Month: March 2019

Time for a pie chart

Author Douglas Adams famously made fun of earthlings for being “so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.” Shortly before he died, Adams gave a talk at the University of California, Santa Barbara (not far from his home), at the end of which there was a brief question-and-answer session. A woman stood up and asked Adams the question that had been bothering her for decades: what did he have against digital watches? The crowd probably expected him to toss off a witty one-liner in response. Instead, he gave a very thoughtful answer that, in true Douglas Adams fashion, made ordinary human behavior seem self-evidently absurd.

After admitting that his comment had originally been written in the days when digital watches were themselves fairly primitive (and, ironically, required two hands to operate), Adams couched his complaint—appropriately—using an analogy. In the early days of personal computers, he said, people got very excited that their spreadsheet programs could finally create pie charts. This was considered a revolutionary advance, because as everyone knows, a pie chart visually represents a part-whole relationship in a way that is immediately obvious—a way that, to be more specific, mere columns of numbers did not. Well, the hands of an analog timepiece form wedges that look very much like a pie chart, and like a pie chart, they represent a sort of part-whole relationship in a way that requires a bare minimum of mental effort to comprehend. Not so digital timepieces, which for all their precision say nothing about the relationship of one time of day to another.

Ticked Off

Although digital watches have their place and are in no danger of becoming extinct, analog models (and, more recently, analog faces on smartwatches) have enjoyed a surge in popularity in recent years, and I think that’s just marvelous. Now, I’ve always liked digital watches, for both aesthetic and practical reasons. But when I stopped to think about it, I realized that it is far less useful to know that it’s 10:13 than that it’s quarter past ten, and that when I read the time in a digital format, I nearly always have to perform an additional mental calculation to figure out what time it “really” is—that is, what that string of numbers actually means in terms of how much of the day has gone by or how much longer I can sleep before getting up to go to work.

Studies have shown alarmingly that many children today—and even a fair number of adults—cannot tell time using an analog clock or watch because they have only ever been exposed to digital timepieces. Presumably, someone whose only experience of timekeeping has been digital would not expend any extra mental effort figuring out how much of an hour had elapsed at 7:52—but then, such a person may have to think harder on other occasions, being unable to visually judge the “distance” between two times. Be that as it may, one clearly must be able at least to identify numbers and count in order to tell time with a digital watch, whereas even without knowing any numbers, someone can tell roughly what time of day it is using an analog watch.

Second Opinion

Analog watch or clock faces—even the ones whose hands decisively click into well-defined positions rather than moving smoothly in a circle—convey a fuzzy or approximate sense of time at a casual glance. This is a good thing, not only for the sake of children’s education but because time itself is continuous, not an infinite series of discrete steps (unless you believe in quantized time, but even if you do, you must admit that human perception of time is continuous). Units like seconds, minutes, and hours are just a convenient, arbitrary fiction, after all—they don’t represent anything objectively real in the world. As linguist George Lakoff pointed out in his book Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things, we like to talk about time as though it were money—a thing that can be spent, saved, earned, or wasted—but this is all merely a conceit of language. Thus, to the extent that analog timepieces distance us less from reality than digital ones do, I’ve got to believe they help to keep us ever-so-slightly more human.

Some people have argued that analog watches, for all their merits, are still too complicated because they artificially divide the day into two arbitrary cycles; there are, unsurprisingly, 24-hour clocks and watches of various designs intended to address this limitation. When an hour hand goes around a dial just once per day, it’s easier to picture what it’s an analog of: namely, the rotation of the Earth (more or less). A sundial, needless to say, gives a representation of time that’s even closer cognitively to its source, but much less accurate (and inconveniently nonfunctional at night).

Nowadays, it’s possible to make analog timepieces every bit as accurate as digital models, and for those who dislike a ticking sound or prefer the no-moving-parts aesthetic, the aforementioned “analog” smartwatch faces (and similar designs on larger timepieces) should do the trick. In short, the analog clock is having its revenge by providing all the benefits of digital timepieces in a human-brain-friendly package. None of this is news; I could have written essentially the same thing decaedes ago. But it is exciting that we earthlings are somehow able to come to our senses and overcome these collective blips of faulty judgment. Let’s all keep up the good work.

Note: This is an updated version of an article that originally appeared on Interesting Thing of the Day on September 4, 2004.

