The Wise Book of Whys (6 page)

Why A Typical Work
day is Eight  Hours Long

During the Industrial Revolution, companies attempted to maximize the output of their factories by keeping them running as many hours as possible, typically implementing a “Sun up to Sun down” workday. Wages were also extremely low, so employees often needed to work these long shifts just to get by financially. The typical workday at this time lasted anywhere from 10-18 hours per day, six days a week. This all began to change in the nineteenth century.

The first
person to suggest an eight-hour workday for everyone was a British man by the name of Robert Owen, who was also one of the founders of socialism. Owen felt that a day should be divided into thirds, with workers getting equal time to themselves and to sleep as they do for work. Thus, in 1817, he began campaigning for an eight-hour working day for all workers, coining the slogan, “Eight hours labour, eight hours recreation, eight hours rest.” Unfortunately, this did not catch on for some time, though throughout the nineteenth century a series of Factories Acts were passed that steadily improved working conditions and reduced work hours for factory workers. For instance, The Factories Act of 1847  stipulated that women and children were to be granted a ten hour workday, thus only having to work 60 hours per week, as opposed to the former amount which in many cases was over 100 hours per week.

The eight-hour work
day cause was taken up once again in Britain, in 1884, by Tom Mann who was part of the Social Democratic Federation. Mann subsequently formed an “Eight Hour League” whose sole goal was to get the eight-hour workday established. Their biggest victory came when they managed to convince the Trades Union Congress, which represented the majority of unions in Britain (and does so even to this day), to establish the eight-hour workday as one of their primary goals, which they subsequently began to work towards.

The
push for a shorter workday began earlier in the United States, in 1791, with workers in Philadelphia striking for a ten-hour total workday that would include two hours for meals. By the 1830s, support for eight-hour workdays was shared among the majority of the working-class people in the United States, but still failed to find support among business owners. Over the next few decades, workers continued to hold strikes demanding shorter working hours and gradually things improved.

Momentum for the cause particularly picked up with several “Eight Hour Leagues” forming in the United States, as Mann had formed in Britain around this same time
. In 1884, the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions declared that May 1, 1886 would be the first day that an eight-hour workday would be made mandatory. This, of course, was neither backed by any federal mandate nor the businesses themselves, and it relied on workers striking and raising a general ruckus to drive the point home. When May 1, 1886 arrived, the first ever May Day Parade was held with 350,000 workers walking off their jobs protesting for the eight-hour workday.

Progress was still slow though
, and it wasn’t until 1905 that industries began implementing the eight-hour workday on their own accord. One of the first businesses to implement this was the Ford Motor Company, in 1914, which not only cut the standard workday to eight hours, but also doubled their worker’s pay per hour. To the shock of many, this resulted in Ford’s overall output per workday increasing significantly, despite the fact that the company was using the same workers, who were now working fewer hours. This encouraged other companies to adopt the shorter, eight hour workday as a standard for their employees.

Final
ly, in 1937 the eight hour workday was standardized in the United States and regulated by the federal government according to the Fair Labor Standards Act. It stipulated that workers were not to work more than 44 hours per week and any hours over the 40 required of the workers were to be paid with overtime bonuses added to their normal pay rate.

Why Golf Balls Have Dimples

Somewhat counter intuitively, dimples in golf balls significantly decrease the drag on the golf ball as it flies through the air, compared to a smooth ball
. Not only that, but the dimples also increase the lift somewhat. These two things combined can make the golf ball go as much as three times farther than the same ball without dimples.

The dimples on golf balls accomplish both of these things by creating turbulence in the layer of air around the golf ball, called the boundary layer
. In simple terms, the dimples more or less scoop the air and direct it inwards towards the back of the golf ball. This effectively increases the net air pressure in the back of the ball, which reduces the drag by reducing the pressure pulling back at the ball from behind. This can reduce drag by as much as 50% over a smooth ball.

More technically, the streamline flow of air on a smooth ball separates fairly quickly from the ball as it passes over the surface of the golf ball
. This ends up maximizing the size of the wake behind the golf ball, which maximizes the area of lower pressure, creating a large drag. With the dimpled golf balls, this streamline flow remains attached to the surface of the ball much longer, creating a smaller low-pressure region behind the ball, thereby significantly reducing the drag on the ball.

