Do Penguins Have Knees? (17 page)
Read Do Penguins Have Knees? Online
Authors: David Feldman
11000=0 | | 01010=5 |
00011=1 | | 01100=6 |
00101=2 | | 10001=7 |
00110=3 | | 10010=8 |
01001=4 | | 10100=9 |
These ten combinations can express all possible ZIP codes.
The bar code readers, working from left to right, add the values of the two full bars for each group of five to arrive at the proper ZIP code. Each of the five bar codes always has the same numerical assignment. From left to right, they are 7, 4, 2, 1, and 0. So if one of the digits of the ZIP code is 7, it will be expressed by making the first bar (7) and fifth (0) bar code full. If you add 7 and 0, you get seven (we hope). To express the number 6, the second (4) and third (2) bars in the group would be full height.
Got it? Good, because we have one more feature to confuse you with. After the nine- or five-digit code is sprayed, one other group of five bars is added to the right of the last ZIP code digit—the “correction character.” To arrive at this number, add all the digits in the ZIP code. The
Imponderables
post office box, for example, is in the 90024 ZIP area. By adding all the individual digits in the ZIP code, we arrive at the sum of fifteen. To calculate the proper correction character, the bar code reader subtracts this sum from the next highest multiple of ten—in this case, 20. (If the sum were 38, it would be subtracted from 40.) The remainder, five, is expressed as any other five would be in the POSTNET system—with the second and fourth bar being full height.
What is truly remarkable about the POSTNET system is how fast the OCRs can operate, and how they are capable of converting five-digit ZIP codes into the nine-digit ones that the postal system prefers. Reader Harold E. Blake, an expert on OCRs whose expertise was invaluable in writing this entry, summarizes how our letter was processed and sent along its merry way to him in the mellifluously named town of Zephyrhills, Florida:
This letter went through an OCR at the rate of nine per second. In about one-ninth of a second, the face of the letter was read and reassembled in a computer register. A multimegabyte memory was searched (sort of like an electronic ZIP code directory for the United States) and my post office box number was verified to be identical to the four in the ZIP + 4 (this is not always the case with box numbers). The 33539 was matched with Zephyrhills as a valid association. Then, a signal went from the computer to an A.B. Dick bar code printer, and “spriff,” several hundred ink dots got sprayed on this letter as it moved along faster than the eye could track it.
All in 110 milliseconds.
POSTNET codes are now commonly preprinted on business reply and courtesy reply envelopes by mass mailers so that the mail will bypass OCRs altogether and go directly to a bar code sorter. The chance of a misdirected letter is greatly reduced. It might not matter anymore if you “accidentally” put the insert of your utility bill upside-down so that no print shows through the address window. That bar code emblazoned on the return envelope is telling a bar code sorter the nine-digit ZIP code of the utility; chances are, the bill will arrive at its intended destination. Ain’t progress grand?
Submitted by George Persico of Thiells, New York. Thanks also to Tom Emig of St. Charles, Missouri; Cynthia J. Gould of Fairhaven, Massachusetts; Harold Fair of Bellwood, Illinois; Bob Peterson, United States Air Force, APO New York; William J. Feole, Alameda, California; Millicent Brinkman of Thornwood, New York; Kristina Castillo of Williamsville, New York; Herman London of Poughkeepsie, New York; Debbie DiAntonio of Malvern, Pennsylvania; and many others
.
We could produce water by combining oxygen and hydrogen, but at quite a cost financially and, in some cases, environmentally.
Brian Bigley, senior chemist for Systech Environmental Corporation, says that most methods for creating water are impractical merely because “you would need massive amounts of hydrogen and oxygen to produce even a small quantity of water, and amassing each would be expensive.” Add to this the cost, of course, the labor and equipment necessary to run a “water plant.”
Bigley suggests another possible alternative would be to obtain water as a byproduct of burning methane in an oxygen atmosphere:
Again, it’s terrible waste of energy. Methane is a wonderful fuel, and is better used as such, rather than using our supply to produce H
2
O. It would be like giving dollar bills to people for a penny to be used as facial tissue.
The most likely long-term solution to droughts is desalinization. We already have the technology to turn ocean water into drinking water, but it is too expensive now to be commercially feasible. Only when we see water as a valuable and limited natural resource, like oil or gold, are we likely to press on with large-scale desalinization plants. In northern Africa, water for crops, animals, and drinking is not taken for granted.
Submitted by Bill Irvin III of Fremont, California
.
Why
Does Your Voice Sound Higher and Funny When You Ingest Helium?
The kiddie equivalent of the drunken partygoer putting a lampshade on his head is ingesting helium and speaking like a chipmunk with a caffeine problem. When we saw
L.A. Law’s
stolid Michael Kuzak playing this prank, we were supposed to be smitten with his puckish, fun-loving, childlike side. We were not convinced.
