Category: other

What was the profession of A. B. Strowger, the inventor of the Step by Step Switching System? — GC, Pleasanton, CA

Mr. Strowger was apparently a Kansas undertaker when he developed his automatic telephone switching system.

How can one measure the vapor pressure of mercury? If it is amalgamated, what is the relationship of vapor pressure with respect to temperature, material content in the amalgam, and free mercury? — BS, Erwin, TN

The vapor pressure of mercury is quite low at room temperature so you’d need a very sensitive pressure gauge and a vacuum system in order to measure it. You’d have to evacuate all of the air from the gauge and expose the empty gauge to a saturated vapor of mercury (mercury vapor that’s in contact with liquid mercury) alone. While the pressure will only be a few thousandths of a millimeter of mercury, there are a number of pressure gauges that are capable of measuring pressures in this range.

Once the mercury is amalgamated with other metals, its vapor pressure drops substantially. The mercury atoms bind so strongly into the amalgam that they can remain in it for years, centuries, or even millennia. Mercury’s vapor pressure in this bound form is exceedingly low. To measure it, you’d need a mass spectrometer that’s capable of counting the atoms in the vapor above the amalgam.

What would happen if the two magnetic poles of the earth were to be reversed? Would it affect climate and weather? Has this ever happened before? — HP, Birmingham, AL

The earth’s magnetic poles have reversed before, many times. A record of the earth’s magnetic field is made whenever a magnetic mineral is cooled through a magnetic transition temperature called the Curie point (named after Pierre Curie, the husband of Marie Curie, who first identified it). Volcanic lava often includes such magnetic minerals and as the lava cools, it records a snapshot of the earth’s current magnetization. By examine ancient lava flows, scientists have pieced together a detailed record of the earth’s magnetization and have found that the earth’s magnetic poles have drifted about and reversed many times, typically every few hundred thousand years or so.

I can’t think of any mechanism whereby these reversals would seriously affect climate or weather. However, these reversals would affect some migratory animals that use the earth’s magnetic field to navigate. In principle, these animals might migrate the wrong direction and die out. However, there are always a few of each species that are born with their magnetic compasses reversed. While these backward animals might not survive during normal times, they would prosper during a reversal and would help to perpetuate their species. Moreover, experiments have shown that individual animals can adapt to the magnetic reversals as well.

Where is all the matter “sucked” into a black hole thought to go? — KH, St. Johns, Newfoundland

From our perspective outside a black hole, the matter never quite passes through the black hole’s event horizon—the surface from which not even light can escape. That’s because time slows down near the event horizon and it takes an infinite amount of our time for the matter to pass through the event horizon. But from the perspective of the matter falling through the event horizon, the passage is uneventful—the matter experiences no sudden changes as it passes through that surface of no return. Instead, the matter continues to accelerate toward the singularity at the center of the black hole—a point of infinite density and infinitely small size. Its approach to the singularity completely destroys the matter’s structure. The gravitational tidal forces caused by the differences in gravity at different locations in space tear the matter apart so that it contributes only mass, charge, momentum, and angular momentum to the singularity. The black hole is usual identified with the event horizon rather than the singularity contained inside it. Passage through that event horizon erases any memory of the structure of the matter, leaving only its mass, charge, momentum, and angular momentum observable in the properties of the black hole.

Does the pull of the moon have any effect on a person’s behavior? — PSC, Summerville, WV

No, but for an interesting reason. While the moon’s gravity acts on people, it also acts on everything around them and everything falls toward the moon at the same rate. Because of this uniform falling, we don’t feel the moon’s gravity at all. This effect is identical to the one that astronauts feel as they orbit the earth—the earth’s gravity pulls on them and on their spaceship, but they are falling freely under the influence of that gravity and they don’t feel it—they feel weightless. Since we are falling freely under the influence of the moon’s gravity, we don’t feel it either—we feel moon-weightless.

Since we are being pulled toward the moon by the moon’s gravity, you might wonder why we don’t crash into the moon. That’s because we’re traveling sideways so fast that we perpetually miss the moon and circle it once every 27.3 days. Similarly, the moon perpetually misses the earth and circles it, too.

The only significant effect of the moon’s gravity is to create the tide. The earth’s oceans are so large that they’re sensitive to variations in the moon’s gravity. The moon’s gravity decreases with distance from the moon, so that the oceans on the near side of the earth are pulled harder than the oceans on the far side of the earth. The result is two bulges in the oceans—one on the near side of the earth and one on the far side of the earth. These bulges create the familiar high and low tides that we observe at the seashore.

