Are Lobsters Ambidextrous? (19 page)

Microcomputer designers found it simpler and less expensive to adapt the monitor to existing technologies. So they appropriated the tubes and circuitry from older VDTs. They used 8½ × 11-inch paper as the standard size so that the paper transport and printing hardware in their printers were compatible with counterparts found in electric typewriters and teletypes. Maier mentions that laser printers borrow much of their optics, hardware, and electronics from small copy machines. They even use the same cartridges, which are made for 8½ × 11-inch paper. This lessens the price of newer technology for both the supplier and the consumer.

As we finished this chapter, we hear a question forming on the lips of an
Imponderables
reader: Why don’t monitors have the same format as printers? To forestall the inevitable question, we also found out why these two components couldn’t be aligned.

Well, they could, but David Maier explains why they are unlikely to be changed in our lifetimes:

 

That would mean making the screen maybe 70 columns wide by 65 lines long to match a page printed in 12 pt. font. Turning a standard PC monitor 90 degrees would give about the right ratio of width to height. However, you would have to shrink the size of characters on the screen and increase the electronic circuitry to handle the greater number of characters. The standard monitor has 80 × 24, or 1920, characters, whereas the page monitor would need 70 × 65, or 4550, characters. It could get hard to read.

However, if all the PC users in the country decided they were only going to buy page-format monitors from now on, the PC manufacturers could provide them in volume at a cost not much greater than what standard monitors cost now. Except.

Except there are now thousands of PC programs that assume a monitor screen has the standard format and whose developers might not be real happy at having to recode them to work with page format.

 

Submitted by Henry J. Stark of Montgomery, New York
.

 

Why
are all calico cats female?

Not quite all. According to Judith Lindley, founder of the Calico Cat Registry International, approximately one male calico is born for every 3,000 females.

The occurrence of male calico cats is theoretically impossible. Ordinarily, male cats have XY sex chromosomes, while females have XX. The X chromosomes carry the genes for coat colors. Therefore, female cats inherit their coat color from both
their queens (XX) and their toms (XY). To create a calico (or tortoise-shell) pattern, one of the X chromosomes must carry the black gene and the other the orange gene. If a black male and an orange female mate, the result will be a half-black and half-orange female offspring, a calico. A black female and an orange male will also produce a calico female.

Usually, the male kitten inherits its coat color from the queen alone, since the Y chromosome determines its sex but has nothing to do with its coat color. A male black cat mating with an orange female will produce an orange male; a male orange cat and black female will produce a black male kitten.

Geneticists have discovered that only one of the two X chromosomes in females is functional, which explains why you usually can make a blanket prediction that any male offspring will be the color of the queen. But occasionally, chromosomes mis-divide, and a male calico is born with an extra chromosome—two X chromosomes and one Y chromosome. If one of the X chromosomes carries the orange gene and the other the non-orange, a calico will result.

Note that the presence of the extra X chromosome doesn’t in itself create the calico. If both chromosomes are coded for orange or black, the offspring will be that color rather than a combination.

Abnormal chromosome counts are unusual but not rare. Most cat cells contain nineteen pairs of chromosomes, but sometimes a mutation will yield one extra chromosome or double or triple the normal number.

Although male calicoes are oddities, the cat experts we consulted indicated that they are normally healthy and have excellent life expectancies. But, unlike their female counterparts, male calicoes do tend to have a common problem—their sexual organs are often malformed, so they are usually sterile.

 

Submitted by Stacey Shore of West Lafayette, Indiana
.

 

Why
do ditto masters come in purple rather than blue ink?

Instant copiers may have supplanted spirit process duplicators (also known as mimeograph duplicators—“Ditto” is actually a trade name of a brand of spirit duplicators) in businesses, but many a handout in schools today is still flecked with the same aromatic purple streaks that we older folks knew and loved as children. For those of you who never made it to the teachers’ lounge, a short description of how mimeos are made will help explain why the stains on teachers’ hands usually are purple rather than blue or black.

To make copies on a mimeo, one must type, write, or draw on a sheet of white master paper hard enough to make an impression on a sheet of purple backing carbon paper. A negative carbon image is created on the back of the master paper. The master paper is then separated from the carbon and placed on the drum of the duplicating machine. Each time the drum rotates, the machine automatically coats the paper with a small amount of spirit fluid. According to Bill Heyer, the third-generation owner of Chicago’s Heyer Company, the spirit fluid dissolves a minute amount of aniline dye found on the carbon sheet and transfers it to the copy sheet each time the drum is rotated, producing a positive image. Heyer reports that this dye is extremely powerful. One thimbleful can turn an entire room blue.

The aniline dye used in spirit duplicators is derived from coal. Don Byczynski of Colonial Carbon Co. of Des Plaines, Illinois, told
Imponderables
that duplicating companies buy the dye in powdered form and mix it with vegetable oils and waxes to arrive at carbon ink.

So why did purple become the industry standard? Carbon companies, of course, wanted the cheapest possible dyes to make their product economical. Although many other solvents were available, alcohol was and still is the cheapest available, so the industry sought to use dyes with the best alcohol solubility. According to Byczynski, the cheapest dye available was crystal violet dye, the lowest-cost color dye with alcohol solubility.

