Why do Clocks run clockwise? (27 page)

Newspaper publishers and ink manufacturers fight over who 210 / DAVID FELDMAN

is responsible for ink rub-off. The publishers blame the ink manufacturers for providing low-quality ink. The ink manufacturers insist that if the newspapers were willing to pay for better-quality ink, they would be glad to provide it.

The issue, clearly, is money. Now that most cities are monopolized by one paper, or by two papers owned by the same company, readers are literally a captive audience. It isn’t clear to the newspapers that reduced rub-off would lead to increased sales. According to the American Newspaper Publishers Association, ink constitutes less than one percent of operating costs for most newspapers that don’t publish in color.

Rub-resistant inks
are
more expensive. They work by neutralizing the carbon black in conventional inks by means of additives, such as resins and waxes. Resins trap the carbon black particles, making them stick to the surface of the newsprint. Wax works to cut down smearing by lubricating the surface of the page, reducing the friction between the ink and the fingers. The more resin and wax added to ink, the more rub-resistant it is—and the more expensive it is.

Conventional black ink designed for the letterpress process costs newspapers about thirty cents a pound; offset ink costs about fifteen cents more per pound. Most rub-resistant inks add at least ten cents more per pound to the bill. If these additives totally eliminated rub-offs, most newspapers would probably buy them, but as of now, they only improve the situation. The industry is still looking for rub-off-free ink.

Is there any solution to the rub-off problem? Ralph Eary, of Scripps Howard, and many other printers think the answer will probably come with flexography presses, which use a water-based ink. Eary believes that when the current generation of presses needs to be replaced, most publishers will choose flexo presses. Adds
Presstime’
s Paul Kruglinski,

Letterpress and offset inks are said to “dry” through the dispersion of the vehicle into the newsprint. They actually don’t dry; the fibers absorb the oil. But because the vehicle in flexo inks is water,

WHY DO CLOCKS RUN CLOCKWISE? / 211

there is evaporation. Not only that, the latex additives bind the pigments in flexo inks to the surface of newsprint. With flexography, newspapers may be able to use a thinner newsprint stock for their products without quality degradation.

And we newspaper fanatics won’t have to wear gloves to carry our treasures home.

Submitted by Jeff Charles, of St. Paul, Minnesota. Thanks also to:
Cassandra Sherrill, of Granite Hills, North Carolina
.

How and Why Do Horses Sleep Standing Up?

Horses have a unique system of interlocking ligaments and bones in their legs, which serves as a sling to suspend their body weight without strain while their muscles are completely relaxed. Thus, horses don’t have to exert any energy consciously to remain standing—their legs are locked in the proper position during sleep.

Most horses do most of their sleeping while standing, but patterns differ. Veterinarians we spoke to said it was not unusual for horses to stand continuously for as long as a month, or more. Because horses are heavy but have relatively fragile bones, lying in one position for a long time can cause muscle cramps.

While one can only speculate about why the horse’s body evolved in this fashion, most experts believe that wild horses slept while standing for defensive purposes. Wayne O. Kester, D.V.M., executive director of the American Association of Equine Practitioners, told us that in the wild, the horse’s chief means of protection and escape from predators was its speed. “They were much less vulnerable while standing and much less apt to be caught by surprise than when lying down.”

Submitted by Carole Rathouz, of Mehlville, Minnesota
.

212 / DAVID FELDMAN

Why Is Seawater Blue and Tap Water Clear? Why
Does the Color of the Ocean Range from Blue to
Red?

White light consists of all the primary and secondary colors in the spectrum. Each color is distinguished by the degree to which it scatters and absorbs light. When sunlight hits seawater, part of it is absorbed while the rest is scattered in all directions after colliding with water molecules.

When sunlight hits clear water, red and infrared light absorb rapidly, and blue the least easily. According to Curtiss O. Davis of the California Institute of Technology’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory,

“only blue-green light can be transmitted into, scattered, and then transmitted back out of the water without being absorbed.” By the time the light has reached ten fathoms deep, most of the red has been absorbed.

Why doesn’t tap water appear blue? Curtiss continues: “To see this blue effect, the water must be on the order of ten feet deep or deeper. In a glass there is not enough water to absorb much light, not even the red; consequently, the water appears clear.”

Thus if clear water is of a depth of more than ten feet, it is likely to appear blue in the sunlight. So how can we explain green and red oceans?

Both are the result not of the optical qualities of sunlight but of the presence of assorted gook in the water itself. A green sea is a combination of the natural blue color with yellow substances in the ocean—humic acids, suspended debris, and living organisms. Red water (usually in coastal areas) is created by an abundance of algae or plankton near the surface of the water. In open waters, compar-atively free from debris and the environmental effect of humans, the ocean usually appears to be blue.

Submitted by Jim Albert, of Cary, North Carolina
.

WHY DO CLOCKS RUN CLOCKWISE? / 213

Why Don’t Kitchen Sinks Have an Overflow
Mechanism?

That little hole on the inside near the top of your bathroom sink or that little doohickey near your bathtub faucet is known in the plumbing trade as the “overflow.” Its sole purpose is to prevent un-necessary spills when forgetful users leave water flowing unattended.

Most bathtubs and bathroom sinks have such safety features, but we have never encountered a kitchen sink that did. Is there a logical reason?

