October 6, 2000

Strange But True!

Q. Oh, no! The elevator cable snaps and you're freefalling 20 stories! Anything you can do to up your survival chances, such as leaping skyward at the last instant.

A. In principle you can soften your fall this way, in practice you'd need superhuman leaping ability, says University of Oregon physicist Raymond E. Frey. Assuming 16 feet per floor, you're in for a 320-foot drop, accelerating to close to 100 mph--the speed you need to overcome.

A person with a 30-inch vertical jump attains about 9 mph. This does not help much... it could reduce your speed to the equivalent of merely(!) a 17-story drop -- assuming you time your jump perfectly.

Here, however, is a winning strategy. When the cable snaps, you have 4.5 seconds to climb the wall and go through the car roof escape door. Remember, you're in free fall, "weightless" like an orbiting astronaut, so it is not hard to climb but maneuvering is tricky. "Now, standing on the car roof, fire up your 4,000-pound-thrust backpack rocket. Cover your eyes."

Q. You just bought a state lottery jackpot ticket at odds of 50 million to 1. So, which is more likely, your hitting it big and getting rich, or the world being hit by a doomsday asteroid before the drawing next week?

A. Space scientists put the risk of a dino-demiselike 1-2-km comet or asteroid hitting Earth out of the cosmic shooting gallery at about 1 in 10,000 per century, or 1 in 1,000,000 per year, 1 in 50,000,000 for the next week. So it's a wash -- about the same odds of you winning and the world getting creamed -- for the ticket you currently hold.

Q. Let's hear it for amniotic fluid! This little-appreciated intrauterine stuff the embryo floats in is a big part of the fetal bliss and relaxation so popularly envisioned. Detail its remarkable features.

A. Floating is the key, secret swimmer in a secret sea, the embryo is lightened by liquid buoyancy and would be able to do nothing if this were not true, for "no newborn, not even the future Arnold Schwartzeneggers of this world, is able to stand or even sit up at birth, let alone do the gymnastics that the mother can so easily feel it carrying out in the womb," says David Bodanis in "The Body Book."

No hot bath, beach or heated Jacuzzi can come close to the sense of gentle surround this fluid affords, for it is swallowed and "breathed" by the embryo, in a way that even scuba divers cannot breathe the water in which they float.

Frequent bladder-emptyings into the fluid pose no problem, as the urine is diluted to non-irritating levels and then carried away, ultimately via the umbilical cord and placenta back to Mom's own blood, kidneys and bladder.

Finally, amniotic fluid is a shock-absorber nonpareil -- with experimental mouse fetuses able to withstand up to 3,000 G's -- so countless abdomen bangings from falls, carpet slips or car accidents are far more likely to injure Mom than the embryo, "who sits them out, floating peacefully away from the shocks, safe and weightless in its warm womb."

Q. Wealthy eccentric scientist shows up at one of your parties and offers you $1,000 for every magnet you can locate in the house. You know there's an old horseshoe magnet in the basement, plus the refrigerator door fastener. But can you get rich?

A. Got a hack saw on hand? Then saw your basement magnet in half to have two full-fledged north-and-south poled magnets, says Paul Hewitt in "Conceptual Physics." Then saw these halves in half to have four magnets, then eight magnets, 16, 32, 64... how long can you keep going?

(In theory, you could continue down to single atoms, which are themselves magnets.)

Next go to work on the fastener and -- oh yeah -- don't forget the magnets in your phone, TV, microwave... $$$$$$

Q. Heard the latest on vampires? Seems they really existed -- sort of. So where does that put Count Dracula?

A. He and the others just may have gone the way of rabies, a disease largely banished by modern medicine, says Dr. Juan Gomez-Alonso in the journal "Neurology." Vampire stories may go back many centuries, but their modern form arose after a major rabies outbreak in central Europe in the early 18th century.

Check out this intriguing circumstantial evidence:

• Vampires bite people; so do 25 percent of men with rabies.

• Vampires seduce women; rabies patients are often hypersexual, in some cases having sex 30 times a day.

• Dracula appeared on moonlit balconies; rabies patients often have disturbed sleep cycles, and insomnia.

• Vampires shun mirrors and garlic; rabies patients are hypersensitive to strong stimuli, such as lights, mirrors, garlicky odors. The mirror connection is so strong, says Gomez-Alonso, that in the past, a man was not considered rabid if he could stand to see his reflection.

• Where there are vampires, there are often wolves and bats -- two animals that can contract rabies and pass it on through bloody bites.

Q. Know the old "fractions" scam for cleaning up at a racetrack? Surely you're too ethical to try this!

A. You get a good breakfast, go early and -- assuming 8 horses in each feature race -- buttonhole 128 bettors before the first gun. To the first 16, you offer a "hot tip" that horse A will win; to the next 16, horse B; and so on.

In this way, you'll soon cover all the bases.

When the first race is over, revisit the 16 bettors whose horse just won, following up with another hot tip: horse A to the first 2, horse B to the next 2, etc.

Once this second race is run, you'll have forecast two winners in a row to a select pair of the original 128 bettors. And, if you can't figure how to parlay this situation into a nice reward for the best tip of the day, then truly you wasted a good breakfast.

Q. Would a baseball tossed off the top of a tall building be going faster than a pitched fastball by the time it hit the ground? Could somebody catch it?

A. This stunt has been tried a couple of times. Terminal velocity of a falling baseball is probably around 95 mph, notes physicist Peter J. Brancazio. That's about what a good major league fastballer can muster.

But catching a horizonal, well-controlled pitch is one thing; fielding a ball plummeting unpredictably out of the sky is another. In 1938, a couple of pro catchers nabbed balls tossed from atop a 700-foot Cleveland skyscraper after watching the first few rebound 13 stories off the pavement.

The following year, playing top this, San Francisco Seal catcher Joe Sprinz stood with mitted hand beneath a blimp 800 feet up. One dropped ball smashed into bleachers; another pounded into the turf.

Then Sprinz got under one and wished he hadn't: the downplunging orb slammed into his glove and shoved it back into his face, breaking five teeth and fracturing his jaw.

And the ball got away.

Previous columns:

• Strange But True!, 09-29-2000