As we learned in
Why Do Dogs Have Wet Noses?
, cash register receipts are purple because the ink lasts longer than other colors. Bill Heyer indicated that the same is true for carbon inks. Other colored dyes (e.g., blue, green, red, and black) are available, but they cost more and would produce fewer copies.

Heyer answered another question we wondered about. Is the carbon in ordinary carbon paper identical to the carbon used in spirit carbons? Surprisingly, the answer is no. The oils and waxes used are identical in both, but carbon paper uses pigments rather than dyes. Carbon paper wouldn’t work on duplicating machines because it doesn’t have alcohol solubility.

For those of you who worry about kids getting hold of alcohol-laden carbon products—relax. The alcohol is denatured by chemicals so that it is undrinkable.

 

Submitted by Diana Berliner of Eureka, California
.

 

Why
are the interior walls of tunnels usually finished with ceramic tiles? Are they tiled for practical or aesthetic reasons?

Come on. Do you really think tunnel-makers are obsessed with aesthetics? Tiles may look nifty, but they also have many practical advantages.

We heard from officials of the International Bridge, Tunnel & Turnpike Association, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, and the chief of the bridge division of the Federal Highway Administration. All hailed ceramic tiles for having two big advantages over other surfaces:

 

1. Tiles are easy to clean. Tunnel walls collect dirt the way Madonna collects boys. Walls are subject to fumes, dust, tire particles, exhaust, and, in some locations, salt. Tiles can be cleaned by many means, including detergents, brushes, and high-pressure water jets.

2. Tiles are durable. As Stanley Gordon, the aforementioned
FHA official, put it, “Finish systems must be resistant to deterioration caused by various kinds of dirt and grime, vehicle emissions, washing, water leakage, temperature changes, sunlight, artificial light, vibration and acids produced by combinations of vehicle emissions and moisture.” Tiles perform admirably in this regard.

 

Gordon mentioned several other qualities that make tiles both practical and economic:

 

3. Reflectance. The more reflective the wall surface, the less money is spent on lighting.

4. Adaptability. “The finish [of the wall surface] must accommodate various special conditions at openings, recesses, corners, and sloping grades [of the tunnel], as well as service components such as lights and signs.”

5. Fire Resistance. Tiles are noncombustible and are likely not to be damaged by small fires.

6. Weather Resistance. Fired clay products, tunnel tiles are, for example, frost-resistant.

7. Repairability. Nothing is easier to replace, if damaged, than one or more matching tiles.

8. Inspectability. It is easy to see if tiles are deteriorating and in need of repair.

 

What are the alternatives? Gordon elucidates:

 

Although many other products, such as porcelain enameled metal, epoxy coated steel, polymer concrete and painted concrete, have been investigated as possible tunnel finishes, the selection of tunnel tile prevails in most cases.

 

All in all, tunnel tiles are an unqualified success. Unless, perhaps, you are the person responsible for taking care of grout problems.

 

Submitted by Ann Albano of Ravena, New York. Thanks also to Anthony Masters of San Rafael, California
.

 

Why
does heat make us sleepy in the afternoon when we’re trying to work but restless when we’re trying to sleep at night?

Fewer experiences are more physically draining than sitting in an overheated library in the winter (why
are
all libraries overheated in the winter?) trying to work. You can be reading the most fascinating book in the world, (e.g., one of ours), and yet you would kill for a spot on a vacant cot rather than remaining on your hardback chair. So you trudge home, eventually, to your overheated house and try to get a good night’s sleep. Yet the very heat that sent your body into a mortal craving for lassitude now turns you into a twisting and turning repository of frustration. You can’t fall asleep. Why?

There is no doubt that heat saps us of energy. Many Latin, Asian, and Mediterranean cultures routinely allow their work force to take siestas during the hottest portions of the day, aware both that productivity would slacken during the early
P.M
. hours without a siesta and that workers are refreshed after an hour or so of sleep.

Yet all of the sleep experts we consulted agreed with the declaration of the Better Sleep Council’s Caroline Jones: “Heat is not what makes us sleepy in the afternoon. Researchers have documented a universal dip in energy levels that occurs in the
P.M
. regardless of the temperature.” These daily fluctuations of sleepiness within our body are known as “circadian rhythms.” David L. Hopper, president of the American Academy of Somnology, told
Imponderables
that late evening and early afternoon are the “two periods during the twenty-four-hour cycle when sleep is possible or likely to occur under normal conditions.”

Some sleep specialists believe that circadian rhythms indicate humans have an inborn predisposition to nap. But somnologists seem to agree that the natural sleepiness most of us feel in the afternoon, when it happens to be hottest outside, has little
or nothing to do with the other very real enervating effects heat has upon us.

Environmental temperatures
do
affect our sleep patterns, though. Most people sleep better in cool environments, which explains why many of us are restless when trying to sleep in hot rooms even when we are exhausted at night. And if the temperature should shift while we are asleep, it can cause us to awaken, as Hopper explains: