4. Clean water is then spread over the conditioned ice by a “trowel,” a clean board that contains a pipe bringing in the new water, and that spreads the new water in a thin, flat film. The “new” water is held in a tank with a capacity of about 200 gallons, although about 70 to 120 gallons are used in a typical resurfacing.
The poser of this Imponderable wonders why this “clean water” spread to form the topmost sheet of ice needs to be hot. Wouldn’t hot water just melt some of the ice on the surface and slow down the freezing process?
The conventional wisdom is that, compared to room temperature water, hot water creates a better bond with the existing ice. It does melt the existing ice a little more, but it fills in the cracks better. When it freezes, hot water creates a smoother temperature gradient from the top of the old ice to the top of the new surface—it “integrates” better and forms a smooth top-sheet of ice.
We spoke to Raoul Lopez, the maintenance chief at the Culver City Ice Arena in Culver City, California. His ice arena uses an Olympia resurfacer, one of Zamboni’s main rivals. Lopez showed us a manual from Olympia that addresses this issue:
For the best resurfacing results, your water supply should be 85 to 95 degrees Centigrade (180 to 200 degrees F). Hot water flows into cracks in the ice surface before cooling and freezing, and by slightly melting the ice surface before freezing, the best possible bond is formed with the existing ice. Hot water holds less oxygen than cold water and therefore produces a denser, harder ice. The hard ice does not get damaged as easily and therefore does not require the resurfacing as often or as deeply, resulting in minimal ice buildup. This means less time spent on ice maintenance and saves wear and tear on ice-resurfacing equipment.
We spoke to a few physicists, who confirmed that hot water would have slight advantages in resurfacing ice, but they wondered whether the small gain would really be worth the cost in heating? If scientists fielding a theoretical question wonder about costs, you can rest assured that the thought has crossed the mind of rink owners. In active rinks, resurfacing is performed every hour or two, so the cost of heating 100 gallons of water an hour is not inconsiderable.
And guess what? None other than Richard Zamboni, now president of his father’s firm, says about his ice rink:
We don’t use hot water and we never have. Cold water works fine for us, and we never have to worry about the cost of heating it. We don’t recommend hot water. When [other] customers have a problem with ice resurfacing, usually sharpening the blade fixes the problem. Occasionally, we recommend trying hot water when other solutions fail.
Despite the Olympia maintenance manual, the experienced chief of maintenance, Raoul Lopez, agrees with Zamboni. His rink doesn’t use hot water except for special occasions. Although he thinks that hot water smoothes the ice out better than room temperature, hot water is just too expensive to justify the small advantages. But we contacted several NHL clubs and high-level figure-skating officials, and they confirmed that hot water rules the day in their domains.
Submitted by Michael Rzechula of Elizabethtown, Illinois.
WHAT IS THE CIRCLE ADJACENT TO THE BATTER’S BOX ON BASEBALL FIELDS?
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This area is known as the fungo circle. Coaches stand in the fungo circle during pregame practice and hit balls to infielders and, more frequently, outfielders.
Why confine the coach to stand in one small area? So he won’t wear out the grass on the field!
Submitted by Terrell K. Holmes of New York, New York.
Thanks also to Ronald C. Semone of Washington, D.C.
WHY ARE COPYRIGHT DATES ON MOVIES AND TELEVISION SHOWS WRITTEN IN ROMAN NUMERALS?
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This is not the kind of question movie studios want to answer on the record. About the only reason anyone could come up with to answer this Imponderable is the obvious one—they express the release date in Roman numerals in order to make it more difficult for viewers to determine exactly how old the show is. It is hard enough to spot the release date printed in Arabic numbers during a fast credit crawl.
Although studio representatives were not unwilling to so speculate off the record, none of them knew this “deception theory” to be a fact. It may be just as likely that copyright dates are in Roman numerals simply because they’ve always been that way: Never discount inertia as an explanation for any phenomenon.
There are many new avenues for international distribution of movies and television shows, notably cable television, home video, and videodisc. With each new “window” of distribution, some time elapses. A hit movie might show up on cable television six months after its theatrical release, and then on videotape and videodisc a year later. But non-hit movies can have a more erratic distribution time frame—B-movies like horror movies or kung-fu flicks might not even hit theaters, let alone home video, until many years after they are shot. And the movie may not be released in foreign markets until even later. There are more reasons than ever for concealing the true release date of movies (writers have long made it a policy not to put dates on screenplays they send out for consideration—the older the date, the staler the script somehow seems to the reader).
Ironically, though, more and more Arabic numbers are popping up on release dates, particularly in television. ABC- and NBC-produced shows now use Arabic numbers, and some movie studios use Arabic numbers, although the policy is inconsistent. W. Drew Kastner, a lawyer for NBC, indicated that the network has no reason to make it difficult for viewers to know exactly when a show was taped or filmed.
