nostrils, ear canals, and eye sockets are all subject to invasion by foreign objects or creeping or flying insects.

  What about the underside of the foot, then? Mullan is slightly more tentative:

  The role of the foot is more perplexing. Is it a warning against the snake that crawled up the tree when we lived in its branches? Is it a hypersensitivity resulting from the removal of the thicker skin of our soles, which was normal before we began to wear shoes? I prefer the former explanation.

  Submitted by a caller on the Mike Rosen Show, KOA-AM, Denver, Colorado.

  If All Time Zones Converge at the North and South Poles, How Do They Tell Time There?

  Imagine that you are a zoologist stationed at the South Pole. You are studying the nighttime migration patterns of Emperor penguins, which involves long periods observing the creatures. But you realize that while you watch them waddle, you are in danger of missing a very special episode of The Bachelor on television unless you set that VCR for the right time. What’s a scientist to do?

  Well, maybe that scenario doesn’t play out too often, but those vertical line markings on globes do reflect the reality. All the time zones do meet at the two poles, and many Imponderables readers wonder how the denizens of the South Pole (and the much fewer and usually shorter-term residents of the North Pole) handle the problem.

  We assumed that the scientists arbitrarily settled on Greenwich Mean Time (the same time zone where London, England, is situated), as GMT is used as the worldwide standard for setting time. But we found out that the GMT is no more! It is now called UTC (or Coordinated Universal Time — and, yes, we know that the acronym’s letter order is mixed up). The UTC is often used at the North Pole as the time standard, and sometimes at the South Pole.

  We veered toward the humanities in school partly because the sciences are cut and dried. If there is always a correct answer, then teachers could always determine that we came up with the wrong answer. Science students were subjected to a rigor that we were not.

  But when it comes to time zones, the scientists at the poles are downright loosey-goosey: They use whatever time zone they want! We spoke to Charles Early, an engineering information specialist at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, who told us that most scientists pick the time zone that is most convenient for their collaborators. For example, most of the flights to Antarctica depart from New Zealand, so the most popular time at the South Pole is New Zealand time. The United States’ Palmer Station, located on the Antarctic Peninsula, sets its time according to its most common debarkation site, Punta Renas, Chile, which happens to share a time zone with Eastern Standard Time in the United States. The Russian station, Volstok, is coordinated with Moscow time, presumably to ease time-conversion hassles for the comrades back in Mother Russia.

  Early research
ed this subject to answer a question from a child who wondered what time Santa Claus left the North Pole in order to drop off all his presents around the world. Based on our lack of goodies lately, we think Santa has been oversleeping big time, and now we know that time-zone confusion is no excuse.

  Submitted by Thomas J. Cronen of Naugatuck, Connecticut.

  Thanks also to Christina Lasley of parts unknown; Jack Fisch of Deven, Pennsylvania; Dave Bennett of Fredericton, Ontario; Paul Keriotis, via the Internet; Peter Darga of Sterling Heights, Illinois; Marvin Eisner of Harvard, Illinois; and Jeff Pontious of Coral Springs, Florida; and Dean Zona, via the Internet.

  How Do You Tell Directions at the North and South Poles?

  You think time zones are a problem, how about giving directions to a pal at the South Pole. By definition, every direction would start with “Head north.”

  In practical terms, though the distances aren’t great at the science stations, and it’s not like there are suburbs where you can get lost. But scientists do have a solution to this problem, as Nathan Tift, a meteorologist who worked at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station explains:

  If someone does talk about things being north or south here, they are most likely referring to what we call “grid directions,” as in grid north and grid south. In the grid system, north is along the prime meridian, or 0 degrees longitude, pointing toward Greenwich, England, south would be 180 longitude, east is 90 degrees, and west is 270 degrees. It’s actually quite simple. Meteorologists like myself always describe wind directions using the grid system. It wouldn’t mean much to report that the wind at the South Pole always comes from the north!