Question: What happens to an unpaid debt that swells and swells for 500 years due to compounding interest? Would there be enough money anywhere to pay this off?
Answer: The notion was put to the test in 1996 when a New College of Oxford administrator discovered that King Edward IV of England, on July 18, 1461, had borrowed the modern equivalent of $384 (U.S.) from the school, paid back $160 but the remaining $224 was never repaid, say Jeffrey O. Bennett et al. in "Using and Understanding Mathematics."
That left 535 years of accumulating interest on the $224 debt, did it not? After all, had the money been deposited in an interest-bearing account, wheelbarrowfuls — maybe even truckloads — of dollars would have accrued.
That's what the administrator argued to the Queen of England, and assuming an interest rate of 4 percent per year, "calculated that the college was owed $290 billion!" That is of course well more than most NATIONS produce in a year, and the administrator didn't seriously expect to collect. So he suggested a compromise figure of 2 percent, reducing the debt to around $9 million.
This he said would pay for a modernization project at the college. True enough, but there was no clear record of any agreement to repay with interest, and even if there were, who would feel obligated to pay 500 years later? Certainly not the queen, and "the debt has not yet been paid."
Question: Chernobyl is virtually synonymous with nuclear disaster, costing an estimated 16,000 lives and more than $200 billion. Was it also a disaster for the region's wildlife?
Answer: Not unambiguously so, for one of the great puzzles to scientists afterward has been the region's thriving and even expanding populations of species such as wild boar, moose, otters, waterfowl and rodents, say Daniel Botkin et al. in "Environmental Science: Earth as a Living Planet."
This has happened in spite of radioactive contaminated soils, vast destruction to vegetation within a seven-kilometer radius, decreased tree growth and even documented increased genetic mutation rates for the animals themselves. But these rates APPEAR not to have crippled the animal populations.
How this happened is unclear, but it is possible other species have benefitted in some ways as humans were driven from the area. Just as with the mammalian upsurge in the wake of the demise of the dinosaurs, the moral here might be that it's an ill eco-wind that blows nobody any good.
Question: What makes a bullwhip's tip crack like a gun? (Brontosaurs, take note.)
Answer: The undulation traveling from the handle toward the end of the whip reaches supersonic velocities, unloosing a boomlet akin (in miniature version) to that of a supersonic plane breaking the sound barrier or the sound produced by a gun, says University of Arizona mathematician Alain Goriely.
Whips are specially designed for their flexibility (kangaroo leather preferred) and tapered so an initial impulse of moderate speed can easily accelerate to supersonic velocities within a few feet — "roll 'em out rawhide," as oldtime bullwhippers prodded cattle onward. The first scientific proof of this supersonic motion came from Zephyrin Carriere in 1927, using high-speed digital photographs to show the tip reaching near Mach 3 (three times the speed of sound in air).
Curiously, the tail of Brontosaurus had a length and shape suggestive of its being able to crack in the air, says Goriely. Some computer simulations have indicated this possibility. But could its bone-structure have withstood such a supersonic flagellation?
"This may be an amusing topic of scientific controversy for many years to come."
Send STRANGE questions to brothers Bill and Rich at strangetrue@compuserve.com