Is there any practical reason for the copyright date in the first place? Although ideas cannot be copyrighted, the expression of such ideas is protected. By inserting the copyright date, movies are automatically protected by the Universal Copyright Convention, which means that if there is a copyright date listed, it will be protected internationally, without the need for costly legal paperwork in each locality the film is exhibited. Under the old copyright law in the United States, the term of the copyright was 28 years from the date of publication. But under the current law, effective January 1, 1978, the copyright extends to the life of the author plus 50 years, or 100 years after creation, or 75 years after publication, whichever is less. With the advent of home video, the copyright on a film is more valuable than ever. It isn’t important, or even desirable, for you to be able to read the copyright date while watching the movie. But it is important that would-be plagiarists know where they stand.
WHY ARE DOWNHILL SKI POLES BENT?
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Unlike the slalom skier’s poles, which must make cuts in the snow to negotiate the gates, the main purpose of the downhill ski poles is to get the skier moving, into a tuck position…and then not get in the way.
According to Tim Ross, director of Coaches’ Education for the United States Ski Coaches Association, the bends allow the racer “to get in the most aerodynamic position possible. This is extremely important at the higher speeds of downhill.” Savings of hundredths of a second are serious business for competitive downhill skiers, even when they are attaining speeds of 60–75 miles per hour.
If the bends in the pole are not symmetrical, they are designed with careful consideration. Dave Hamilton, of the Professional Ski Instructors of America, reports that top-level ski racers have poles individually designed to fit their dimensions. Recreational skiers are now starting to bend their poles out of shape. According to Ross, the custom-made downhill ski poles may have as many as three to four different bend angles.
Funny. We haven’t seen downhill skiers with three to four different bend angles in their bodies.
Submitted by Roy Welland of New York, New York.
WHY DO FEMALES TEND TO THROW “LIKE A GIRL”?
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Not only do girls (and later, women) tend not to be able to throw balls as far as boys, but their form is noticeably different. If you ask the average boy to throw a baseball as far as he can, he will lift his elbow and wind his arm far back. A girl will tend to kee
p her elbow static and push forward with her hand in a motion not unlike that of a shot putter.
Why the difference? Our correspondent mentions that he has heard theories that females have an extra bone that prevents them from throwing “like a boy.” Or is it that they are missing one bone?
We talked to some physiologists (who assured us that boys and girls have all the same relevant bones) and to some specialists in exercise physiology who have studied the underperformance of girls in throwing.
In their textbook, Training for Sport and Activity: The Physiological Basis of the Conditioning Process, Jack H. Wilmore and David L. Costill cite quite a few studies that indicate that up until the ages of ten to twelve, boys and girls have remarkably similar scores in motor skills and athletic ability. In almost every test, boys barely beat the girls. But at the onset of puberty, the male becomes much stronger, possesses greater muscular and cardiovascular endurance, and outperforms girls in virtually all motor skills.
In only one athletic test do the boys far exceed the girls before and after puberty: the softball throw. From the ages of five to sixteen, the average boy can throw a softball about twice as far as a girl.
Wilmore and Costill cite a fascinating study that attempted to explain this phenomenon. Two hundred males and females from ages three to twenty threw softballs for science. The result: males beat females two to one when throwing with their dominant hand, but females threw almost as far as males with their nondominant hand. Up until the ages of ten to twelve, girls threw just as far with their nondominant hand as boys did.
The conclusion of Wilmore and Costill is inescapable:
Major differences at all ages were the results for the dominant arm…the softball throw for distance using the dominant arm appears to be biased by the previous experience and practice of the males. When the influence of experience and practice was removed by using the nondominant arm, this motor skill task was identical to each of the others.
All the evidence suggests that girls can be taught, or learn through experience, how to throw “like a boy.” Exercise physiologist Ralph Wickstrom believes most children go through several developmental stages of throwing. Boys simply continue growing in sophistication, while girls are not encouraged to throw softballs or baseballs and stop in the learning curve. As an example, Wickstrom notes that most right-handed girls throw with their right foot forward. Simply shifting their left foot forward would increase their throwing distance.
When forced to throw with their nondominant hand, most boys throw “like a girl.” The loss in distance is accountable not only to lesser muscular development in the nondominant side, but to a breakdown in form caused by a lack of practice.
Submitted by Tony Alessandrini of Brooklyn, New York.
WHY DON’T MAGAZINES PUT PAGE NUMBERS ON EVERY PAGE?
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Magazine publishers would like to put a number on every page of their magazine. But many publishers freely agree to withhold pagination for full-page advertisements, particularly for “bleed” ads, in which the material covers the entire page. In a standard ad, an outside border usually allows for pagination without interfering with photographs or artwork. But many advertising agencies demand that their image-enhancing bleed ads not be marred by anything as mundane as a page number; publishers contractually accede to this requirement.
