Uncle John’s Supremely Satisfying Bathroom Reader® (10 page)

Although Cochrane’s wealthy friends immediately ordered the “Cochrane Dishwasher” for their own kitchens, the home model did not sell well. Few homes had electricity in those days. Water heaters were rare. Most available water was hard and did not create suds well. And the price tag of $150 was huge—equivalent to about $4,500 today. Furthermore, many housewives felt that there was nothing wrong with washing dishes by hand—it was a relaxing way to end the day.

Cochrane tried changing her sales pitch to point out that the water in her dishwashing machines was hotter than human hands could stand, resulting in germ-free dishes. But it didn’t matter: Her strongest potential market was not private homes, it was industry.

Cochrane got her big break when she exhibited her dishwasher at the World’s Columbian Expo of 1893 in Chicago. Against heavy competition from around the world, her dishwasher received first prize for “best mechanical construction for durability and adaptation to a particular line of work.” And she sold dishwashers to many of the restaurants and other establishments catering to the large crowds at the Expo. Hotels, restaurants, boardinghouses, and hospitals immediately saw the advantage of being able to wash, scald, rinse, and dry dozens of dishes of all shapes and sizes in minutes. One of the concessionaires sent her this glowing tribute: “Your machine washed without delay soiled dishes left by eight relays of a thousand soldiers each, completing each lot within 30 minutes.”

Cochrane continued to improve her product, designing models with revolving washing systems, a centrifugal pump, and a hose for draining into a sink. She ignored the clergy (who claimed the dishwasher was immoral because it denied women the labor to which God had called them) and the servants (who claimed it would put them out of business). The company kept growing, pushed by Josephine Cochrane’s energy and ambition until her death at age 74 in 1913. By the 1950s, the world finally caught up with Cochrane. Dishwashers became commonplace in ordinary homes…using the same design principles she had invented 70 years before.

Kiwis are the only birds that hunt by smell.

It gives us great comfort to know that scientists are hard at work…figuring out what it would be like to play baseball on the moon. From
Think Tank: If Baseball Expands to the Moon, Be Sure to Back Up Those Fences,
by Bruce Weber.

It isn’t, perhaps, the most pragmatic of disciplines, but Peter Brancazio probably has it all to himself. A lot of people have applied the laws of physics to sports, Mr. Brancazio among them. He’s the guy who demonstrated that Michael Jordan’s vaunted hang time was only eight-tenths of a second, and that a rising fastball doesn’t really rise. (It just doesn’t fall as quickly as the batter expects.)

But because he taught astronomy in the physics department of Brooklyn College (he is now retired), Mr. Brancazio, 62, asserts with pride that he is uniquely qualified for his current specialty. That would be the physics of
lunar
sports, which probes the scientific issues that would be involved should, for example, George Steinbrenner contemplate moving the Yankees from the Bronx to outer space.

“About 10 years ago, there was talk about returning to the moon,” Mr. Brancazio said. “I taught astronomy, and I’m a sports fan, and I wondered what it would be like to play all sorts of sports on the moon.”

His lecture on the subject, delivered at the City University of New York, was initially composed for a science fiction convention. But he eventually discovered its uses as a teaching tool.

“There are things you take for granted in sports that affect the field of play, like the Earth’s gravity and its atmosphere,” he said.

There’s no air on the moon, of course. This means all athletes would have to wear unwieldy spacesuits, and how interesting would that be to play or watch? Mr. Brancazio, who brings a measure of earthly practicality to his calculations, concluded that lunar sports must be conducted indoors, in pressurized, domed arenas where air—and air resistance—would be the same as it is on Earth.

Jay North, star of TV’s
Dennis the
Menace, was also the voice of Bam-Bam Rubble.

Lunar gravity, about a sixth of what it is here, would remain a significant factor indoors, rendering certain sports impossible. Tennis is out; you couldn’t hit a ball with enough topspin to keep it on the court. And basketball is out; the baskets would have to be 60 feet high. On the other hand, diving and gymnastics would be more balletic.

Mr. Brancazio’s primary focus, however, was baseball; he’s the kind of Brooklyn Dodger fan who still winces when you say Ralph Branca, and he seems hopeful if not serious when he envisions future recreational possibilities on a populated moon base. An understanding of how the game would change, he said, begins with the difference between mass and weight. The former is a measurement of an object’s resistance to being accelerated; the latter measures the force of gravity on an object. Given equal air resistance on Earth and in a lunar stadium, the mass—of a person, say, or a ball—remains constant; its weight on the moon, however, is one-sixth of its weight on Earth.

So you couldn’t run any faster on the moon than you can here (you would have to develop a kind of low-lying, hopping stride, however, so you didn’t launch yourself into the air with every push off the ball of your foot); and you couldn’t throw a ball any faster, either.

“The bat will feel lighter when you pick it up,” Mr. Brancazio said, because it doesn’t weigh as much. “But swinging it”—its mass doesn’t change—“isn’t any easier.”