Image credit: Pixabay

I know people have very strong opinions on the question of pancakes vs. waffles. My opinion is that they are both delicious, and while waffles have a superior texture, pancakes are less fussy to make (and to butter), so I eat pancakes far more frequently. However, today I believe I’ll drag out the ol’ waffle iron and waffle up some batter for the family, because it’s the right thing to do today.

Image credit: Pplc [CC BY-SA 4.0], via Wikimedia Commons

New Wales in Patagonia

Argentina has no shortage of bookstores. In some of the busier shopping districts of Buenos Aires, it’s not unusual to see half a dozen of them in a single block—all apparently doing brisk business. We visited many of these when we traveled there, and showed uncharacteristic restraint, leaving with just a few books altogether. Of course, the selection of English-language books was typically limited, though you could find Spanish translations of nearly any major English book you could name. For example, I picked up a Spanish copy of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. On the copyright page, it said that this book was also available in Latin and Welsh translations. The Latin bit surprised me: I can’t think of anywhere other than Vatican City where Latin is still used conversationally, and I don’t expect many folks there are keen on reading stories about wizards and witches. Welsh, on the other hand—that can certainly constitute a reasonable market, especially in Patagonia.

Looking for New Wales

In the mid-1800s, many residents of Wales felt their territory, culture, and language were being overrun by the English. Realizing they were hopelessly outnumbered, a group of them decided to look for a place far away where they could transplant a piece of Wales and control their own destiny. Patagonia offered a familiar climate and an appropriately remote location, far from English influence. So in 1865, 159 settlers, led by Rev. Michael D. Jones, sailed aboard a ship called Mimosa and landed in a sheltered bay on the coast of Argentina known as Golfo Nuevo. They initially set up residence in a port town that came to be called Puerto Madryn, but soon thereafter most of the colonists moved about 100km (60 miles) to the south, building several small towns along the Rio Chubut—one of the few fertile regions in this part of Patagonia. Among these towns are Rawson, the provincial capital near the coast; Trelew, a hub of commerce and transportation about 20km (12 miles) to the west; and a further 16km (10 miles) inland along the river, Gaiman.

Although Gaiman was originally founded by a Pennsylvanian named David Roberts, it eventually achieved notoriety as the largest Welsh settlement outside Wales. Today, the town’s population numbers less than 5,000, but a large percentage of these people are direct descendants of the original colonists. Public signs are in Spanish and Welsh, and the Welsh language is still taught in the public schools. Here in the heart of Argentina, it’s not at all unusual to encounter people with names like Williams, Davies, or Jones—perhaps even with red hair—who speak Spanish with a Welsh accent and not a bit of English. Locals still proudly recall a visit by Diana, princess of Wales, in 1995.

Tea, Anyone?

Gaiman’s biggest tourist attraction, by far, is its tea houses. Here you can have a traditional afternoon tea with a large selection of pastries. An English couple in our group couldn’t wait to tell their families about the experience, as it was something they’d never actually do at home. Other major attractions in the town include the Primera Casa, a stone house built by Roberts in 1874 (still intact but with a new, corrugated metal roof), and a brick chapel built in 1880. The town also hosts an annual festival of choral music and poetry called Eisteddfod, where you can hear both Welsh and Argentinean folk music.

Of the roughly 500,000 people in the world who speak Welsh, roughly 1%, or 5,000, live in Patagonia. Of these, the vast majority are bilingual, and in fact few speak Welsh as a first language. But today, as in the earliest days of the Welsh settlements in Patagonia, a group of dedicated citizens is working hard to maintain and revitalize the Welsh language and culture in this remote area. And if that requires help from a couple of Harry Potter novels, well, it’s all in the service of a good cause.

Note: This is an updated version of an article that originally appeared on Interesting Thing of the Day on January 27, 2005.

