The charisma remains. Brown told Imponderables that he still receives calls from longtime owners of Beetles, asking him to come for a thirtieth birthday party or a 300,000-mile party. Magazines and clubs devoted to the Beetle keep the spirit alive. The Beetle is still manufactured in Mexico, and exported to Germany.
We asked Brown if the Beetle might be resurrected. After all, the death of convertibles was prematurely announced just a few years ago. Brown wasn’t optimistic. He estimates that there are twenty thousand hardcore addicts who would buy a new Beetle immediately, but after that, it would be a hard sell. Volkswagen would have to sell a Beetle with the old specifications for approximately eight to ten thousand dollars today, overpriced for an entry-level car.
Instead, for 1988 Volkswagen has chosen to offer the Fox, a new entry-level model with a list price of under six thousand dollars. Intended to compete with the new Korean cars, as well as Japanese subcompacts, the Fox won’t be the cheapest car on the block, the way the old Beetle used to be.
The race of so many full-line automobile companies to compete in the entry-level field indicates that there is still profit to WHY DO CLOCKS RUN CLOCKWISE? / 193
be made in low-priced cars. Volkswagen probably would have clung to the Beetle indefinitely as long as it sold, but the Bug’s demise, ironically, forced Volkswagen to expand its thinking and planning.
A one-product company (the Karmann Ghia, VW’s sports car, was never a big seller in the U.S.) is always in jeopardy.
The success of the Beetle was dependent on the serendipitous confluence of several factors: a bulging demographic group of baby boomers coming into driving age; a clever marketing and advertising campaign; and a growing wave of antiestablishment thinking. But most of all, there was that charisma. When charisma wanes, it’s hard to regain that magic. Ask the makers of Flavor Straws. Or Screaming Yellow Zonkers.
Submitted by J. Spring, of Citrus Heights, California.
194 / DAVID FELDMAN
Why Are the Flush Handles on Toilets on the Left Side?
Have we finally found a product that was designed with the left-hander in mind? Of course not.
Most early flush toilets were operated by a chain above the tank that had to be pulled down by hand. Almost all of the chains were located on the left side of the toilet, for the user had more leverage when pulling with the right hand while seated.
When the smaller handles near the top of the tank were popularized in the 1940s and 1950s, many were fitted onto existing toilets then equipped with pull-chains. Therefore, it was cheaper and more convenient to place the new handles where they fitted standard plumbing and fixtures.
The handles offered the user a new dilemma: should one flush while seated or flush while standing? Although this subject is not often discussed in polite quarters, we are more that delighted to tread on delicate matters in order to stamp out Imponderability wherever we find it. Alexander Kira, in his wonderful book, The Bathroom, notes that in the “Cornell Survey of Personal Hygiene Attitudes and Practices in 1000 Middle-Class Households,” 34 percent of respondents flushed the toilet while still seated and 66 percent flushed while standing up. Thus, it would seem that the majority of Americans flush either left-handed or else in an awkward right-handed crossover style. Would there be reason to switch handles over to the right side?
In The Bathroom, Kira argues that the current configuration discriminates not so much against right-handers as against flushing-while-seated types:
Most flushing mechanisms are poorly located…. convenient only if the user flushes the closet after rising and turning around. A sizable number of persons prefer, however, for one reason or another (odor, peace of mind, and so on), to flush the closet while seated and after each bowel movement and must engage in contortions to do so. Since the water closet is presently also used for
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standing male urination, this might be regarded as a justification for its location.
Kira sees the flushometer as no solution to our left-right problem.
Generally used only in public bathrooms, flushometers are those levers that you never know whether you are supposed to operate with your foot or your hand. Evidently, people use both, making the flushometer unsanitary. The device’s position, about eighteen inches off the floor, is awkward for either extremity.
Europeans have fared little better in tackling this design problem.
Most European toilets have a pull-up knob located on top of the tank. The placement of the knob not only makes it most difficult to flush from a seated position, but it prevents using the top of the tank as a magazine rack or radio stand.
Alexander Kira’s solution to all of these problems is Solomonlike in its ecumenicalism. He recommends a spring-loaded flush button set into the floor that would allow users to flush from either a seated or standing position, “before, during, or after elimination.” These buttons can be operated electronically rather than mechanically, freeing them from the fate of the current flush handle, the placement of which is dictated by the demands of mechanics rather than the convenience of the user.
Submitted by Lisa R. Bell, of Atlanta, Georgia. Thanks also to: Linda Kaminski, of Park Ridge, Illinois.
196 / DAVID FELDMAN
Why Does the Price of Gas End in Nine-Tenths of a Cent?
No one we contacted in the oil or service-station businesses could find any reason to believe that gas isn’t priced at $1.19.9 for the same reason that automobiles are priced at $9,999 or record albums at $8.98. As Ralph Bombardiere, the executive director of the New York State Association of Service Stations, Inc., put it, “There is and will always be a big difference between the price of 29.9 cents and 30.0 cents, and the same principle will follow through when the number reaches $1.29.9 and $1.30.0.”
