Almanac chapter 25: Science and Engineering

                                     Chapter 25

                              SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING

              You may ask, "of what tangible use is science?" You may  wish
         less  of  taxpayers'  money  was  spent  in  pursuit of answers to
         questions which you don't care  about.   Science  does  eventually
         lead  to very tangible, personal results. Here's the most profound
         example: A hundred years ago, Americans worked an  average  of  73
         hours  per  week.  Americans now work an average of about 35 hours
         per week. Still, you may not care personally about  science.   Let
         the scientists discover things; let the engineers work out ways to
         use  these  new  discoveries.   To  a  degree,  I  agree.  But, my
         research has discovered that scientists are both a great  boon  to
         society  and  a  great  danger.   I think you'll find this chapter
         interesting enough to provoke the latent scientist within you.

              "What scientists have in their briefcases is  terrifying."  -
         Nikita Khrushchev

                               Science Behind Warfare

              Before the  first atomic bomb was tested in  the  New  Mexico
         desert  on on July 16, 1945, some of the scientists working on the
         bomb thought there was a three  in  one  million  chance  that  an
         atomic bomb might melt down the entire earth - yet they went ahead
         and tested that first atomic bomb.
              Windows were broken 125 miles away from the first atomic test
         blast.   If  the  test  had  been in Disneyland, windows in Mexico
         would have broken from the noise.

              "It is the great public which  is  demanding  the  utmost  of
         secrecy  for  modern  science  in  all  things which may touch its
         military uses. This demand for secrecy is scarcely more  than  the
         wish  of  a sick civilization not to learn the progress of its own
         disease." - Norbert Wiener

              At Arnold Air Force Base in Tennessee is  a  special  20-foot
         long  cannon  that  spits out dead chickens at 700 miles per hour.
         Why? This gun tests  fighter  jet  canopies  against  impact  with
         birds.


                             Scientists, And Their Work

              A student at Iowa State University wrote to 37 scientists who
         had  published  research  studies.   He  requested  their data for
         verification.   Five  did  not  answer,  and  twenty-one  of   the
         so-called  scientists  said  that their data was lost or that some
         accident made it unaccessible.

              There are almost five million  United  States  patents.   The
         1,300  patent  examiners  receive twelve thousand letters per day.
         The record holder is Thomas Edison who had over 1,000 patents.

              There  are  over   1.5   million   scientists   in   America.
         Approximately  400,000  of  these  folks  are involved in the life
         sciences, and 80,000 are in earth science. One out  of  every  162
         Americans is a scientist.

              Only 13 percent of scientists are women.

              The  Soviet  Union spends 4.6 percent of their gross national
         product on scientific research. In the United States the figure is
         only 2.5 percent.

                                   Life Sciences

              Scientists tested vision in men with tight collars  and  ties
         and  found significant improvement in these mens' vision when they
         loosened their ties and unbuttoned their collars.

              A teaspoonful of soil may contain 100 million bacteria.

              Some scientists trained a bunch of flatworms to  react  in  a
         special  way  to  light.  They noted how long it took the worms to
         learn, then they cut the worms up and fed the  pieces  to  another
         batch  of  untrained  worms.  After their meal, the new worms were
         taught the same lesson. The second batch learned much faster.
              Wondering if this were a fluke (no, they were plenaria), some
         other scientists tried similar experimentation with mice.  A batch
         of mice were trained to  run  a  maze.   Then  their  brains  were
         removed, an extract was made from these brains and fed to another,
         untrained  batch  of  mice.   Once again, the new mice learned the
         maze much more quickly, up to twice as fast.

              German researchers trained honey bees to  expect  food  at  a
         certain  time  every  day.   Then they cut off the bees' heads and
         transplanted a part of their brains into the brains of other bees.
         The bees with the brain transplants then expected the food at  the
         same time of day.

              Nerve messages move at 240 mph.

              Your  brain  is mostly water, 80 percent. Your blood actually
         is less fluid (or more solid) than your brain.

              Your brain uses  25  percent  of  all  the  oxygen  that  you
         breathe.