High-circulation magazines often publish many different editions. When you encounter letters after a page number (e.g., 35A, 35B, 35C), you are reading a section designed for a particular demographic or geographic group. Readers often find these editions annoying, because they impede the flow of the magazine (try finding page 36 when the regional edition occupies pages 35A through 35Q).
By customizing their editions, magazines can not only attract advertisers who might be uninterested or cannot afford inserting messages in a national edition, but can charge considerably more per thousand readers reached. If Fortune printed an edition targeted at accountants, for example, a software company with a new accounting package might be convinced to advertise in this edition but would not find it cost-effective to try the national edition. Even nonbleed full-page ads designed for regional or demographic editions are rarely numbered, since one ad might appear on several different page numbers in different editions.
J. J. Hanson, chairman and CEO of Hanson Publishing Group, Inc., adds that another reason for omitting pagination is that some ads are actually preprinted by the advertiser and inserted in the magazine: “Often those preprinted inserts are prepared before the publisher knows which page number would be appropriate.” Scratch and sniff perfume strips and liquor ads with laser effects are two common examples.
At a time when one designer-jean advertiser might book ten consecutive, nonpaginated pages, and regional, demographic, and advertising supplements can dot a single issue of a magazine, finding a page number can be a mine field for readers. But a gold mine for the publishers.
Submitted by Samuel F. Pugh of Indianapolis, Indiana.
Thanks also to Karin Norris of Salinas, California; and
Gloria A. Quigley of Chicago, Illinois.
WHY DO MAGAZINE AND NEWSPAPER EDITORS FORCE YOU TO SKIP PAGES TO CONTINUE AN ARTICLE AT THE BACK OF THE MAGAZINE/NEWSPAPER?
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We’ve answered why page numbers are missing from magazines. Now, from our correspondent Karin Norris: “It has always annoyed me to have to hold my place and search for the remainder of the article, hoping the page numbers will be there.”
We hear you, Karin. In fact, one of the great pleasures of reading The New Yorker is the certainty that there will be no such jumps. We had always assumed that the purposes of jumps was to force you to go to the back of the book, thus making advertisements in nonprime areas of the paper or magazine more appealing to potential clients. Chats with publishers in both the newspaper and magazine field have convinced us that other factors are more important.
A newspaper’s front page is crucial to newsstand sales. Editors want readers to feel that if they scan the front page, they can get a sense of the truly important stories of the day. If there were no jumps in newspapers, articles would have to be radically shortened or else the number of stories on the front page would have to be drastically curtailed.
Less obviously, magazine editors want what Robert E. Kenyon, Jr., executive director of the American Society of Magazine Editors, calls “a well-defined central section.” Let’s face it. Most magazines and newspapers are filled with ads, but with the possible exception of fashion and hobbyist magazines, readers are usually far more interested in articles. Magazine editors want to concentrate their top editorial features in one section to give at least the impression that the magazine exists as a vehicle for information rather than advertising. J. J. Hanson, chairman and CEO of Hanson Publishing Group, argues that sometimes jumps are necessary:
An article that the editor feels is too long to position entirely in a prime location will jump to the back of the book, thus permitting the editor to insert another important feature within the main feature or news “well.” Many publishers try very hard to avoid jumps.
The unhappiest version of a jump is one where an article jumps more than once so that instead of completing the article after the first jump, the reader reads on for a while and then has to jump again. That’s almost unforgivable.
Hanson adds that another common reason for jumps in magazines, as opposed to newspapers, is color imposition:
Most magazines do not run four-color or even two-color throughout the entire issue. Often the editor wants to position the major art treatment of his features or news items within that four-color section. In order to get as many articles as possible in that section, the editor sometimes chooses to jump the remaining portions of the story to a black and white signature.
Of course, advertising does play more than a little role in the creation of jumps. Most publications will sell clients just about any size ad they want. If an advertiser wants an odd-sized ad, one that can’t b
e combined with other ads to create a full page of ads, editorial content is needed. It is much easier to fill these holes with the back end of jumps than to create special features to fill space. The New Yorker plugs these gaps with illustrations and funny clippings sent in by readers, which, truth be told, may be read more assiduously than their five-part book-length treatments on the history of beets.
Submitted by Karin Norris of Salinas, California.
WHY DO BASKETBALLS HAVE FAKE SEAMS? DO THEY HAVE A PRACTICAL PURPOSE OR ARE THEY MERELY DECORATIVE?
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A caller on a radio talk show asked this question indignantly, as if the ball industry were purposely perpetrating a fraud, at worst, and foisting unnecessary decoration on a ball, at best. Before you accuse basketball manufacturers of making a needless fashion statement, consider that most basketball players need all the help they can get manipulating a basketball. A basketball is too big for all but the Kareems and Ewings of the world to grasp with their fingers. Those “fake” seams are there to help you grip the ball (similarly, quarterbacks make sure their fingers make contact with the seams when passing).
Imponderables: Fun and Games Page 6
