The Wise Book of Whys (4 page)

Why Tuberculosis Was Called “Consumption”

Originally, of course, nobody knew what caused the various forms of tuberculosis, and they certainly didn’t understand it was caused by what would eventually be called tubercle bacillus (usually the offending microbes are specifically Mycobacterium tuberculosis).

The word “tuberculosis” was coined
by Johann Lukas Schönle in 1839, from the Latin “tuberculum,” meaning “small, swelling bump or pimple.” However, it wouldn’t be until 1882 when Dr. Robert Koch discovered the tubercle bacillus, for which he won a Nobel Prize in 1905, that the name “tuberculosis” began being exclusively used to refer to the disease formerly popularly known as consumption.

Of course, the microbes that cause the disease have been around for at least 15,000-20,000 years with known human deaths being caused by the bacteria dating back at least as far as 5,000 years ago, so the current name is an extremely recent moniker
relative to how long the disease has been around.

The much older
name originally came from the ancient Greeks who called the disease something meaning “consumption,” “phthisis,” specifically referring to pulmonary tuberculosis, with the earliest references to this being in 460 BC.

The “father of Western medicine
,” Hippocrates, estimated that phthisis was the most widespread disease of his age. He further told his students that they shouldn’t attempt to treat patients in the last stages of phthisis, as they were sure to die and it would ruin his protégés’ reputation as healers if they made a practice of attempting to heal such individuals.

Tuberculosis wasn’t just found across the pond either, but
it is known to have been present in the Americas as early as 100 AD.

So why was “phthisis” aka
“consumption” chosen for the name? It was because the disease seemed to consume the individual, with their weight drastically dropping as the disease progressed.

Why Some Coins in the United States Have Ridges

Putting ridges on some coins in America got its start back in the 1700s. At this time, coins were actually made of materials that were worth what the coin was worth. For example, a half dollar silver coin contained fifty cents worth of silver. Likewise, a $10 gold coin contained $10 worth of gold.

As a consequence of this, people started to shave off bits of thes
e coins around the edges; so then a $10 gold piece only contained, say, $9.50 worth of gold. The payoff came from that if they were very careful when they shaved the coins, it was difficult to tell that anything had been shaved off, so they could still generally get their $10 worth out of the now $9.50 piece. Over time, they’d collect the shavings and when they had a large enough amount, they’d go sell them.

Eventually, the government decided
to do something about this. One of the methods to combat this practice was to add ridges to these coins; something known as “reeding” the coins. With the ridges on the edges, it became significantly more difficult to shave anything off the coins without detection. The government chose not to do this with smaller valued coins that came out later (pennies and nickels), because the metals these coins contained weren’t valuable enough for shaving them to be worth the effort.

So that was then, why do they still do it today when the coins are no longer made of valuable
metals? Initially, it was supposedly easier and cheaper than modifying the existing machinery. Today, however, it is to help the visually impaired to more easily distinguish between coins of a somewhat similar size like a penny and a dime. This is something unfortunately not done with today’s American paper money, which is indistinguishable to blind people without resorting to tricks like folding them certain ways for different bills or Braille money stampers. The blind still need someone to tell them what the bill is in the first place when they receive it, so they can do whatever they do to it to be able to distinguish it later on their own. Although, supposedly the government is working on this problem with one of the most popular suggested solutions being to adopt the new Canadian system of imprinting the bills with Braille.

Why Paper Cuts Hurt So much

The generally accepted reason paper cuts are so painful primarily lies in the fact that you usually get them on your fingers, particularly your fingertips. Fingertips and hands have significantly more nociceptors (nerve fibers) per square millimeter than most of the rest of your body, such as your legs, arms, stomach area, etc. This ends up making cuts on your fingertips feel significantly more painful than cuts elsewhere, even when they are produced by paper or similar objects.

T
hat’s fine for the reason why paper cuts hurt so much more than other cuts on the rest of the body, but why do paper cuts seem to hurt more than other types of cuts on the hand? This is thought to be because the edges of paper are very dull and flexible, compared to knives and other such sharp objects. Because of this, when the paper cuts your flesh, it does a lot more microscopic damage as it rips through your skin. Think of it like a dull knife that you are trying to use to cut into a steak. You have to saw at it more than you would with a sharp knife and, in the end, the cut you made is a lot more mutilated than a cut with a very sharp knife. With paper cuts, you can’t see this with the naked eye, but the same type of thing is happening.

Not only is there more microscopic damage, but this damage is also very shallow on the skin
. This will further increase the pain because some of the most sensitive nerves in your skin, which have very low thresholds to trigger, are near the surface. This will result in a much sharper and distinct pain than if the cut had been deeper and caused the same type of damage to nerves deep in your flesh, which would send back signals to the brain more akin to a throbbing sensation when they are activated.

Further, the paper cut, being a very shallow wound, will also
tend to hurt longer because it won’t bleed much and sometimes not at all. This leaves the nerves open to the air and other irritants, so they will continue to be in an activated state for much longer than more significant cuts.

Why the Same Side of the Moon Always Faces the Earth

One Moon “day” is approximately 29 1/2 Earth days. This rotation coincides with its orbit around the Earth so that we only see about 59% of the surface of the Moon. When the Moon first formed, its rotational speed and orbit were very different than they are now. Over time, the Earth’s gravitational field gradually slowed the Moon’s rotation until the orbital period and the rotational speed stabilized, making one side of the Moon always face the Earth.

