When Do Fish Sleep? (16 page)
WHY
Are Banking Hours So Short?
Nine to three, five days a week. Not a bad job if you can get it, eh? Short banking hours have always fit the needs of bankers and industry, but have not been convenient for retail customers. The banks are open only when the average person is working or going to school.
Mind you, workers in the bank industry don’t get to leave the door at the stroke of three. Tellers, for example, must count cash and report their balances to a central processing center. Before automation, reconciling their books might have taken a little longer, but not significantly so.
Executives in the banking industry, who do not have to mind the day-to-day transactions of retail customers, have plenty of phone and social contacts to make after banking hours. When we posed this Imponderable to Joan Silverman, of Citibank, she was incredulous that we had not heard of the rule of 3/6/3.
“What is the rule of 3/6/3?” we asked.
“It’s simple,” she replied. “If you want to be a successful banker, you pay 3% to depositors; you charge 6% on loans to customers; and you hit the golf course by 3
P.M
.” Based on the interest rates mentioned, this obviously is a very old rule.
Government regulations once restricted the hours during which banks could be open for business. Gentleman bankers conducted most of their business on the golf course while tellers were back at the ranch settling their ledgers.
With computerization, there is no reason why banks couldn’t have much longer hours. The tradition of the 9
A.M
. to 3
P.M
. Monday through Friday bank is preserved because of the bottom line: The banks figure that if they stay open later or open on weekends, they will increase retail customers’ simple—and to the bank, often unprofitable—transactions, such as depositing or withdrawing money from checking and savings accounts. Most other businesses are closed on weekends and evenings—
they
don’t have demanding, long hours.
Bank hours generally are extended only when there is a competitive marketing reason to do so, usually when a new bank or new branch needs to build new accounts and can advertise extended hours. Ohio’s Banc One, Dayton, for example, opens many branches on Saturdays and even Sundays. Many of their branches are located in malls; before Banc One opened on weekends, it was often the only business closed in the whole shopping center. Much to Banc One’s surprise, according to
American Banker:
the volume of teller activity during Sunday’s four-hour shift has been greater than the amount of teller activity during a normal seven-hour weekday.
Obviously, if it were cost-effective for most banks to be open longer, they would do it. Automated teller machines have effectively opened the doors of many banks twenty-four hours a day anyway. Unlike bank employees, ATMs don’t complain when they aren’t excused to leave for the golf course at 3
P.M
.
Submitted by Dorio Barbieri of Mountain View, California. Thanks also to Herbert Kraut of Forest Hills, New York
.
The banking industry is being squeezed from two sides. On the one hand, customers now demand interest on checking accounts and money-market rates on savings accounts. Yet they also want services provided for free.
While it is true that an ATM transaction generally is cheaper for the banks than the same transaction conducted by a teller, banks have spent a fortune buying and installing these machines. As David Taylor, of the Bank Administration Institute put it, “As the customer gets more and more convenience and control of his banking options, he will have to pay for each option one at a time.” The alternative would be a return to having no service fees but also to customers getting lower interest rates on CDs and checking and savings accounts, which banks know would be suicidal for them. As bank deregulation accelerates and banks are allowed to compete with brokerages and other financial institutions, expect to see increasing service charges.
Most banks do not charge for ATM transactions. If there are two big banks in a town, each knows that if it charges for ATM transactions, the other bank will advertise that its machines are free. So the choice between free and pay ATMs is left to what the banking business calls “competitive reasons,” which is fiduciary lingo for “if we think we can get away with charging for it, we will.”
Why
Does Granulated Sugar Tend to Clump Together?
It ain’t the heat, it’s the humidity. Sugar is hygroscopic, meaning that it is capable of absorbing moisture from the air and changing its form as a result of the absorption. When sugar is subjected to 80% or higher relative humidity, the moisture dissolves a thin film of sugar on the surface of the sugar crystal. Each of these crystals turns into a sugar solution, linked to one another by a “liquid bridge.”
According to Jerry Hageney, of the Amstar Corporation, when the relative humidity decreases, “the sugar solution gives up its moisture, causing the sugar to become a crystal again. The crystals joined by the liquid bridge become as one crystal. Thus, hundreds of thousands of crystals become linked together to form a rather solid lump.”
Although we can’t see the moist film on sugar exposed to high humidity, it won’t pour quite as smoothly as sugar that has never been exposed to moisture. But when it dries up again, the liquid bridge is a strong one. Bruce Foster, of Sugar Industry Technologists, told us that the technology used to make sugar cubes utilizes this natural phenomenon.