              If  you could harness the power used by your brain, you could
         power as a 10-watt light bulb.

              Neanderthal men had brains larger than than ours.

              You may have a true  split  personality.   According  to  one
         school  of  thought,  the  left  hemisphere of your brain may tend
         toward acceptance and positiveness while the right  hemisphere  is
         more concerned with negative and avoidance thoughts or behaviors.

              We remember one trillion things in a lifetime.

              A researcher has succeeded in mending broken spinal cords. He
         broke the backs of ten  rats.  They  were  then  exposed  to  high
         pressure  oxygen and injected with DSMO (dimethyl sulfoxide).  Two
         of the rats could walk again; six showed some signs of  nerve  re-
         growth. (It is important to note that the experiments were done as
         soon  as  the  injury  happened.  The  results  would  not  be  as
         encouraging on rats who had received the injuries at some time  in
         the past.)

              In  a  scientific  study,  children were told to imagine that
         they  were  wearing  heavy  mittens.   The  temperature  of  their
         fingertips went up.

              Evidently, your kidneys use more energy that your heart.  The
         kidneys  use  twelve  percent  of  your oxygen, yet the heart only
         requires seven percent.

              If you stretch out all the DNA in one of the cells from  your
         body,  it  would  be  about  six feet long.  There are about three
         billion pairings  of  atoms,  or  specific  bits  of  information.
         Scientists  are trying to make a total map of the human code, like
         blue prints.  With such a map, they  could  eventually  cure  many
         problems  by simply looking on the map to see where things started
         going wrong, and make a potion to fix it. So  far,  of  the  three
         billion bits, they have mapped approximately 35 million. So, they
         are roughly one percent finished with the job.

              In France, a scientist put electrodes and a radio transmitter
         into a trout's brain. A computer reads and  decodes  the  signals.
         The  trout  reacts  strongly  to  tiny amounts of pollution in its
         water.  The fish can detect as little as  1/1,000,000,000  of  one
         gram  of a pesticide in a liter of water. More trout like this one
         can be used as pollution meters. All you would have to do  is  let
         them swim in questionable water, and tell us what they think about
         it.

              There are plants with a body temperature just like birds  and
         mammals.   Skunk  cabbages  can  have  an  internal temperature 25
         degrees higher than their surroundings.

              The angle of the  branches  from  the  trunk  of  a  tree  is
         constant   from  one  member  to  another  of  the  same  species.
         Furthermore, that same angle is represented in the veins  of  that
         tree's leaves.

              You  can figure out which way is south if you are near a tree
         stump. The growth rings are wider on the south side.

              Trees sweat.  Up to 1680 gallons of  water  evaporate  off  a
         large  oak  tree per day. If you decide to water your trees with a
         garden hose, it will take over five hours to make  up  one  tree's
         daily water use.

              The  telegraph  plant  has  leaves   that   move   themselves
         continuously  in  calm  weather  as if they were fluttering in the
         breeze.

              Some plants can see. They have the  ability  to  detect  blue
         light  with  little  yellow  receptor  cells that have transparent
         windows over them, much like eyes. These  cells  send  signals  to
         other  cells  near the base of leaf stems that cause the leaves to
         turn the correct way to follow the sun, thereby insuring the plant
         can absorb as much sunlight as possible.  This  has  been  proven.
         What  has  not  yet  been proven is that plants think and feel. Of
         course, they probably don't, but it has not been disproven either.

              Robert Falls is a researcher who has  managed  through  gene-
         splicing  to  create  cedar  and  poplar trees with square trunks.
         These will mean less wasted wood at the mills when lumber is cut.

              Bees may have a true sixth sense, one that people probably do
         not have: They have magnetic crystals in their abdomens with which
         they may feel direction relative to the earth's magnetic field.

              Mosquitoes like the  scent  of  estrogen,  hence,  women  get
         bitten by mosquitoes more than men do. Only female mosquitoes bite
         people.

              The  smallest  tools  ever  made are glass micropipette tubes
         used for surgery within a single cell.


