The Wise Book of Whys (10 page)

Why Pop Rocks pop

Much like other hard sugar candies, Pop Rocks are made primarily of sugar, corn syrup, water, and artificial flavorin
g. What causes the candy to pop when it comes in contact with the moisture and heat in your mouth is not due to any ingredient. Rather, it is due to the way the candy is made.

Basically, what they do is heat the ingredients together, bringing the mixture to boil
. They continue to boil it until the moisture level descends suitably so that a thick syrupy substance remains. In normal hard sugar candies, this substance is then put in molds and allowed to cool and harden. With pop rocks, they expose the hot mix to carbon dioxide at about 600 pounds per square inch worth of pressure. This causes very small bubbles of carbon dioxide to form within the mix. The substance is then cooled and subsequently hardens.

Once the hard candy is formed, the pressure is released
. This causes the candy to shatter, leaving small nuggets of hard candy, which are the Pop Rocks. Many of these  nuggets still contain pockets of carbon dioxide kept at relatively high pressure. When the candy hits the saliva in your mouth, it quickly dissolves the thin barriers containing the pressurized carbon dioxide. This results in the bubbles bursting fairly quickly, releasing the trapped carbon dioxide, often with sufficient force to cause the candy to pop and sometimes jump in your mouth.

Why We Call a Crazy Person a “Basket Case”

At first, “basket case” didn’t mean someone who was crazy. Instead, it referred to someone who had a physical disability.

The phrase has its origins in World War I. Funny enough, one of the earliest known documented instance
s of the phrase was actually in denial that "basket cases" actually existed, as found in a bulletin issued in March of 1919 on behalf of the United States Surgeon General:

“The Surgeon General of the Army… denies…that there is any foundation for the stories that have been circulated…of the existence of basket cases in our hospitals.”

But just what was the Surgeon General referring to when he said “basket case”? When this bulletin came out, many newspapers felt the need to define the phrase for their audiences, so apparently the phrase wasn't widely used at this point. They defined it as “a soldier who has lost both arms and legs and therefore must be carried in a basket.” (The Syracuse Herald, March of 1919)

Whether they were literally carried around in baskets as the newspapers stated or the phrase originally was just referencing the then common colloquial idea of associating baskets with beggars or helplessness, given the grisly nature of the First World War and anecdotal reports, it seems plausible enough that there probably were at least some "basket cases
," despite the Surgeon General’s denial.

As you can imagine, the original meaning of “basket case” was never incredibly common. It wasn’t until World War II that the phrase prominently resurfaced. Near the end of the war in May of 1944, once again, the Surgeon General attempted to deny that there were any basket cases:

“…there is nothing to rumors of so-called ‘basket cases’—cases of men with both arms and legs amputated.”

After World War II, the original meaning fell out of favor altogether, likely due to the lack of literal basket cases. However, for a while the phrase expanded to mean someone with a physical disability who was unable to get around by themselves easily.

Today, of course, it has further evolved to mostly be a slang phrase for someone with a mental disability, or someone who seems to have been moved to act in a crazy fashion for whatever reason.

Why There is an Area of New York Called “The Bronx”

This is thanks to a seventeenth century Scandinavian man by the name of Jonas Bronck, originally from Tórshavn in the Faroe Islands.

In 1639, Bronck immigrated to New Amsterdam in New Netherland
, which was right next to what is today called Bronx River, named after Jonas Bronck.

Why
? In New Amsterdam, Bronck owned a 680 acre farm which was called, unimaginatively, “Bronck’s Land” and the river abutting it “Bronck’s River.” He held this land for just four years before dying in 1643. From there, various people owned this property, keeping the name Bronck’s Land, until Colonel Lewis Morris acquired it and renamed it the “Manor of Morrisania.”

Despite the renaming of the land, the river next to it continued to be called “Bronck’s River
.” From the river’s name, the modern-day name of “Bronx” got extended to the region directly around the river in the late nineteenth century. The name for the region has stuck ever since.

Why New York City is Called “The Big Apple”

The earliest documented reference to New York being referred to as “The Big Apple” comes from a 1909 book by Edward Martin, called
The Wayfarer
. In it, he uses the moniker in a metaphorical sense, rather than a proper name for the city:

“Kansas is apt to see
in New York a greedy city… It inclines to think that the big apple gets a disproportionate share of the national sap…”

The next known documented instance of New York being called
“The Big Apple” comes from sportswriter John J. Fitz Gerald who began popularizing the name starting on May 3, 1921, where he stated in a column:

“J. P. Smith, with Tippity Witchet and others of the L. T. Bauer string, is scheduled to start for ‘the big apple’ to-morrow after a most prosperous Spring campaign at Bowie and Havre de Grace.”

In this case, he was referencing the early 1920s practice of calling certain race courses in the New York City region this particular fruity name, in that the New York City races tended to payout significant prizes to the winner compared to races in many other regions, hence “big apple.”

According to linguist Dr. Gerald Cohen, this wasn’t out of the ordinary, even outside of horse racing
. As he states, “Apples were important throughout history, but the big red delicious apples developed in Iowa in the 1870s came to be regarded as extra special. That led to ‘the big apple’ being applied to things and people who were extra special, or perhaps only thought they were…”

As to applying this to New York City, it’s thought that Fitz Gerald didn
’t come up with this on his own but rather heard it from people from New Orleans in 1920 when he traveled down to that city to supposedly sell one of his horses, with the common tale being that it came from a couple of stable hands.

