Why do Clocks run clockwise? (11 page)

a commander and chief intelligence officer in the U.S. Navy, the earliest English regulation, formulated in 1688, prescribed that the birthdays and coronations of royalty should be solemnized “by the Fleet, Squadrons, and every single ship of war, by the discharge of such number of their great guns,” but allowed that the number of guns used should be decided upon by the chief officer. By 1730, the British Naval Regulations were amended so that the number of guns discharged was still at the discretion of the chief officer, but was not to exceed twenty-one for each ship.

The notion of twenty-one as the highest gun salute undoubtedly stems from this royal origin. Salutes were always in odd numbers in the British military, with lower-ranking officers receiving, say, a five-gun salute and each increasing rank offered two more guns. The 1730 regulation was probably a response to rampant inflation in gun salutes; the Navy wanted to assure that no one received more guns than the royalty. In 1808, twenty-one guns was mandated as the
only
proper salute for royalty.

Although the United States, in its infancy, adopted gun salutes, there were no specific regulations governing the practice. Until 1841, the U.S. Navy fired one gun for each state in the Union. As our nation grew, and what with the price of ammunition, we prudently decided to limit our salutes to twenty-one guns. This change was codified in 1865 and has remained the practice ever since. The establishment of a maximum standard was not arbitrary or capricious.

Gun salutes were a form of international diplomacy, and any devi-ation from the norm had possible ramifications. Commander Davis stressed the importance of conforming to international practice:

“According to the present regulations and long established custom, a vessel of war, on her arrival in a foreign port, salutes the flag of the nation to which that port belongs, after having ascertained that the salute will be returned, with 21 guns. The salute is immediately returned gun for gun. This rule is universal and invariable in all countries in the world.”

Davis believed that if the United States had continued its WHY DO CLOCKS RUN CLOCKWISE? / 69

practice of discharging one gun for each state, it could have had serious consequences. He feared that other countries would assume that by exceeding twenty-one guns, we were trumpeting our own power and superiority.

A last objection to the one gun/one state idea was that gun salutes have always involved an odd number. Even numbers have traditionally been fired in mourning and at funerals. While modern communications equipment has largely obviated the need to use gun salutes as a symbol of peace and goodwill, the twenty-one-gun salute is alive and well as a ritual to express celebration and honor. Although we can’t pinpoint exactly why the British first arrived at twenty-one (some speculate that the combination of three multiplied by seven might have been adopted for mystical or religious reasons), we clearly owe our custom to the British military’s desire to salute royalty with the utmost hoopla.

Submitted by Debra Kalkwarf, of Columbus, Indiana. Thanks also
to: Douglas Watkins, Jr., of Hayward, California
.

Why Do Women Tend to Have Higher Voices Than
Men? Why Do Short People Tend to Have Higher
Voices Than Tall People?

Daniel Boone, a University of Arizona professor and expert on vocal mechanisms, provides the answer: “Fundamental frequency or voice pitch level is directly related to the length and thickness of the individual’s vocal folds [or vocal cords].” The average man’s vocal-fold length is approximately eighteen millimeters; the average woman’s is ten millimeters.

The tall person of either gender is likely to have longer vocal cords than a shorter person of the same sex.

70 / DAVID FELDMAN

Washington, D.C. Streets Are Named

Alphabetically. Why Is There No “J” Street?

We posed this Imponderable to Nelson Rimensnyder, historian of the House of Representatives Committee on the District of Columbia.

Although Rimensnyder stated that there was no definitive answer, he did offer two main theories:

1.
J
, as written during the eighteenth century, was often confused with other letters of the alphabet, particularly
I
.

2. Pierre L’Enfant and other founders of Washington, D.C., were political, professional, and personal enemies of John Jay and therefore snubbed him when naming the streets in 1791.

Rimensnyder adds that there
is
a two-mile-long “Jay” Street in the Deanwood section of northeast Washington. Although this street presumably honors our first Supreme Court Chief Justice, its naming didn’t upset Pierre L’Enfant in the slightest: “Jay” Street wasn’t adopted until after 1900.

Submitted by M. Babe Penalver, of Bronx, New York
.

WHY DO CLOCKS RUN CLOCKWISE? / 71

What Happens to the Tread That Wears Off Tires?

The tread wears gradually off our tires. After a few years of heavy mileage, it eventually becomes bare. But we don’t see bits of tread on the road (except from premature blowouts, of course). Highways are not discolored with blackened tread bits. Does tire tread disappear along with our socks?

The automobile industry, the tire industry, and some independent pollution experts have long been concerned about what may seem to be a trivial problem. Two specialists in the chemistry department of the Ford Motor Company have estimated that 600,000 metric tons of tire tread are worn off American vehicles every year. The possibility was more than remote that all of this material might remain in the air, in suspendable particles, which could be dangerous to humans. So they sought a way to measure what happens to the disappearing tread.

72 / DAVID FELDMAN

Tests to determine the presence of tire tread were held in three different sites, all of which presented some problems. First, indoor tests were designed to simulate driving wear on a tire. Unfortunately, without ambient weather conditions, worn rubber simply tended to stick to the simulated road surface. Scientists knew this wasn’t what happened under real conditions, for the second type of tests, on real highways, indicated that virtually no rubber stayed on the road, due to wind, rain, and movement of surrounding traffic. Additionally, surface areas around highways were sometimes cleaned by maintenance crews, hindering efforts to measure long-term accumulation of tire tread. The third type of test, in tunnels, might be thought to show the maximum possible buildup of tire tread, except that road surfaces in tunnels tend to wear tires less than surface streets, and the lack of natural wind and rain in the tunnel made any extrapola-tion difficult.

