Question: Why is it a waste of time for a baseball player to "cork" his bat, drilling an axial hole and stuffing it with cork, rubber balls, etc.?
Answer: The supposed trampoline effect of a corked bat won't help because the bat-ball collision lasts a bare .0006 second (.6 of a millisecond), not enough time for the extra elastic energy to reach the bat surface, which may take up to 3 milliseconds, says Yale physicist Robert Adair in "The Physics of Baseball." In fact, the filler will just add weight at the bat's end, slowing the swing. Better to just hollow out the wood as lightener, though this too is an "illegal" modification.
This same advantage can be achieved by choking up an inch on the bat, or legally shortening it by about 3/4 inch, or lathing it to be .1 inch thinner in the barrel. "All of these produce a bat with almost exactly the same swinging weight and swinging length of the illegally drilled bat."
Question: If a huge scale were built into the surface of a road, would your car weigh more (a) when speeding along? (b) when parked? (c) do you take us for fools — it's the same either way.
Answer: No folly here — the answer is (b). Certainly a plane weighs less as it nears takeoff, which would be evident if the same huge scale were built into the runway surface. Something similar happens to cars as the airflow over the aerodynamically contoured car top is faster than across the bottom, causing lower pressure above, says Barry Parker in "The Isaac Newton School of Driving." This results in a lifting force — as if the car were an airplane wing — not great at passenger car speeds but significant for racing cars. Lift coefficients depend on the shape and angle of the nose of the car and on the overall styling. The lift also varies with the square of the speed (velocity times velocity), so if racers didn't incorporate spoilers or negative lift devices such as inverted wings, the several hundred pounds of generated lift per vehicle would sacrifice traction and maneuverability and have cars flying off the track every which way.
Question: Imagine a camcorder set up to record all fetal movements right from the start. What would the movie show?
Answer: Lights, cameras, action — and plenty of it, letting mom-to-be know that her baby's nervous system, skeleton and muscles are indeed working, says David Bainbridge in "Making Babies: The Science of Pregnancy."
Fifth month for first felt movement is common, earlier for women who have already had a child. Ultrasound scans show lots of early embryonic activity, such as somersaults and hiccups, but fetal movements are quite erratic.
Many moms learn tricks to prompt their babies to perform on cue, such as a caffeine and sugar "hit" of chocolate or coaxing by particular voices. But "in the last month of pregnancy, fetuses start to move less because they are running out of kicking space by this time." End of movie: A star is born!
Question: Would modern mechanical clocks be any different if they had been invented in the Southern Hemisphere?
Answer: Clock predecessors were ancient sundials, whose shadows north of the equator move in a "clockwise" pattern, as we say it today.
This is an accident of history since mechanical clocks originated in the Northern Hemisphere, but had they been invented in Argentina or Australia or South Africa and then spread round the world, clockwise and counterclockwise would be reversed.
Also following the sundial, early clocks had only one hand, says NewScientist.Com. And it is no coincidence that 12 o'clock is at the top of the clock's face, because the sundial's shadow is pointing North (or near enough North) at that time.
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