                             The Earth and Its Weather

              There are 1.3 billion cattle  in  the  world,  and  they  all
         belch.  This  is  a  serious problem! Each of these cattle burp up
         about 8 ounces of methane per day, which totals 1/3 million  tons.
         According  to one scientist's calculations, this is enough methane
         to ruin the world's weather by raising the temperature  5  degrees
         within 60 years, due to the greenhouse effect.

              1816 was known as the year without a summer.  The weather was
         unusual  that  year.   In  the Eastern United States and in Europe
         there were days when the temperature was below freezing  in  every
         month of the winter, spring, summer and fall.

              You've  probably  heard  all  the  horrors  of the greenhouse
         effect. The greenhouse effect is a situation in  which  the  world
         will warm up due to carbon dioxide, other gases or dust blanketing
         the  atmosphere.  Solar heat will get in, but not out. Some of the
         normal amount of reflected radiation will be trapped. With just  a
         small change in temperature, the weather could change drastically,
         causing worldwide crop failure or worse problems.
              If  we have a major greenhouse effect, and several scientists
         predict just that, then all the ice in Antarctica would  melt.  25
         percent  of  all  the land in the world would be under water.  The
         oceans would have to rise only 240 feet to do this.
              What your mother never told  you  is  that  perhaps  all  the
         scientists  are  making lots of political noise over nothing.  The
         counter indications for a giant ungreenhousing Rx are as follows:

         * According to scientists,  the  warmest  weather  within  several
         thousand years occurred between 1890 and 1945.  The weather is now
         slowly  declining into another ice age.  Perhaps we will soon need
         a greenhouse effect.

         * With more carbon dioxide in the air, crop yields  will  increase
         because plants thrive in an atmosphere rich in CO2.

         *  If  we  have  global  warming, some of the polar ice will melt,
         resulting in water over a larger amount of  the  earth's  surface.
         This  water  will evaporate, causing more  world-wide  rain,  much
         to the satisfaction of drought-stricken Californians.

         * Any slight change in weather is likely to rearrange  the  places
         where  rain  falls.  Californians  say  that  their drought is the
         result of the greenhouse effect. But we cannot tell whether it may
         rain more or less in the Imperial Valley, Hawaii, or the Sahara.

         * One  scientist,  Sherwood  Idso,  of  the  United  States  Water
         Conservation   Laboratory,  has  studied  the  data  from  seventy
         reports,  and  predicts  that  increased  carbon  dioxide  in  our
         atmosphere might actually cause a cooling trend.

         *  Because of deforrestation in the Amazon and many other parts of
         the world, the earth reflects more  heat  and  light.  Bare  earth
         reflects  better  than  trees.   This is called the Albedo Effect,
         which would cause a cooling trend perhaps equal to or greater than
         a greenhouse warming.  According to a  Russian  study  of  Siberia
         where  quite  a  bit of logging is going on, it is one-half degree
         colder there than it would have been if the forest had  been  left
         alone.

              If  you totally flattened the world, dug up the mountains and
         put the dirt into the  ravines,  the  entire  earth  would  become
         covered with two miles of water.

              The Atlantic Ocean gets wider by a little more than one  inch
         every year.

              All except three percent of the world's total water is ocean.

              It would take half a trillion tons of coal to produce as much
         energy as the earth gets from the sun's radiation each day.

              Niagra  Falls  has moved about ten miles upstream in the last
         10,000 years.  The falls are eroding at the rate  of  5  feet  per
         year.

              If  you  get  into the bottom of a well or a tall chimney and
         look up, you can see stars, even in the middle of the day.

              As seen from television, we tend to underestimate  the  power
         and  size  of  volcanoes.  In 1883, a volcano blew up in the Dutch
         East Indies.  The sound it made could be heard in  Thailand,  3000
         miles  away.   The  dust thrown into the atmosphere made a band in
         the sky that surrounded the world.