To make sugar cubes, water is added to sugar in a cube-shaped mold. After the sugar forms into cubes, it is dried out, and voilà! you have a chemical-free way to keep sugar stuck together.
Submitted by Patty Payne of Seattle, Washington
.
Why
Do Two Horses in an Open Field Always Seem to Stand Head to Tail?
Horses, unlike people, don’t bother to make the pretense of listening to what companions have to say. And also, unlike humans, horses have tails. Rather than stand around face-to-face boring each other, figures the horse, wouldn’t it be more practical to stand head to tail? This way, with one swish of the tail, a horse can rid its body of flies and other insects while knocking the bugs off of the head of the other horse.
In cold weather, horses are more likely to stand head-to-head, so they can help keep each other warm with their breaths. In this one respect, horses are like people—they are full of an inexhaustible supply of hot air.
Submitted by Mrs. Phyllis A. Diamond of Cherry Valley, California
.
Why
Does Your Whole Body Ache When You Get a Cold or Flu?
When a virus enters your bloodstream, it releases several compounds that mount your body’s defense against infection. Interferon, interleukin, and prostaglandins are among the body’s most valuable compounds. They raise a fever, shift the metabolism, and increase blood flow to areas of the body that need it.
Frank Davidoff, of the American College of Physicians, suggests that although science hasn’t yet precisely defined their function, there is much evidence to suggest that these compounds are responsible for the aching feeling that accompanies colds and flus. More of the compounds are usually found in the bloodstream during the aching phase than before any symptoms start. And when doctors inject a purified form of each compound into a patient, many of the symptoms of a virus, including fever, sweating, and aching, occur without actually causing the entire illness.
These compounds are effective without anyone knowing precisely
how
they work, but there are logical explanations for
why
they work. Davidoff sums it up well:
the aching and other symptoms seem to be the “price” that’s paid for mounting a defense against the infection. Whether the price is inseparable from the defense isn’t clear. Thus, on the one hand, the symptoms might actually be a holdover from some mechanism that was important earlier in evolution but that is unnecessary now in more complex creatures. On the other hand, symptoms like aching may be part and parcel of the defense; I don’t believe anyone knows for sure.
Submitted by James Wheaton of Plattsburgh Air Force Base, New York
.
Our idea of a good time does not include trying to do long division with Roman numerals. Can you imagine dividing CXVII by IX and carrying down numbers that look more like a cryptogram than an arithmetic problem?
The Romans were saved that torture. The Romans relied on the Chinese abacus, with pebbles as counters, to perform their calculations. In fact, Barry Fells, of the Epigraphic Society, informs us that these mathematical operations were performed in Roman times by persons called “calculatores.” They were so named because they used
calcule
(Latin for pebbles) to add, subtract, multiply, and divide.
Submitted by Greg Cox of San Rafael, California
.
Why
Do Some Ice Cubes Come Out Cloudy and Others Come Out Clear?
A caller on the Merle Pollis radio show, in Cleveland, Ohio, first confronted us with this problem. We admitted we weren’t sure about the answer, but subsequent callers all had strong convictions about the matter. The only problem was that they all had
different
convictions.
One caller insisted that the mineral content of the water determined the opacity of the cube, but this theory doesn’t explain why all the cubes from the same water source don’t come out either cloudy or clear.
Two callers insisted that the temperature of the water when put into the freezer was the critical factor. Unfortunately, they couldn’t agree about whether it was the hot water or the cold water that yielded clear ice.
We finally decided to go to an expert who confirmed what we expected—all the callers were wrong. Dr. John Hallet, of the Atmospheric Ice Laboratory of the Desert Research Institute in Reno, Nevada, informed us that the key factor in cloud formation is the temperature of the
freezer
.
When ice forms slowly, it tends to freeze first at one edge. Air bubbles found in a solution in the water have time to rise and escape. The result is clear ice cubes.
The clouds in ice cubes are the result of air bubbles formed as ice is freezing. When water freezes rapidly, freezing starts at more than one end, and water residuals are trapped in the middle of the cube, preventing bubble loss. The trapped bubbles make the cube appear cloudy.
Why
Are Most Pencils Painted Yellow?
Pencils came in various colors before 1890, but it was in that year the Austrian L & C Hardtmuth Company developed a drawing pencil that was painted yellow. Available in a range of degrees of hardness, the company dubbed their product Koh-I-Noor.