Question: On a busy day out, would you rather be faced with a 1-minute walk followed by a 7-minute wait, or a 6-minute walk and then a 2-minute wait? And yes, it matters — a lot. Just ask management at Houston International Airport.
Answer: The psychology of the wait is important in determining queuing structures for businesses, says Bart Holland in "What Are the Chances?" Unexplained or unanticipated waits obviously seem longer, as do boring waits, the reason TV screens are common at checkouts and why the Manhattan Savings Bank once provided live entertainment.
But one of the strangest time-speeders was at baggage-checkout at the Houston airport, where customer criticism had become prevalent and strident. Managers stepped up the number of handlers, but to no avail. The average elapsed time of 8 minutes from leaving the plane to having baggage in hand was within industry standards, so why the barrage of complaints?
The solution, it turned out, lay in a Disneyworld trick of long "crocodile lines" weaving in and out to keep everyone happily moving. Now busytime flights were brought in to gates far from the baggage-claim area, forcing a 6-minute walk with only a 2-minute wait at the carousel: Both 1 + 7 and 6 + 2 equal 8, but the second sequencing made all the difference! "Customer dissatisfaction disappeared."
Question: What makes a properly thrown boomerang come back?
Answer: Some 20,000 years ago, StoneAgers in what is now Poland used boomerangs for hunting, and these weren't supposed to come back, says Cambridge University's Hugh Hunt in his online "Unspinning the Boomerang."
Their odd hockey-stick or banana shapes and weight distributions allowed them to be thrown for great distances, with a wobble and unpredictability that made them harder for a bird or kangaroo to dodge. Trial and error resulted in some boomerangs that did curve around and come back — used for play or sport.
A boomerang, with "arms" shaped like airplane wings or airfoils, curves because it behaves like a gyroscope. The spin causes the wings to move through the air at different speeds and to generate uneven lift. The resulting twisting moment causes the boomerang to "precess" and move in a circular path.
"This is a bit like a baseball pitcher's curve ball where the spin generates lift that pushes the ball sideways, but the real difference is that a baseball does not behave as a gyroscope. Just as well: You wouldn't want a 90-mph baseball coming back at you!"
Question: Is that car you drive a "she," a "he" or an "it"? How about your computer? The nation you live in? That baby being pushed in a carriage along the street?
Answer: Many nouns are given variable gender, depending on whether they're thought of in an intimate way, such as vehicles or countries — "she can reach 60 in 5 seconds," "France has increased her exports" — says David Crystal in "The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language."
Pets are often "he" or "she" though an anonymous baby may become "it." It is not obvious why some entities are personified and others not, or why female personifications are used with guns, tanks and trucks. Certainly anger, aggression and other typical gender stereotyping are not the clues here.
"The only consistently male trend in personification that the author has heard in recent years is in computing, where word processors and other devices are widely given male pet names and pronouns."
Remember Douglas Adams' "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy," in which the computer Deep Thought, when asked about Life, the Universe and Everything replied, "'Yes, there is an answer. But," he added, "I'll have to think about it." (His answer, it turned out, was "42.")
Send STRANGE questions to brothers Bill and Rich at strangetrue@compuserve.com