              On the Big Island of Hawaii is a volcano that has been active
         for years, but on a less dramatic scale.  There  is  a  continuous
         river of lava spilling out of the hole and flowing toward the sea.
         The  lava slowly flows across the rain forest and marijuana fields
         like a jar of spilled honey on a kitchen  floor,  burning  up  the
         trees in its path.
              Since   lava  is  quite  porous,  it  insulates  itself,  and
         therefore the surface cools quickly. The author was  delighted  to
         walk on Hawaiian real estate that did not exist the day before. It
         can  be  walked  on with ordinary sneakers although if you are not
         careful, sometimes the tread will start to smoke and melt. As  you
         look  into  the  cracks  in  the  new land, you can see a red glow
         coming from hotter lava only three inches under your feet.
              This new land is the quietest place on earth.  There  are  no
         birds, there are not even any trees rustling in the breeze.
              If  the  wind  is  coming from behind, you can walk to within
         four feet of the lava river and poke sticks into it.   They  burst
         into flames instantly.

              Eight percent of the earth's crust is aluminum.

              Scientists  are  pretty  well in agreement that California is
         due for another, even more destructive earthquake within the  next
         20  years,  probably  occuring nearer to Los Angeles.  This one is
         estimated to take 14,000+ lives.

              Earthquakes have been recorded in every state in America.


                                     Astronomy

              The average density of the universe is one atom per  cube  of
         nothingness measuring 27 inches on each side.

              On  May  10,  1879,  making  a  deafening roar and giving off
         tremendous light, a meteor weighing 431  arrived  in  Estherville,
         Iowa.   It hit the ground so fast that it dug a hole fourteen feet
         deep.

              The mathematical probability of a person on earth  being  hit
         by a meteorite is that one person will get bonked every 180 years.

              The  earth  gains  in  weight  about 1,000 tons daily, due to
         meteors and other space garbage falling in. Almost all of it burns
         up  due  to  the  friction  of  air  resistance and never hits the
         ground.

              Diamonds have been found in meteorites, but they are so small
         that they cannot be seen with a  microscope.  Possibly  there  are
         millions of tons of diamond dust in space.

              One  night  in  1833  there  were  almost  a  quarter-million
         shooting stars. (Don't you wish you were there to see it?)

              If you could shoot a gun at the sun, it would take the bullet
         20 years to get there.

              The earth orbits the sun at about eight times the speed of  a
         bullet.

              If  you  could  get  in  your car right now and start driving
         non-stop to the moon at 55 miles per hour, you would get there  in
         a  little  over  six  months  (27 weeks). If your car could get 20
         miles per gallon on this trip, you would need  12,500  gallons  of
         gas.

              I'll  bet  you  don't  know  what an orrery is!  It is one of
         those things you see in museums that model the solar  system.  The
         sun  and  the  planets  are made out of various size balls held on
         wires, and they circle around like the hands of a clock.  Orreries
         are  hopelessly  out  of  scale. In reality, if the sun were three
         feet in diameter, the earth would be the size of a  pea.  The  pea
         would  be  circling  around  the three-foot sun on a wire 100 feet
         long.  This whole thing, with the pea-size earth, and with all the
         other planets including  Pluto  would  be  over  ninety  miles  in
         diameter.

              When astronauts landed on the moon, their instruments noticed
         that  because  of the impact of their landing the moon rang like a
         bell for fifty-five minutes.

              Solar flares can reach more than 100,000 miles away from  the
         sun.

              On the sun there are hurricanes bigger than 100 earths.

              During  major  sunspot  activity,  compass  readings  can  be
         inaccurate by as much as ten degrees.

              All of the radio waves from space  ever  studied  equal  less
         than the power of a single snowflake hitting the ground.

              There is probably a black hole at the center of  our  galaxy,
         the Milky Way.

              Scientists  estimate  that  the  universe is 15 billion years
         old. By looking far out into space, they can see the past in other
         places, because light takes  time  to  reach  us.  An  event  that
         happened  on  the sun nine minutes ago will just be now visible to
         us. They have just recently discovered a place so far away that it
         dates back to almost the beginning of the universe.  What  we  see
         today happened 14 billion years ago.