Yep. Three, at least.

1. Most kitchen sinks, especially in homes, are actually double sinks. The divider between the double sinks is markedly lower than the level that would cause an overflow. Thus, excess 214 / DAVID FELDMAN

water in one of the sinks is automatically routed to the other side.

2. The kitchen sink is less likely than bathroom basins to go unattended for long periods of time. Because it takes so long to fill a bathtub, many a potential bather has answered the telephone, reached out and touched someone, and found much to his consterna-tion that overflow mechanisms in bathtubs are far from infallible.

3. Perhaps the most important reason: kitchen sinks are usually made out of hard cast-iron surfaces, which tend to accumulate germs and fats more easily than china bathtubs, for example. Most kitchen overflows become quickly clogged, not only defeating the purpose of overflows, but creating unsanitary conditions.

Robert Seaman, the retired marketing manager of American Standard, told
Imponderables
that there is a current movement in the plumbing industry away from putting overflows into bathroom sinks. Germs can breed and spread inside overflows, and most get clogged eventually anyway. Many localities, however, have code requirements that mandate overflows in all lavatory sinks, where they are likely to remain until these codes are relaxed.

Submitted by Merrill Perlman, of New York, New York
.

WHY DO CLOCKS RUN CLOCKWISE? / 215

Why Do You Have to
Dry
-Clean Raincoats?

Actually, the majority of raincoats are washable. If the label indicates that a raincoat must be dry-cleaned, one or more components or fabrics of the coat are not washable. The most common offenders: linings (especially acetate linings), buttons, most wools, pile, satins, rubber, and canvas.

Most laymen assume that the care label instructions for rainwear refer to the effect of cleaning on water repellency. Actually, the water-resistant chemicals with which raincoats are treated are partially removed by both washing and dry-cleaning. Strangely, washing is easier on water repellency than dry-cleaning, as long as the detergent is completely removed through extra rinse cycles. According to Londontown Corp., makers of London Fog raincoats, the “worst enemies of water-repellent

216 / DAVID FELDMAN

fabrics are (in this order) soil, detergents, and solvents.” Dirt damages water repellency far more than cleaning, and stains tend to stick to raincoats if not eliminated right away.

Some of the solvents that dry cleaners use are destructive to water repellency. Before the original energy crisis, most dry-cleaning solvents were oil-based and were relatively benign to raincoats.

When the price of oil-based solvents soared, the dry cleaning industry turned to the synthetic perchloroethylene, which can contaminate water-repellent fabrics. Michael Hubsmith, of London Fog, said that if dry cleaners would rerinse garments in a clear solvent after dry-cleaning, the problem would go away. Likewise, if dry cleaners used clean dry-cleaning solution every time they treated a new batch of clothes, raincoats would retain their water repellency. But dry cleaners are as likely to blow the money for new solvent for every load as a greasy spoon is to use new oil for every batch of french fries.

Fred Shippee, of the American Apparel Manufacturers Association, adds that for many garments, clothing manufacturers have a choice of recommending either or both cleaning methods. Shippee speculates that some manufacturers might tend to favor dry-cleaning over washing for reasons of appearance. A washed raincoat needs touching up. A dry-cleaned, pressed raincoat looks great. When people like the way their garments look, they are likely to buy the same brand again.

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What Is the Purpose of the White Half-Moons on
the Bases of Our Fingernails and Toenails? And
Why Don’t They Grow Out with the Nails?

Those white moons are called lunulae. The lunula is the only visible portion of the nail matrix, which produces the nail itself. The matrix (and the lunulae) never moves, but new nails continually push forward, away from the matrix.

Why does a lunula appear white? Dermatologist Harry Arnold explains:

The nail beds distal to the lunulae look pink because capillaries with blood in them immediately underlie the nail plate. The lunulae look white because the thin, modified epidermis of the nail bed is three or four times thicker there, being the busy factory where nail plate is manufactured. The lunula is avascular [without blood vessels], so it looks white.

Submitted by Joanna Parker, of Miami, Florida. Thanks also to:
Jo Hadley, of Claremont, California
.

Can Raisins Be Made Out of Seeded Grapes?

At one time, no doubt, raisins had seeds. Humans have eaten raisins for at least three millennia, presumably ever since someone was hungry enough to do a little experimentation with a cluster of sun-dried grapes. We do know that raisins were a valuable commodity long before the birth of Christ, especially in the Middle East, where foods that could withstand the hot sun and store indefinitely without spoilage were prized. We know that raisins were cherished in southern Europe, as well: in ancient Rome, two jars of raisins could fetch you a slave boy in trade.

Today, raisins have no seeds. When we pop a raisin into our mouth, we are saved that moment of nervous anticipation we encounter with table grapes, wondering whether we are about 218 / DAVID FELDMAN

to bite into a hard pip. More than 90 percent of all raisins are made from Thompson seedless grapes, exactly the same table grape that is omnipresent in produce sections of the supermarket.

When they have reached the proper ripeness, in early autumn, Thompson grapes are taken from their vines and placed on paper trays to sun-dry. It takes about two to three weeks in the sun before the raisin reaches the correct degree of moisture (15 percent, as opposed to the 78 percent water content of table grapes), and the desired color and flavor. Four to five pounds of grapes sacrifice their lives to yield one pound of raisins.