It is doubtful that sophisticated marketing surveys were ever undertaken by service stations or oil companies to establish the effectiveness of ending prices in nine-tenths of a cent, but the use of fractional prices goes back at least seventy years. C. F. Helvie, customer relations manager for the Mobil Oil Corporation, sent us a fascinating letter, the result of combing through Mobil’s collection of photographs of old service stations and other reference materials.
Helvie found a photograph of a 1914 Texaco gas station that displayed a sign advertising gasoline for 14½ cents per gallon. The Mobil material suggests, but does not conclusively prove, that the practice of ending unit pricing of gas with nine-tenths started no earlier than the late 1920s and early 1930s.
The Great Depression decimated the demand for gasoline. More than 2.6 million cars and trucks were taken off the road, and the consumption of gasoline was down a billion gallons per year in both 1932 and 1933. Gas stations fought to survive. Helvie writes: Production at the time was running far above demand and the market quickly went into a serious oversupply situation. It was at that time that premiums such as candy, cigarettes, ash trays, dolls, and countless other giveaway items made their appearance at service stations. In such a competitive climate, it seems reasonable to assume that the gasoline marketers of the day would have been
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attracted to the concept of fractional pricing. In addition, mechanical gasoline pumps, with computers that could be set to fractional prices, began to make their appearance at service stations at about the same time.
When prices zoomed at the gas pumps during the oil crisis of the 1970s and federal price and supply controls were imposed, individual stations lost the autonomy to set prices. The government issued mandated formulas for pricing, which resulted in unusual fractional amounts. Further compounding the problem was that, during this period, the price of gasoline went above one dollar per gallon, and most computers were incapable of handling prices of more than two digits. Until their computers could be modified, many service stations simply set their pumps to calculate half-gallon prices, which led to more strange fractions. Some stations chose to sell at a price per l
iter and maintained the usual nine-tenths fraction.
Consumers are accustomed to most retail establishments charging a cent or two less than a round number. Helvie indicated that his experience as a customer-relations expert was that “most motorists accept and understand gasoline prices ending in nine-tenths of a cent per gallon, but they react negatively to prices ending in other fractions.”
Submitted by John D. Wright, of Hazelwood, Missouri. Thanks also to: Charles F. Myers, of Los Altos, California.
198 / DAVID FELDMAN
When I Open the Hot-Water Tap, Why Does the Sound of the Running Water Change As It Gets Hot?
The whistling sound you hear occurs with cold water as well, but is more common with hot water. Whistling occurs when there is a restriction of water flow in the pipes. According to Tom Higham, executive director of the International Association of Plumbing and Mechanical Officials, the source of the noise depends on the construction of the plumbing: “If the piping is copper, the cause is usually attributed to undersized piping. If the pipe is galvanized steel, noise is usually caused by a buildup of lime which reduces the area for the flow of the water.” Water flow is restricted more often with hot water, as Richard W. Church, president of the Plumbing Manufacturers Institute, ex
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plains it, because “of additional air in the hot water formed when the molecules expand during the heating process.”
The crackling noise you hear in the water heater is caused by lime accumulations in its tank. As the water heater expands and contracts, depending on the temperature, the lime breaks off and falls to the bottom of the tank. The water pipes simply transmit and amplify the glorious sound.
Submitted by Glenn Worthman, of Palo Alto, California.
The Measurement of “One Foot” Was Meant to Approximate the Length of a Man’s Foot. How Did They Decide How Long a Meter Should Be?
The U.S. Constitution gives the Congress the power to fix uniform standards for weights and measures. Previously, little uniformity existed among different colonies or even among different countries in Europe or Asia. For example, King Henry I personally provided the nose and thumb that set the standard for the length of a yard, while other nations didn’t even use the yard as a measure. Asian nations must have wondered if our “feet” really measured the length of a human foot.
200 / DAVID FELDMAN
Much of the clamor for a uniform system of measurement came from France. In 1790, during the French Revolution, the National Assembly of France asked the French Academy of Sciences to provide an invariable standard for all weights and measures. One committee responded quickly, urging that the Academy accept a decimal system as the simplest and most elegant solution. A subsequent committee recommended that the basic measure of length of such a system should represent a portion of the earth’s circumference: a unit equal to one ten-millionth of the length of a quadrant of the earth’s meridian (in other words, one ten-milionth of an arc representing the distance between the Equator and the North Pole).
This unit was later given the name mètre, from the Greek word metron, meaning “a measure.” The meter was the foundation for all of the other measures, as Valerie Antoine, executive director of the U.S. Metric Association, Inc., explains:
The unit of mass was to be derived by cubing some part of this length unit and filling it with water [thus, the “gram” became the mass of one cubic centimeter of water at its temperature of maximum density]. The same technique would also provide the capacity measure. In this way, the standards of length, mass, and capacity were all to be derived from a single measurement, infinitely reproducible because of natural origins, precisely interrelated, and decimally based for convenience.