Still, many
Imponderables
readers want to know the answer to this question, so we contacted several chemists and physicists. They replied with unanimity. Perhaps the most complete explanation came from George B. Kauffman:
Sound is the sensation produced by stimulation of the organs of hearing by vibrations transmitted through the air or other mediums. Low-frequency sound is heard as low pitch and higher frequencies as correspondingly higher pitch. The frequency (pitch) of sound depends on the density of the medium through which the vibrations are transmitted; the less dense the medium, the greater the rate (frequency) of vibration, and hence, the higher the pitch of the sound.
The densities of gases are directly proportional to their molecular weights. Because the density of helium (mol. wt. 4) is much less than that of air, a mixture of about 78 percent nitrogen (mol. wt. 28) and about 20 percent oxygen (mol. wt. 32), the vocal cords vibrate much faster (at a higher frequency) in helium than in air, and therefore the voice is perceived as having a higher pitch.
The effect is more readily perceived with male voices, which have a lower pitch than female voices. The pitch of the voice [can] be lowered by inhaling a member of the noble (inert) gas family (to which helium belongs) that is heavier than air, such as xenon (mol. wt. 131.29)….
Brian Bigley, a chemist at Systech Environmental Corporation, told
Imponderables
that helium mixtures are used to treat asthma and other types of respiratory ailments. Patients with breathing problems can process a helium mixture more easily than normal air, and the muscles of the lungs don’t have to work as hard as they do to inhale the same volume of oxygen.
Submitted by Jim Albert of Cary, North Carolina. Thanks also to James Wheaton of Plattsburg AFB, New York; Nancy Sampson of West Milford, New Jersey; Karen Riddick of Dresden, Tennessee; Loren A. Larson of Altamonte Springs, Florida; and Teresa Bankhead of Culpepper, Virginia
.
Why
Is the French Horn Designed for Left-Handers?
We hope that this Imponderable wasn’t submitted by two left-handers who learned the instrument because they were inspired by the idea that an instrument was finally designed specifically for them. If so, Messrs. Corcoran and Zitzman are in for a rude awakening.
If we have learned anything in our years toiling in the minefields of Imponderability, it is that
nothing
is designed for left-handers except products created exclusively for lefties that cost twice as much as right- (in both senses of the word) handed products.
In case the premise of the Imponderable is confusing, the French horn is the brass wind instrument with a coiled tube—it looks a little like a brass circle with plumbing in the middle and a flaring bell connected to it. The player sticks his or her right hand into the bell itself and hits the three valves with the left hand. So the question before the house is: Why isn’t the process reversed, with the difficult fingering done by the right hand?
You’ve probably figured it out already. The original instrument had no valves. Dr. Kristin Thelander, professor of music at the University of Iowa School of Music and a member of the International Horn Society, elaborates:
In the period 1750-1840, horns had no valves, so the playing technique was entirely different from our modern technique. The instruments were built with interchangeable crooks which placed the horn in the appropriate key for the music being played, and pitches lying outside of the natural harmonic series were obtained by varying degrees of hand stopping in the bell of the horn.
It was the right hand which did this manipulation in the bell of the horn, probably because the majority of people are right-handed [another theory is that earlier hunting horns were designed to be blown while on horseback. The rider would hold the instrument with the left hand and hold the reins with the right hand].
Even when the valves were added to the instrument, a lot of hand technique was still used, so the valves were added to the left-hand side.
On the modern French horn, this hand technique is no longer necessary. But so many generations grew up with the old configuration that the hand position remains the same. Inertia triumphs again, even though it would probably make sense for right-handers to use their right hands on the valves. But fair is fair: Lefties have had to contend with all the rest of the right-dominant instruments for centuries.
Most of our sources took us to task for referring to the instrument as the “French horn.” In a rare case of our language actually getting simpler, the members of the International Horn Society voted in 1971 to change the name of the instrument from the “French Horn” to the “horn.”
Why? Because the creators of the instrument never referred to it as the “French horn,” any more than French diners order “French” dressing on their salads or “French” fries with their steak. As we mentioned earlier, the horn was the direct descendant of the hunting horn, which was very popular in French during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The English, the same folks who screwed us up with the
cor anglais
or English horn started referring to the instrument as the “French horn” as early as the late seventeenth century, and the name stuck. Americans, proper lemmings, followed the English misnomer.
Submitted by Edward Corcoran of South Windsor, Connecticut. Thanks also to Manfred S. Zitzman of Wyomissing, Pennsylvania
.
In our first book,
Imponderables
, we discussed why milk cartons are so difficult to open and close. To make a long story short, the answer: The current milk carton is extremely cheap to manufacture, and customers don’t complain about the problem enough to motivate milk suppliers to change the packaging.
But three readers have written recently to ask about another milk carton conundrum that has always perplexed us. The top of the milk carton looks so symmetrical, it hardly
seems
to matter where you form the spout.