The dimples also create lift when there is significant backspin on the ball as it flies through the air
. This is very similar to how the seams of a baseball create lift when there is backspin. In both cases, the backspin causes the air to move faster backwards on the top of the ball -with the golf ball via the dimples and with the baseball via the seams. This creates lower air pressure above the ball than below, which creates a small amount of lift. A similar effect can also be observed with baseballs and golf balls when a ball has a certain amount of side-spin. Except, in this case, instead of creating lift upwards, it will cause the ball to tail to one side or the other, depending on the direction of spin. This is why balls with this side-spin tend to travel in a sideways arc through the air.

You might be asking yourself,
“Why don’t they put dimples on planes, cars, and the like to reduce drag?” Primarily because creating turbulence in the boundary layer doesn’t always reduce the net drag. It largely depends on the shape of the object and the speed at which it is traveling, among other things. For an object in the shape of a ball, where the primary drag is created by the wake, this ends up decreasing the net drag significantly. In more streamlined objects, such as an airplane wing, they create very little wake relative to the skin friction drag they experience. So the dimples wouldn’t help much and, indeed, creating this turbulence would actually increase the streamline drag, which would drastically increase the skin friction while not helping much with the less significant drag caused by separation in the wake.

Now, as far as cars go, which tend to not be
all that aerodynamically shaped relative to something like an airplane wing, it has been shown that creating a dimpled surface can decrease the overall drag somewhat on certain designs of cars. However, the difference in fuel efficiency is fairly marginal and hasn’t, to date, been shown to be near significant enough to warrant sacrificing certain cosmetic aspects of the car by adding dimples.

Why Red Meat Turns Brown When Cooked

This is thanks to a protein called myoglobin, which also is what makes raw red meat look red, not blood, as many people think. Myoglobin is a protein that stores oxygen in muscle cells, very similar to its cousin, hemoglobin, that stores oxygen in red blood cells. This oxygen store is necessary for muscles which need immediate oxygen for energy during continual usage.

So how does the myoglobin end up making the meat turn brown when cooked
? This darkening effect is due to the oxidation state of the iron atoms in myoglobin. When the myoglobin is exposed to oxygen, before you cook the meat, the iron atom oxidation level is +2 and it is bound to a dioxygen molecule (O2), which makes the meat appear bright red. As you cook the meat, this iron atom loses an electron and goes to a +3 oxidation level. This process turns the meat brown.

White meat, on the other hand, doesn’t turn dark brown like red meat because it has significantly less myoglobin in it
. In fact, the myoglobin levels are actually one of the main factors that officially distinguish white meat from red meat.

Why Amish Men Wear Beards But Not Moustaches

This tradition stems back to the early days of the Amish when wearing elaborate moustaches was common among those in the military. (In fact, this became so popular that from 1860 to 1916, British soldiers were actually required to have moustaches).

The Amish, being a
pacifist group (not just in war, but also in all confrontation, which is why they prefer the term “non-resistance” to “pacifism”), didn’t want to associate themselves with those who waged war, so they strictly forbade their members from growing moustaches. Today, few men in the Western world choose to grow moustaches, but this tradition remains among the Old Order Amish people, which number about 200,000 in North America.

While m
oustaches are not allowed, beards are practically a requirement among the Amish due to beards being common among men in the Bible. However, not all Amish men are traditionally allowed to grow beards. It isn’t until an Amish man gets married that he will stop shaving his beard and allow it to grow out, with beards being a mark of an Amish male having become a man.

Why The Toilet is Commonly Known as “The Crapper”

It all started with U.S. soldiers stationed in England during WWI
. The toilets in England at the time were predominately made by the company “Thomas Crapper & Co Ltd”, with the company’s name appearing on the toilets. The soldiers took to calling toilets “The Crapper” and brought that slang term for the toilet back with them to the United States.

If you’re wondering, the word “crap” does not derive from “Crapper”
. While the origins of the word “crap” are not entirely known, it is known that it was commonly used in England to refer to rubbish or chaff, but fell out of use in the sixteenth century, long before Thomas Crapper and his company came along.

The term “crap” was still used somewhat in Amer
ica though, originally coming over before the slang term died out in England, and it is thought that one of the reasons American soldiers seemed to universally take to calling the toilet “The Crapper” is that they found it funny with “crap” meaning something to the effect of “refuse” and that most of the cisterns and toilets in England were stamped with “T. Crapper & Co Ltd.” It was ironical to them, though the joke was lost on the English who had long since stopped using the term “crap.”