Is this an advantage for hitters or pitchers? Well, that depends on how you spin it—the ball, that is. The rotation on a ball is a force that works in conjunction with air resistance and gravity to create a total force that determines the path of a ball. Curve balls, sliders, and sinkers—which are all thrown with a degree of overspin and break downward—would be less effective on the moon because the break is not as enhanced by a lesser gravitational pull. A ball thrown with enough backspin, however, would be something no major leaguer has ever seen—a rising fastball that isn’t merely an illusion.

Official distance from home plate to second base: 127 feet, 3
⅜
inches.

The distance between the pitcher’s mound to the plate is 60 feet, 6 inches, and on Earth, over that span, gravity causes a thrown ball to drop about 3 feet, Mr. Brancazio said. A backspin of, say, 1,800 rotations per minute can reduce that drop by a foot and a half.

“But on the moon the ball rises if the spin is greater than 600 rpm’s,” he said, “because the lift force it produces is greater than the weight of the ball.”

Of course, if the batter does manage to hit the ball, a whole other set of these physical forces, come into play. The ball will travel farther, and over an unfamiliar arc; one scenario outlined by Mr. Brancazio shows that a fly ball struck with enough backspin will rise and do a loop-de-loop before proceeding into the outfield. More generally, Mr. Brancazio said, consider a batted ball that rises at an angle of 40 degrees, travels 385 feet—a deep drive if not a home run—and stays aloft for 5 seconds on Earth. On the moon the same ball will go 890 feet and stay in the air for 21.1 seconds.

“This raises interesting questions,” Mr. Brancazio said. “Where do you put the fences? And where do you position the outfielders? They can’t run any faster, but the ball will stay in the air long enough for them to possibly make a play. So you’ll have a situation where the batter can hit the ball, circle the bases and go into the dugout and watch to see if he’s scored.”

“Robert Meier of Tampa, Florida, was accused of marrying his comatose girlfriend, Constance Sewell, hours before she died, then running up $20,000 on her credit cards. He told police he knew it was wrong, but the woman’s dog told him to do it. However, the investigator who searched the apartment said, ‘The dog was in the garage and didn’t say anything.’ ”

—
Strange Days #2

The Arctic is classified as a desert…annual precipitation is less than 4 inches a year.

Thoughts and observations from political humorist Will Durst.

“[George W. Bush] said there was no room in the Republican Party for racists. Boy, I knew there were a lot of them; I didn’t think all the slots were full.”

“The federal government announced it was worried about the long-term effects of medical marijuana on the terminally ill.”

“In America, we’ll give you the shirt off our back, as long as there’s the off chance we can trap you in a blind alley and strip you naked.”

“Colleges are banning alcohol on campus, sending the message to kids, ‘If you want to drink, get a car.’ ”

“Guns don’t kill people. It’s those darn bullets that put the holes in that the blood leaks out of way too quick.”

“If you’re not confused, you’re not paying attention.”

“I hate the outdoors. To me the outdoors is where the car is.”

“Hillary Clinton made a hundred thousand on a thousand-dollar investment. Forget the New York senatorship—put her in charge of Social Security!”

“Patrick Buchanan doesn’t believe in evolution and some say he is his own best argument.”

“Racism is so stupid. There’s more than enough reasons to dislike people on an individual basis.”

“I’m all in favor of billionaires running for president instead of politicians. That way we eliminate the middlemen.”

“Jesse Ventura refereed a WCW event and caused an outcry. The wrestlers were afraid the appearance of a politician would cheapen the sport.”

“To me, Las Vegas is America, because there’s money everywhere, and none of it is yours.”

“If God has cable, we are the 24-hour doofus network.”

The game Simon Says was originally called Do This, Do That.

Kids always ask their parents questions like “Why is the sky blue?” Uncle John asks the experts. Here are some of their answers.

Q:
How does blowing on food cool it off?
A:
“When you see steam rising from hot food, it’s because heat is coming out. The steam acts like a blanket that helps keep the heat in. The faster you blow the blanket of steam away, the faster the heat can leave the food, and the faster the food cools down.” (From
Why Does Popcorn Pop?,
by Catherine Ripley)

Q:
Do insects sleep?

A:
“Let’s put it this way. They get quiet and curl up and look like they’re sleeping. But what’s really going on inside those molecule-sized brains nobody knows.

“The one sure way to know if an animal is sleeping is to hook it up to a machine that measures electrical patterns in the brain. That’s how we know that birds and mammals—animals like dogs, cats, cows, and pigs—actually sleep. The problem with bugs is they don’t have enough brains to hook the wires to. So we don’t really know what they’re doing.” (From
Know It All!,
by Ed Zotti)

Q:
How
much is one horsepower?

A:
“Although it was originally intended to be measured as the average rate at which a horse does work, one horsepower has now been standardized to equal exactly 550 foot-pounds of work per second, or 746 watts of power.

“Speaking of watts, they’re named after James Watt, the Scottish engineer who invented an improved steam engine and then created the term
horsepower.
He needed some way to convince potential customers that his engine could outperform the horse. By devising a system of measurement based on the power of a horse, customers could easily compare the work potential of his engine versus that of the beast.” (From
Everything You Pretend to Know and Are Afraid Someone Will Ask,
by Lynette Padwa)

Mozart’s age when he wrote the melody, “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star”: Five years old.