              "The  materials  that make up life are everywhere [in space].
         Water is one of the most common molecules in the universe, and the
         light elements - carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen  -  are  ubiquitous.
         Many  experiments have shown that from these very simple materials
         you can create the organic molecules for life.  It  almost,  then,
         becomes a statistical matter: You put the right materials together
         with  an  energy  source,  and things are going to regurgitate and
         percolate.  Eventually the chemistry becomes complex to the  point
         that  it begins to control its own future. Then a self-replicating
         molecule comes into the picture.   It  is  virtually  unimaginable
         that  all  those  stars resembling the sun could form and leave an
         environment around them so clean there's nothing left to  coalesce
         into  smaller  "coaly"  bodies.   So there must be planets around.
         Many stars will have planets too close, too small, or too far away
         from them. But those with planets at the right distance will  have
         liquid  water  on them, and once you have liquid water and all the
         other  stuff,  life  is  going  to  happen."  -  Bradford   Smith,
         world-famous astronomer, in an interview by OMNI Magazine


                                Theoretical Science

              Perhaps  the  Big  Bang  (theory  of  the  beginning  of  the
         universe) was before the onset of time.  Perhaps  all  matter  was
         clumped  together  in  a great big ball because until the Big Bang
         there was never any time to spread out. Then time developed, and -
         bang!

              If an item moves very, very  fast,  it  becomes  smaller  and
         heavier.

              "General  field  theory  predicts the possibility of at least
         three more entire spectra.  You see,  there  are  three  types  of
         energy  fields  known  to  exist in space: electric, magnetic, and
         gravitic or gravitational.  Light, X-rays,  all  such  radiations,
         are  part  of  the electromagnetic spectrum.  Theory indicates the
         possibility of analogous spectra between  magnetic  and  gravitic,
         between  electric  and  gravitic,  and finally, a three-phase type
         between  electric-  magnetic-gravitic  fields.   Each  type  would
         constitute a complete new spectrum, a total of three new fields of
         learning.
              "If  there  are  such,  they would presumably have properties
         quite as remarkable as  the  electromagnetic  spectrum  and  quite
         different.   But  we have no instruments with which to detect such
         spectra, nor do we even know that such spectra exist."
              "...The  very   theoretical   considerations   that   predict
         additional  spectra allow of some reasonable probability as to the
         general nature of their properties..."
                                - quoted  from  the  book,
                                The Day After Tomorrow, Robert A. Heinlein.

              "Today we  know  four  types  of  forces  -  electromagnetic,
         gravitational,  and  the  strong and weak nuclear forces.  But the
         existence of the latter two was not  even  suspected  before  this
         century.   I  don't  believe  that we have found all the forces in
         nature yet.  There is probably at least one more  type  of  energy
         operating  at  the  physical level which serves to support psychic
         phenomena" - William Tiller"

              Earliest life may have been catalized from rust. Rust is slow
         burning, where iron combines with oxygen.  Life is  slow  burning,
         where  various  elements combine with oxygen, particularly carbon,
         just like when wood burns.


                              The Fruits of Technology

              Chances are, you are within ten feet of Krypton. This gas  is
         in fluorescent lights.

              Your  color  TV  is  a  source  of  some  very rare and weird
         elements.  There are europium and yttrium to make  the  reds,  and
         without  cerium the radiation from your set would turn the picture
         tube glass purple.

              Bug zappers, those high voltage cages that attract bugs to an
         ultra-violet light, and then kill them by electrocution,  increase
         the  likelihood  that mosquitoes will bite you. The light attracts
         hundreds of bugs to the area, but kills only some of them.

              The next generation of sunglasses may be eyedrops.  The  very
         best   sunglasses   block  only  60  -  95  percent  of  dangerous
         ultraviolet rays, but Neville A.  Baron has invented eyedrops that
         block 98 percent of ultraviolet for two to four hours yet  do  not
         affect vision. The drops now require FDA approval.

              Perhaps  soon,  we  will no longer have to cut down trees for
         paper. Scientists are experimenting with a relative of sugar  cane
         called  Kenaf,  which  can be used for paper pulp instead of wood.
         This plant is much less complicated to harvest.

              There is a new alloy of aluminum  that  dissolves  in  water.
         Think of the possibilities!

              "I've  heard  it  suggested  that  in  the future, instead of
         commuting to work, some people way be computing to work." - Ronald
         Reagan

                                      History

                               DATES  OF  INVENTIONS
                           aerosol spray............1926
                           air conditioning.........1911
                           anesthesia...............1842
                           antiseptic surgery.......1867
                           aspirin..................1889
                           ballpoint pen............1888
                           electric motor...........1837
                           electron microscope......1931
                           helicopter...............1939
                           incandescent light.......1879
                           nylon....................1930
                           optical microscope.......1590
                           penicillin...............1929
                           rocket engine............1926
                           submarine................1776
                           television...............1923
                           thermometer..............1593
                           vacuum cleaner...........1907


              In 1875 the director of the U.S. patent office  resigned.  He
         said that there was nothing left to invent.

              We all credit Thomas Edison with inventing the phonograph and
         improving electric lights.  He also invented wax paper. He claimed
         that  his  greatest  invention was a machine that would be able to
         pick up evidence if there was life after death.

              In  the  1920's  a  radio  station in Schenectady, NY built a
         powerful transmitter.  In those days before the  FCC  regulations,
         not  knowing  just  how big to make a transmitter in order for the
         signal to be received some distance away, the station  set  up  to
         broadcast  at  500,000  watts.   It  requires about one watt to be
         received  four  blocks  away.   This  station  broadcast  at  such
         tremendous power that they could be heard around the world. People
         in  New  York  didn't  even need radios. They could sometimes hear
         voices transmitting from the station in  the  fire  pit  of  their
         furnaces.   In  Schenectady, light bulbs lit up in people's houses
         even if they were switched off.


                                   Miscellaneous

              The  Nuclear Regulatory Commission did a study of the control
         rooms of atomic power plants  and  found  some  serious  ergonomic
         mistakes.   For  instance,  some gauges are as far away as fifteen
         feet from the knobs that have to be adjusted  while  watching  the
         gauges.   Some  of  the gauges furnish misleading information, and
         some needed information is not displayed at all.

              As you break a window the cracks made in the glass travel  at
         speeds up to three thousand miles per hour.

              If  you  took  a  glass of iced tea and magnified it until it
         were as large as the whole earth, each molecule of water would  be
         about the size of a baseball.

              Diamonds are flammable.

              I found this item by an unknown author on a computer bulletin
         board:
              "A  New  Biologist  was  doing  an experiment, he took a
              frog, a tape measure, and  a  pad  and  pencil,  and  an
              exact-o knife, He set the frog on the table, and slammed
              his  fist  down  on the table, behind the frog, and said
              "Frog JUMP!", the frog Jumped, and he took his measuring
              tape, and measured the distance, and wrote "Frog with  4
              legs  Jumps  12  feet".  he  then  fetched the frog, and
              chopped off one leghe put the frog back  on  the  table,
              and  again  slammed  his  fist  down  on  the  table and
              shouted"Frog JUMP!", the Frog again Jumpped,and he again
              measured and wrote "Frog with 3 legs jumps 8  feet",  he
              got  the  frog  again, chopped off another leg, and went
              thru the process again, measured it, and wrote"Frog with
              2 legs jumps 6 feet", he got the frog,  and  chopped  of
              another  leg,  and  again repeated the process, the frog
              jumped, and he wrote "Frog with one leg jumps  3  feet",
              he  took  the frog, and chopped off the last leg, he put
              the frog down, and slammed his fist down on  the  table,
              yelling  "Frog Jump!", the frog just sat there, again he
              hit the  table  "FROG  JUMP!",  the  frog  still  didn't
              budge,  he  dd  this  a  final  time, and still the frog
              didn't move, he took his book, and write, Frog  with  No
              legs CAN'T HEAR!"