The “metric system” did not catch on beyond France, at first, but its rigidity and standardization made it appealing to scientists and engineers throughout the world. Few people realize that as early as 1866, by Act of Congress, it was made “lawful throughout the United States of America to employ the weights and measures of the metric system in all contracts, dealing or court procedures.” By the turn of the twentieth century, the supremacy of the metric system was assured among developed nations.
The advances in precision instruments made the original definition of the meter too fuzzy. The “Treaty of the Meter,” an WHY DO CLOCKS RUN CLOCKWISE? / 201
1875 agreement, established a mechanism to refine and amend the metric system, and seventeen nations, including the United States, joined the “Metric Convention.” Since 1893, the meter has been defined as the length of the path traveled by light in a vacuum during a time interval of 1/299, 792, 458 of a second (in other words, the speed of light in a vacuum is 299,792,458 meters per second). As the speed of light is unlikely to change in the near future, scientists are confident that the meter will have a long life as a standard measurement.
Valerie Antoine mildly reprimanded us for using the spelling
“meter,” which is an Americanized version of what most of the world—including other English-speaking countries—spells “metre.”
Why Does the Moon Appear Bigger at the Horizon Than Up in the Sky?
This Imponderable has been floating around the cosmos for eons and has long been discussed by astronomers, who call it the moon illusion. Not only the moon but the sun appears much larger at the horizon than up in the sky. And constellations, as they ascend in the sky, appear smaller and smaller. Obviously, none of these bodies actually changes size or shape, so why do they seem to grow and shrink?
202 / DAVID FELDMAN
Although there is not total unanimity on the subject, astronomers, for the most part, are satisfied that three explanations answer this Imponderable. In descending order of importance, they are: 1. As Alan MacRobert of Sky & Telescope magazine states it, “The sky itself appears more distant near the horizon than high overhead.”
In his recent article in Astronomy magazine, “Learning the Sky by Degrees,” Jim Loudon explains, “Apparently, we perceive the sky not as half a sphere but as half an oblate [flattened at the poles]
spheroid—in other words, the sky overhead seems closer to the observer than the horizon. A celestial object that is perceived as ‘projected’ onto this distorted sky bowl seems bigger at the horizon.”
Why? Because the object appears to occupy just as much space at the seemingly faraway horizon as it does in the supposedly closer sky.
2. When reference points are available in the foreground, distant objects appear bigger. If you see the moon rising through the trees, the moon will appear immense, because your brain is unconsciously comparing the size of the object in the foreground (the tree limbs) with the moon in the background. When you see the moon up in the sky, it is set against tiny stars in the background.
Artists often play with distorting perception by moving peripheral objects closer to the foreground. Peter Boyce, of the American Astronomical Society, adds that reference points tend to distort perception most when they are close to us and when the size of the reference points is well known to the observer. We know how large a tree limb is, but our mind plays tricks on us when we try to determine the size of heavenly objects. Loudon states that eleven full moons would fit between the pointer stars of the Big Dipper, a fact we could never determine with our naked eyes alone.
3. The moon illusion may be partially explained by the refraction of our atmosphere magnifying the image. But even the WHY DO CLOCKS RUN CLOCKWISE? / 203
astronomers who mentioned the refraction theory indicated that it could explain only some of the distortion.
A few skeptics, no doubt the same folks who insist that the world is flat and that no astronaut has ever really landed on the moon, believe that the moon really is larger at the horizon than when up in the sky. If you want to squelch these skeptics, here are a few counterarguments that the astronomers suggested.
1. Take photos of the moon or sun at the horizon and up in the sky. The bodies will appear to be the same size.
2. “Cover” the moon with a fingertip. Unless your nails grow at an alarming rate, you should be able to cover the moon just as easily whether it is high or low.
3. Best of all, if you want proof of how easy it is to skew your perception of size, bend over and look at the moon upside down through your legs. When we are faced with a new vantage point, all reference points and size comparisons are upset, and we realize how much we rely upon experience, rather than our sensory organs, to judge distances and size.
We do, however, suggest that this physically challenging and potentially embarrassing scientific procedure be done in wide-open spaces and with the supervision of a parent or guardian. Imponderables cannot be held responsible for the physical or emotional well-being of those in search of astronomical truths.
Submitted by Patrick Chambers, of Grandview, Missouri.
204 / DAVID FELDMAN
If We See Mockingbirds During the Day and Hear Them at Night, When Do They Sleep?
At night, but off and on, and with an occasional nap during the day.
Birds aren’t as compulsive as humans are about their sleep hours, but then they don’t have nine-to-five jobs. Birds also require much less sleep than humans, but then they don’t have taxes to worry about either.
Actually, it has proved to be quite a challenge to determine the sleep patterns of birds. Laboratory experiments can’t replicate the conditions they face in the elements, and any movement or sound the scientist makes during close observation will disrupt the sleep he is trying to measure.
No one has actually proved that sleep is physiologically necessary for birds. Its main benefit for them might be that standing still helps conserve energy: if a bird can’t hear a potential predator hovering or see a worm ripe for the picking, it can’t do anything about it.
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