Still, the combined results of these experiments did provide quite a lot of information about exactly what happens to tire tread.

Whereas the most common substance in exhaust fumes is dangerous lead, the most plentiful tire debris is in the form of styrene-butadiene rubber (SBR), the most common rubber hydrocarbon in treads. Most of the tread debris is not in the form of gas, but rather in microscopic particles that are heavy enough to fall to the ground.

All road and tunnel tests seem to confirm that particle debris found along roadsides accounted for at least 50 percent of the total missing tire tread, and possibly much more. One study indicated that 2

percent of all roadside dustfall consisted of worn tread material.

Another study, in Detroit, found that of the total particulate loading in the air, only 1 percent was tread dust. Even in tunnel tests, tire tread comprised only 1 to 4 percent of the total airborne particulate matter generated—a percentage far less than that of the exhaust emissions of gasoline-and diesel-powered vehicles.

All the tests concur, then, that the vast majority of worn tread in particle form falls on the ground instead of staying in the air.

WHY DO CLOCKS RUN CLOCKWISE? / 73

What happens to the rest of the worn tread? Much of it is dissolved through oxidation and devulcanization (a chemical reaction that reverses the process used to harden rubber). One estimate speculated that devulcanization accounted for 30 percent of the disappearing SBR. Wind, water runoff, oxygen, and microbial attack all act to help degrade tread particulates, which degenerate faster than the tread rubber on tires in any case.

In fact, nobody could get very excited about the possible environmental dangers of worn tire tread. If the tread particulate were light enough to remain airborne, it could cause some harm, but the 95

percent plus that settles into the ground near the roadway poses no health hazard. K. L. Campbell, of Firestone Tire & Rubber Company, points out that “Tire tread rubber is essentially an inert material so it doesn’t contribute to acid rain or soil pollution.” And because worn tire-tread particles on the ground are in too small a form even to see with the naked eye, we aren’t even aware that they are there.

Which proves again that what you can’t see can’t hurt you.

Submitted by Larry Orbin, of Florissant, Missouri. Thanks also
to: Brad Miles, of Victoria, British Columbia; G. William Foster,
Jr., of Tulsa, Oklahoma; and Art Lombard, of Oakland, California
.

Why Do Whips Make a Cracking Sound When
Snapped?

Whips can attain a speed of more than seven hundred miles per hour when snapped, breaking the sound barrier. What you are hearing is a mini sonic boom.

74 / DAVID FELDMAN

How Did Xmas Come to Stand for Christmas?

The use of the colloquial “Xmas” has often been singled out as an example of how the holiday has been commercialized and robbed of its religious content. The
X
in Xmas is actually the descendant of the Greek equivalent of
Ch
, as in “Christos,” which means “Christ.”

The letter
X
has stood for Christ (look up
X
in any dictionary) since at least A.D. 1100, and the term “Xmas” was first cited in 1551.

Word expert Eric Partridge points out that the scholarly abbreviation for “Christianity” is “Xianity.”

So many people dislike “Xmas” for its supposed crassness that its use is now virtually confined to commercial literature and banners.

The
New York Times Manual of Style and Usage
, for example, offers this simple recommendation for when “Xmas” is acceptable: “Never use.”

Submitted by Bobby Dalton, of Maryland Heights, Missouri.

Thanks also to: Andrew Neiman, of Dallas, Texas
.

WHY DO CLOCKS RUN CLOCKWISE? / 75

Do Batteries Wear Out Faster If You Turn Up the
Volume of a Radio?

Absolutely.

The battery applications manager of Eveready Battery Company, Inc., B.G. Merritt, told us about some research that proved the point conclusively:

We recently tested a major manufacturer dual cassette “boom box” powered by 6 “D” size cells. From lowest setting to highest setting on the volume control, the power necessary to drive the

“box” increased three times. This power increase directly translates into one third battery life at full volume when compared with zero volume. This power increase is necessary to drive the speakers.

By comparison, a personal stereo (portable type) cassette player current increased only 30% when adjusted from zero volume to full volume. Battery life would be decreased only 30%

for this device.

76 / DAVID FELDMAN

Don French, a battery expert at Radio Shack, confirmed Eveready’s findings. He estimated that a shirt-pocket portable radio would use at least 200 percent more battery charge at the loudest volume setting than at the softest. French pointed out that even tiny radios have audio amplifiers that must be powered. A home stereo might require fifty watts and a shirt-pocket radio two hundred milliwatts, but the principle is the same—the more power required, the more juice required.

Submitted by Allen Kahn, of New York, New York
.

Why Do Some Ranchers Hang Old Boots on
Fenceposts?

It all started with an innocent call from a listener to Tannah Hirsch’s
KMBZ
talk show in Kansas City. The listener asked the Imponderable above, and we admitted that we didn’t have the slightest idea why some ranchers hang old boots on fenceposts. In fact, being urban folks, we had never seen this phenomenon at all. But it was an intriguing question, and we decided to investigate. The results will show you some of the trials and tribulations of tracking down answers to Imponderables.