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Controlled burn
THE LAST WORD Stream of consciousness I recently heard of another search for the black box flight-data recorders from a missing aircraft. Why is this data not streamed periodically to a satellite or ground station so in the event of the unexplained loss of an aircraft, it would be available? (Continued)
n I think an earlier correspondent is mistaken in supposing that the term “black box” was invented in connection with aviation. My recollection is that it was coined by Norbert Wiener, the cybernetics pioneer. He used it to describe a unit that appears on a system flow chart and performs some specified function. It has certain inputs and certain outputs but the internal workings are not specified. It may be a piece of hardware or a piece of software. For instance, one might have a black box that performs a coordinate conversion, or another mathematical operation. Or it might have physical inputs and outputs: one can imagine a black box with sunlight and carbon dioxide as inputs and oxygen and diamonds as outputs. John Ponsonby Wilmslow, Cheshire, UK
Write or wrong? Why do we have different styles of handwriting? It is so individual that you can identify people such as friends and colleagues purely from their handwriting.
Questions and answers should be concise. We reserve the right to edit items for clarity and style. Include a daytime telephone number and email address if you have one. Restrict questions to scientific enquiries about everyday phenomena. The writers of published answers will receive a cheque for £25 (or US$ equivalent). Reed Business Information Ltd reserves all rights to reuse question and answer material submitted by readers in any medium or format.
Last words past and present, plus questions, at last-word.com
using letters 10 times bigger than on paper, yet I can still recognise his handwriting. So it is not just a matter of small muscle control. Philip Roe By email, no address supplied
dilution. Professionals start with all the elements pre-chilled: liquor and mixer, cocktail shaker and glass, and with the ice already chipped. The ice, liquor and mixer are added to the cocktail shaker and shaken or stirred vigorously for 15 seconds, decanted through a sieve into the cold glass and given to the customer. Some leave the ice in the drink, which keeps it cool longer, but dilutes the drink as it melts. Choice rules here. Shaking with chipped ice brings the mix to the coldest point in the fastest time via fully turbulent mixing. It provides a large contact area between the ice and the fluid for fast heat transfer. Some people use a specialised freezer to make cubes of the alcohol (bottled liquor freezes out water as slush at about -40 °C and reaches full solidification at about -114 °C). As a young student, I did this in the lab freezer – naughty boy that I was. Bill Jackson Toronto, Canada
Swirled, not stirred
Wall-to-wall webbing
Why shake or stir vodka martinis at all? Both methods mean there is far more collision between liquid and ice, which makes the martini very dilute. I just hold the cocktail shaker gently and loosely spin it in a circular motion to swirl drink and ice together. Assuming there is a flaw in my method, what is it?
In a chalet on the Alps which had no obvious draughts, I noticed spider threads spanning horizontally from wall to wall. How did they do it?
n Handwriting is influenced by factors including the style we were first taught, how our minds reacted to this teaching, how we learned from errors, whether we are left or right-handed, the anatomy of our hands, the nature, quality and dexterity of our handeye coordination, the effect of our personalities on the conscious and subconscious choices we make about our handwriting as we grow up, plus various cultural influences we absorb over time. Given these influences it’s more surprising that we manage to use handwriting to communicate at all. I’ve had to type this because my handwriting’s terrible. Geoff Convery Gainsborough, Lincolnshire, UK n My friend writes on a blackboard
n When you mix ice and alcoholic liquor you want the coldest drink in the shortest time with the least
New Scientist retains total editorial control over the content of The Last Word. Send questions and answers to The Last Word, New Scientist, Lacon House, 84 Theobald’s Road, London WC1X 8NS, UK, by email to [email protected] or visit www.last-word.com (please include a postal address in order to receive payment for answers). For a list of all unanswered questions send an SAE to LWQlist at the above address.
hermetically sealed. For example, windows allow sunlight to penetrate, heating a patch of floor. Air in contact with the floor would warm and expand. Being less dense, it would rise, to be replaced by cooler, denser air, initiating the required air movement. The spider scurries along the first line – called a bridge line – spinning a stronger second thread. It continues making return journeys until the line is sufficiently strong. The rest of the web follows. David Attenborough describes the construction of a web by an orb-web spider at bit.ly/fC8ABR. Mike Follows Willenhall, West Midlands, UK
This week’s question
Controlled burn n Air currents carry a silk line
from a spider’s spinneret until it reaches a solid object. Because of its sticky nature, the line attaches to whatever it encounters. Draughts or convection currents sufficient to carry the line would exist even in a room that was
While burning pages of New Scientist on my camping trip, I noticed the ash had two distinct stages of “burntness” (see photo). What causes the burning process to stop at each stage? Vincent By email, no address supplied
Why are orangutans orange? A new collection: the usual insight, ingenuity and wit – this time with full colour photographs Available from booksellers and at newscientist.com/orangutans
n I think an earlier correspondent is mistaken in supposing that the term “black box” was invented in connection with aviation. My recollection is that it was coined by Norbert Wiener, the cybernetics pioneer. He used it to describe a unit that appears on a system flow chart and performs some specified function. It has certain inputs and certain outputs but the internal workings are not specified. It may be a piece of hardware or a piece of software. For instance, one might have a black box that performs a coordinate conversion, or another mathematical operation. Or it might have physical inputs and outputs: one can imagine a black box with sunlight and carbon dioxide as inputs and oxygen and diamonds as outputs. John Ponsonby Wilmslow, Cheshire, UK
Write or wrong? Why do we have different styles of handwriting? It is so individual that you can identify people such as friends and colleagues purely from their handwriting.
