EDITORIALLY S P E A K I N G
A
book with the fascinating title "The Odd Book of Data" recently arrived atop the pile on the desk. I t is an English-language translation of a compilation by Dr. R. Houwink, the eminent Dutch cbemist, published by Elsevier (New York, 1965, $5.00). Some may wish to revise the title to read "The Book of Odd Data." I t is a collection of items to serve the purpose, in the author's words, ". . . of simplifying and thereby to render more memorablethose quantitative data of Nature which we, and particularly the young student of science, are often at pains to absorb and retain." I t does this admirably. It is an arsenal of ammunition that the scientist can use to raise the level of cocktail-party conversation when it goes too far into the realm of the currently popular fad for obscure, useless information (such as the name of Barney Google's horse). Perhaps a more intellectually respectable use of some of the items would be to spark up the otherwise dull classroom lecture. Thus armed, the professor may be able to take advantage of the undeniable tendency students have of remembering the oddest things! Some samples: of alams and molecules .
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If Columbus had emptied a glass of water in the ocean, and assuming that this water were now thoroughly mixed and distributed through the seas of the world, then each g l m of water taken from the nearest tap or other source of water would now contain up to 250 molecules of the original contents of Columbus' glass. If all the molecules in a. handful of snow were magnified to the size of a pea, there would be snow enough to blanket the entire surface of the Earth to a thickness covering the Eiffel Tower or the Rockefeller Center in New York, i.e., 300 meters (330 yards). If, after the Flood (supposed to have taken place around 3000 B.C.), Noah had set himself to string electrons on a thread a t the rate of one a. second ior eight hours a day the chain so formed would today still be only two-tenths of a millimeter long. Composed of hydrogen atoms, the chain would be something like 25 metem (80 feet) by now. At every breath, each of us is likely to inhale some 50 million molecules of air exhaled a t some time by Leonsrdo da Vinci or by any other person who lived for 65 years and whose breath has been well distributed throughout the atmosphere. strict standard of Certain types of transistor require a purity, the admissible inhomogeneities in the finished product being comparable to a. situation in which only three albinos were represented in the world's total population, i.e., 3.3 hillion.
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old earth, ymng mankind. If the age of the Earth were one-tenth greater than i t is now
estimated to be, uranium 235 (on which we increasingly rely as a reactor fuel) would not be available to us; radioactive decay would by now have led to its extinction. If we imaeine the entire historv of the Earth to he condensed
ber 31. The entire progeny of Adam and Eve (by which is meant the sum t,otal of all human beings living and dead) is estimated to he only 25 times larger than the present human population of the world.
of Xature, h g e and small . The amount oi radiation necessary to palpably stimulate the human optic nerve is so infinitesimally small, that if the mechsniral energy required to lift a single pea. through one inch were converted to light energy, this would provide stimulus enough to have actuated the optic nerves of every human being who has ever lived.
motion that if our ears were only very slightly more sensitive, we might experience the constant background noise of the collisions of molecules in the air-a very tiring sensation. So dense is the concentration of bacteria in the top layer of of fertile soil that one single spoonful (1 cm3) of i t may often contain a population surpassing that of the human race. Each year approximately forty times more carbon is used in photosynthesis of carbon compounds from carbon dioxide hy plants than is extracted by man from the world's coal mines. the Earth's Limited reserves of coal and oil. are estimated to be equivalent to only two weeks' supply of solar energy poured on the Earth's surface.
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sometimes, the o6vimcs is not
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Greater London). Asked to judge between the reliability of a watch which lost ten minutes s d i y snd one which had lost its main spring, you might reasonably decide in favor of the first. However, the losing watch would be correct only once in 72 days, whereas the other would show the right time twice every 24 hours. The wall of s. soap bubble is some 100 atoms thick, but i t is still ahout 10,000 times thinner than the average human hair. Cynics might he tempted to observe that those who split atoms are therefore a t least some million times as pedantic as those who split hairs.
or, that puncturing a bubble (such as a human mind that considers itself infallible) should be lo4 times as easy as splitting a hair. Volume 43, Number 2, February 1966
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