Hydrogen atoms can form a single bond to each other, oxygen atoms can form a double bond to each other, and nitrogen atoms can form a triple bond to each other. Is there any element that can form a quadruple bond? — KC, Mendenhall, MS

The bonds that you are referring to are call “covalent bonds,” in which two atoms share a pair of electrons in order to lower their total energy. When two electrons are shared in this manner, the electrons are able to spread out over two atoms rather than one. This broadening of their territories lowers their kinetic energies because of quantum mechanical effects. The electrons also spend large portions of their times between the atoms, where they lower the electrostatic potential energies of the two atoms. Lowering the total energy of the two atoms binds them together.

The number of covalent bonds that form between two atoms depends on the number of electrons in those atoms. Hydrogen atoms have only one electron each and can form only one covalent bond. Oxygen atoms have two electrons each that they can share and form two covalent bonds. Nitrogen atoms have three electrons to share and form three covalent bonds. And carbon atoms have four electrons to share, so you might expect them to form four covalent bonds. But there’s a hitch…

In the first covalent bond that forms between two atoms, the pair of electrons positions itself directly in between the atoms. This arrangement is most effective for lowering the energy of the system and binding the two atoms together. Chemists call this arrangement a “sigma bond.” In the second covalent bond, the two electrons position themselves on both sides of the sigma bond. If you picture the atoms as two people facing one another and holding hands, the electrons are located along the arms of the two people. This arrangement is reasonably effective for lowering the energy of the system and is called a “pi bond.” The third covalent bond is also a pi bond, but it forms 90° from the first pi bond, as though the two people are now touching their heads and their feet together along with their hands. With a sigma bond and the two pi bonds between the atoms, there is no room for additional electrons. The fourth covalent bond that two carbon atoms would like to form with one another simply can’t form. While two carbon atoms will bind together with a triple bond, each atom will have one remaining electron that is still seeking a partner. The carbon dimer molecule is a highly reactive double radical that will bind to just about anything it encounters.

Is the fact that the small magnetic fields generated by appliances change due to the alternating electric current the reason that EMFs may cause health problems? — MC, Independence, KS

I believe that the alternating nature of the electromagnetic fields around appliances is at least part of the reason they’re suspected of causing health problems. Since these fields are created by an electric current that alternates in direction, they alternate in direction, too. However, I have not seen any credible evidence for there being a relationship between these appliance-related fields and health problems, nor have I heard any sensible physical theory for such a possibility. On the contrary, I have read a number of compelling arguments for why the tiny electromagnetic fields around appliances should have no biological effects at all. I think that the worries about EMFs are unfounded.

Is magic a real possibility? — LM, Dartmouth, Nova Scotia

I would define magic as any phenomenon that can’t be explained by the normal laws of nature. In that case, I’m afraid that it isn’t a possibility. Like most physicists, I’m convinced that the laws of physics can ultimately explain everything that we observe. Violations in those laws would have such terrible complications that even a single “magic” event just can’t occur. No doubt, there are people who believe in magic and that view physicists as just another group with a different and incorrect opinion about the world. That’s just wishful thinking. Physics has been extraordinarily successful at explaining how the world works. Unlike magic, physics has an internal consistency that is astonishing and it has the ability to predict behavior with enormous accuracy.

How do motion detectors work? — MK, Port St. Joe, FL

According to Gabriel Lombardi of Torrance, CA, most home motion detectors use infrared light to sense motion. Moving objects change the amount of infrared light striking a detector at the focus of an array of fresnel lenses. He points out that you can see this array on the front of many motion sensors. Such devices are known as passive infrared or PIR detectors. The motion detectors used in automatic door openers, such as those at the supermarket, usually use radio frequency electromagnetic waves to detect motion.

How does a sewing machine work? — RD, APO

A sewing machine uses a spinning shaft to push a needle up and down through fabric. The rod that controls the needle’s height is attached to the spinning shaft away from the shaft’s axis of rotation so that as the shaft spins, the rod and needle move up and down. This motion resembles that of a child on a tricycle: as the front wheel turns, the child’s legs move up and down.

Thread from a spool held above the fabric passes through an eye in the needle’s tip, so that as the needle pierces the fabric, it carries the thread with it. A device beneath the fabric catches hold of this thread and pulls it rapidly around a smaller spool of thread (the bobbin). The thread from above the fabric thus fully encircles the thread from this bobbin and the two threads become permanently locked together. When the needle withdraws from the fabric, some of the thread that it carries remains behind, locked around the thread from the bobbin below. With each stroke of the needle, a new joint is created between the thread from above the fabric and the thread from below the fabric. If there are several pieces of fabric lying on top of one another, these pieces become locked together by the intertwined threads.