Questions and answers should be concise. We reserve the right to edit items for clarity and style. Include a daytime telephone number and email address if you have one. Restrict questions to scientific enquiries about everyday phenomena. The writers of published answers will receive a cheque for £25 (or US$ equivalent). Reed Business Information Ltd reserves all rights to reuse question and answer material submitted by readers in any medium or format.
Last words past and present, plus questions, at last-word.com
using letters 10 times bigger than on paper, yet I can still recognise his handwriting. So it is not just a matter of small muscle control. Philip Roe By email, no address supplied
dilution. Professionals start with all the elements pre-chilled: liquor and mixer, cocktail shaker and glass, and with the ice already chipped. The ice, liquor and mixer are added to the cocktail shaker and shaken or stirred vigorously for 15 seconds, decanted through a sieve into the cold glass and given to the customer. Some leave the ice in the drink, which keeps it cool longer, but dilutes the drink as it melts. Choice rules here. Shaking with chipped ice brings the mix to the coldest point in the fastest time via fully turbulent mixing. It provides a large contact area between the ice and the fluid for fast heat transfer. Some people use a specialised freezer to make cubes of the alcohol (bottled liquor freezes out water as slush at about -40 °C and reaches full solidification at about -114 °C). As a young student, I did this in the lab freezer – naughty boy that I was. Bill Jackson Toronto, Canada
Swirled, not stirred
Wall-to-wall webbing
Why shake or stir vodka martinis at all? Both methods mean there is far more collision between liquid and ice, which makes the martini very dilute. I just hold the cocktail shaker gently and loosely spin it in a circular motion to swirl drink and ice together. Assuming there is a flaw in my method, what is it?
In a chalet on the Alps which had no obvious draughts, I noticed spider threads spanning horizontally from wall to wall. How did they do it?
n Handwriting is influenced by factors including the style we were first taught, how our minds reacted to this teaching, how we learned from errors, whether we are left or right-handed, the anatomy of our hands, the nature, quality and dexterity of our handeye coordination, the effect of our personalities on the conscious and subconscious choices we make about our handwriting as we grow up, plus various cultural influences we absorb over time. Given these influences it’s more surprising that we manage to use handwriting to communicate at all. I’ve had to type this because my handwriting’s terrible. Geoff Convery Gainsborough, Lincolnshire, UK n My friend writes on a blackboard
n When you mix ice and alcoholic liquor you want the coldest drink in the shortest time with the least
New Scientist retains total editorial control over the content of The Last Word. Send questions and answers to The Last Word, New Scientist, Lacon House, 84 Theobald’s Road, London WC1X 8NS, UK, by email to [email protected] or visit www.last-word.com (please include a postal address in order to receive payment for answers). For a list of all unanswered questions send an SAE to LWQlist at the above address.
hermetically sealed. For example, windows allow sunlight to penetrate, heating a patch of floor. Air in contact with the floor would warm and expand. Being less dense, it would rise, to be replaced by cooler, denser air, initiating the required air movement. The spider scurries along the first line – called a bridge line – spinning a stronger second thread. It continues making return journeys until the line is sufficiently strong. The rest of the web follows. David Attenborough describes the construction of a web by an orb-web spider at bit.ly/fC8ABR. Mike Follows Willenhall, West Midlands, UK
This week’s question
Controlled burn n Air currents carry a silk line
from a spider’s spinneret until it reaches a solid object. Because of its sticky nature, the line attaches to whatever it encounters. Draughts or convection currents sufficient to carry the line would exist even in a room that was
While burning pages of New Scientist on my camping trip, I noticed the ash had two distinct stages of “burntness” (see photo). What causes the burning process to stop at each stage? Vincent By email, no address supplied
Why are orangutans orange? A new collection: the usual insight, ingenuity and wit – this time with full colour photographs Available from booksellers and at newscientist.com/orangutans