How does this work? Simply put
-tidal friction. For a slightly less simple explanation, we’ll have to put our science caps on. But stick with it; it’s fascinating. I promise.

To start, think of how the Moon causes major tides on the Earth due to the Moon pulling at the Earth via its gravitational field. The Earth has this same effect on the Moon and, being 81.28 times more massive, the effect is much more powerful.

So, as the mass of the Moon is attempting to go one way (in a straight line), the Earth is simultaneously pulling it another way (towards the Earth). Further, the effect of the Earth’s gravitational field is stronger on the side of the Moon closest to the Earth than on the far side (and the same with the Moon’s gravitational field’s effect on the different parts of the surface of the Earth).

This combination essentially stretches the Earth and Moon, creating tidal bulges on both celestial bodies. This occurs on both sides of each, with the bulge on the sides closest together
from gravity and on the sides farthest away from inertia. In the latter case, the matter is less affected by the gravitational force with inertia dominating in this case. To put it another way, the matter is trying to move in a straight line away from the Earth and the gravitational forces here aren’t as strongly able to overcome this, which creates the bulge on that side.

So back before the Moon was tidally locked with the Earth, the bulge on the side of the Moon nearest to Earth ended up
slightly leading thanks to friction and the fact that the Moon rotated faster than its orbital period around the Earth. So with this slightly leading bulge being offset from the line of gravitational pull between the Moon and Earth, this created a torque, which overtime resulted in the Moon’s rotation slowing until it became tidally locked with the Earth; thus, only one side faces the Earth. (Note: the bulge on the far side of the Moon had the opposite effect, but the bulge closest to the Earth dominated the interaction.)

You’ll note, though, that I said we actually get to see about 59% of the surface of the Moon from Earth, not 50%
. The discrepancy comes from the fact that the Moon’s orbit around the Earth isn’t perfectly circular, more of an ellipse. As the Moon’s distance from the Earth increases and decreases, its angular speed changes, while its rotational speed stays the same. The result is that we get to see an extra 9% of its surface than we would if it had a perfectly circular orbit.

The
other side of this, as you may have guessed, is that the Moon has the same effect on the Earth and is gradually slowing the Earth's rotation in the exact same way the Moon became tidally locked with the Earth. Further, as the Moon slows the Earth’s rotation, a small portion of the Earth’s rotational momentum gets transferred to the Moon’s orbital momentum, with the result being that the average radius of the Moon’s orbit increases at about 3.8 centimeters per year with the current continental positions and barring major geological events. (Contrary to what you’ll often read, the Moon isn’t getting all the energy here, most of it is being converted to heat via friction, with only an estimated 3% of the energy in the interaction being “stolen” by the Moon.)

Thus, the distance between the Moon and the Earth changes gradually
and is more or less in step with the rotational period change. It should be noted, though, that it’s not a constant change as things like major earthquakes, glacial changes, continental drift, and other such geological events play a role here, which is why leap seconds aren’t added at regular intervals, but only when needed. But the overall effect is that over time, the Moon is getting farther and farther away from the Earth every year, while the Earth’s rotation is slowing down.

I
n theory, at some point tens of billions of years from now (with the exact timeframe being extremely difficult to nail down due to so many unknowable factors) the same side of the Earth will always face the Moon, with the Earth only rotating once per lunar cycle, which at that point most estimates indicate should be about 47 current Earth days long.

“In theory”… but this will likely
never happen. Why? In about 1 to 2 billion years or so, the Sun’s brightness will have increased sufficiently to vaporize all water on the surface of the Earth, getting rid of the ocean tides altogether, which is a huge factor in this interaction. However, there still would be some bulging of the Earth’s crust to continue the process to a much lesser extent.

In 5 to
6 billion years, the Sun will be around the peak of its Red Giant phase, and according to the latest models, even with the Sun losing quite a bit of mass during this process, thus making the Earth’s orbit farther out, the Sun should just barely consume the Earth and Moon many billions of years before such a dual tidal lock can occur.

Bottom line, at some point in the next billion years or so, humans will need to either find another home, or figure out how to manually move our cur
rent one to a farther out orbit, keeping Earth in the habitable zone of our solar system.

Why “Colonel” is Pronounced “Kernel”

Believe it or not, “colonel” was pronounced more or less the way it originally looked when it was introduced to English. The spelling changed over time to “colonel”, while the pronunciation stayed the same as it was before.

“Colonel” ultimately derives from the Latin “columna
,” meaning “pillar.” This gave rise to the Old Italian “compagna colonnella,” meaning “little-column company.” This, in turn, gave us the rank of “colonnello” -the leader of a column.

Other nations adopted this ranking giving
us the Middle French “Coronel.” This was pronounced pretty much like it looks at first, then later slurred down to “Kernel” by the English, but using the same spelling.

However, starting with the French ar
ound the 1540s, the spelling was changed back closer to the Italian spelling, which gave us “Colonel” in French.

Within a few decades, the English also f
ollowed suit and by the mid-seventeenth century, “colonel” was the most common way to spell the word in English. At that time, the common pronunciation was mixed between the older “kernel” and the new “colonel,” with the former winning out in the end, despite the way it’s spelled.