Fitz Gerald explicitly mentions this three years later in his 1923 column “Around the Big Apple
,” though it’s possible he just made the story up:

“The Big Apple. The dream of every lad that ever threw a leg over a thoroughbred and the goal of all horsemen. There's only one Big Apple. That's New York. Two dusky stable hands were leading a pair of thoroughbred around the ‘cooling rings’ of adjoining stables at the Fair Grounds in New Orleans and engaging in desultory conversation. ‘Where y'all goin' from here?’ queried one. ‘From here we're headin' for The Big Apple,’ proudly replied the other. ‘Well, you'd better fatten up them skinners or all you'll get from the apple will be the core,’ was the quick rejoinder.”

This nickname for New York City gradually caught on and began being used in a non-sporting sense, including a popular song/dance coming out in the 1930s called “The Big Apple,” as well as numerous references in other songs, particularly in jazz music.

However, this nickname for the city died off by the 1960s and few outside of the city would have
understood the reference had you used it then. That all changed in the 1970s when Charles Gillett and the New York Convention and Visitors Bureau decided to revive the nickname in a tourism campaign. In this campaign, they began aggressively advertising New York City as a tourist hotspot and referred to it as “The Big Apple,” using bright, clean looking red apples in their advertisements to attempt to contrast the popular notion of the day that New York City was a dirty place where you were as likely to be mugged as not if you visited there.

Why Mosquito Bites Itch

When female mosquitoes poke their proboscis through your skin so they can suck some of your blood, they inject you with some of their saliva. This saliva helps them to drink your blood more quickly, as it contains a cocktail of anticoagulants. Once the female mosquito is full up of your blood or is disturbed, she flies away, leaving some of her saliva behind. Your body then kicks your immune system into high gear as a response to the presence of this saliva, producing various antibodies that, in turn, bind to the antigens in the mosquito's saliva.

This also triggers the release of histamine. Histamine is a nitrogen compound that, among other things, triggers an inflammatory response
. It also helps white blood cells and other proteins to engage invaders in your body by making the capillaries of these cells more permeable. Bottom line, the histamine ends up making the blood vessels near the bite swell up, producing a pink, itchy bump where the mosquito poked you.

Scratching the bump only makes this worse because it causes more irritation and inflammation of the sight, resulting in your immune system thinking it needs more antibodies to get rid of the foreign protein
. So the more you scratch, the more it will swell; the itchier it will get; and the longer it will last.

Why You Generally Shouldn’t Put Metals in a Microwave

First, it should be noted that it is not unsafe to put all metals in the microwave. Indeed, you often put metals in the microwave, such as when you put a hot pocket in the little pouch and place it in the microwave. The pouch has a thin layer of aluminum lining the inside that is designed to absorb the microwave radiation and heat up to brown the outside of the hot pocket.

On top of that, the inside walls of your microwave oven are made of metal
. This forms something called a Faraday Cage that traps the microwaves inside the box so that they cook the food and not things around the microwave oven, like you. If you look closely, you'll also see that the window you look at the food through has metal mesh lining it. The holes in this mesh are smaller than the wavelengths of the electromagnetic radiation your microwave is producing. This makes it so the waves can't pass through the holes. Visible light, however, is comprised of much smaller wavelengths, so that form of radiated energy passes through the holes just fine, allowing you to see inside your microwave while it's running without getting your eyeballs cooked.

So if the inside of your microwave is lined with me
tal and certain food products have containers that contain metal, such as hot pockets and pot pies, why does your microwave manual say not to put metal in the microwave?

First, you’ll need to understand a little about how a microwave oven actually works
. At its core, a microwave oven is a pretty simple device. It's basically just a magnetron hooked up to a high voltage source. This magnetron creates microwaves which are directed into the metal box. These generated microwaves then bounce around inside the microwave until they are absorbed via dielectric loss in various molecules resulting in the molecules heating up. Types of matter that work well here are things such as water, ceramics, certain polymers, etc. These all convert microwave energy into heat quite effectively.

Metals, on the other hand, are great conductors of electricity, being packed with electrons that can move freely
. Depending on the shape/type/thickness/distribution/etc. of metal, you may observe some heating of the metal itself in the microwave or none at all. You may also observe some arcing of electricity or none at all. When these microwaves hit the metal, free electrons on the surface of the metal end up moving from side to side very rapidly. This, in turn, prevents the electric wave from entering the metal; thus, the waves end up being reflected instead. However, there is also the potential that this will create a sufficient charge density that the electrical potential in the metal object exceeds the dielectric breakdown of air. When this happens, it will result in arcing inside your microwave, from that metal to another electrical conductor with lower potential (often the wall of the microwave). In extreme cases, these electrical sparks can damage the wall by burning small holes in it. It can also end up burning out the magnetron in your microwave oven or, in modern microwaves, can provide a surge that damages sensitive microelectronics, possibly killing your microwave or making it unsafe to use.

Another way it can kill the magnetron of your microwave is when enough of the generated microwaves don't get absorbed, such as if the food is wrapped in aluminum foil or mostly enclosed in a metal container
. This can create a lot of energy that does not get absorbed and has nowhere to go but back to the magnetron, damaging it.

On a more mundane level, something like a spoon or a metal plate or the like, positioned correctly, will simply make your food potentially not cook normally
. On that note, it is once again, actually acceptable to put metal in a microwave under the proper conditions. Some microwaves even have metal grates inside for setting food on, such as is often the case with certain convection ovens. There are also certain types of metal pots and pans that are microwave safe. These all, however, are carefully designed to not cause any problems in your microwave oven. In general, putting metal in the microwave is unsafe, not because you are necessarily at risk of bodily harm (though in extreme cases a fire might be started from this), but primarily because it has the potential of damaging your microwave.