We have covered numerous national whatever days here where the whatever was a specific type of cocktail, such as a martini or a margarita. Today, it’s bartender’s choice. Mix potable liquids in whatever manner strikes your fancy, optionally garnish with a complementary fruit or vegetable, and consume in moderation. Me, I’m sort of feeling like a gin & tonic, although I definitely do not look like a gin & tonic. Perhaps if I stuck a wedge of lime behind my ear…

Image credit: Pixabay

Legend, science, and common sense

Chemistry was one of my favorite classes in high school. I remember on one occasion, our teacher gave us all a very strange and difficult assignment. It was a list of “real-world” questions to which chemistry could presumably provide the answers, and we were given several days to figure them out, with complete freedom to consult libraries or any other available sources to get the information. One of these questions had to do with the freezing point of water. I no longer remember the exact wording, but the gist of it was that if you had two wooden buckets of a given size, one containing hot water and the other containing cold water (with precise temperatures specified in each case), and if you exposed said buckets to an air temperature of such-and-such, which one would freeze first? The obvious answer, of course, would have been the one with colder water, which led us to believe that this must be the wrong answer. However, it was not sufficient to provide the correct response; we had to justify the answer based on our knowledge of chemistry. Well, despite a great deal of research—and bear in mind, this was back when research meant looking at books rather than searching the web—I came up empty-handed. I left that one blank, and to make matters worse, I happened to miss class on the day the assignment was discussed, so I never found out the solution to this mystery.

Years later, I was to discover that there are a number of urban myths about the boiling point and freezing point of water, with “hot water freezes faster” being just one of them. I scoured a bunch of websites, and came up with contradictory information. But this is not, after all, rocket science—there’s no reason I should have to live with uncertainty about something so easily demonstrated. So I decided to conduct my own experiments and find out for myself. Although I didn’t have a wooden bucket handy, I did have a freezer, a stove, some water, and a digital thermometer. I’ll tell you the results of my experiments in just a moment. But first, here are some of the interesting claims about water I found.

• “Hot water freezes faster than cold water.” Most experts say that, all things being equal, cold water freezes faster. However, things are not always equal. A curious phenomenon known as the Mpemba effect can, under some very specific (and poorly understood) circumstances, result in hotter water freezing faster than colder water. One of the numerous possible explanations for this effect involves evaporation: if you start with extremely hot water, a good bit of it will evaporate, and a smaller quantity of water will freeze faster than a larger quantity. (Evaporation is also endothermic, reducing the water’s temperature further and faster.) And so, according to chemists, this one is not a myth, but it works only if you get the initial conditions exactly correct. This is presumably what my high school chemistry assignment was getting at.
• “Previously boiled water freezes faster than regular water.” Notwithstanding the previous explanation, water at room temperature that was once boiled, according to some experts, should freeze faster because the dissolved oxygen has been removed.
• “Previously boiled water boils faster than regular water.” Likewise, previously boiled water at room temperature should boil faster than water that has never been boiled, for the same reason it freezes faster (less dissolved oxygen).
• “Cold water boils faster than hot water.” If hot water freezes faster, maybe cold water boils faster! Again, this defies common sense—and again, say scientists, it’s simply wrong. Hot water from the tap should in fact boil much faster than cold water. However, using hot water for boiling does not actually save any energy. You may use less gas (or electricity) on the stovetop, but your water heater will have used the same amount of energy to heat the water in the first place. (If you use solar energy to heat your water, of course, that’s a different story.) Some water heaters may introduce additional sediment into the water, giving you another reason to consider starting with cold—at least, if time is not of the essence.
• “Adding salt to water raises its boiling point.” Chemically speaking, this is a verifiable fact. Salt does raise water’s boiling point (and lower its freezing point—which is why home ice cream makers use rock salt). But the real question is whether this makes it take longer to get to the boiling point (and, for that matter, how far above 212°F/100°C it will get). Despite what you read in cookbooks, scientists claim that the amount of salt you’d typically add to a pot of boiling water is too small to make any meaningful difference in the boiling time or boiling point.

So, given what I knew should happen, here’s what actually occurred in my experiments.

Freezing Water: I started with three identical glass containers, each holding 100ml (about 3.5 fl. oz.) of filtered water: one at room temperature (72°F/22°C), one at the same temperature as my hot water tap (115°F/46°C), and one boiling (212°F/100°C). I put all these into my freezer, which had an air temperature of 0°F (–18°C). I knew that the water would not turn from liquid to ice all at once, and I puzzled over when to consider the water “frozen”—when the first ice crystals appeared, when the water was completely solid, or what? I eventually decided on an arbitrary standard for frozenness: the time at which a wooden chopstick dropped into the center of the container would no longer touch the bottom, meaning the water was mostly but not entirely frozen. I checked each of the containers every five minutes. The results? The room-temperature water froze in 50 minutes. The hot water froze in 80 minutes. And the boiling water froze in 95 minutes. My verdict: no contest—not even remotely close. Given the conditions in my freezer and the water I used, I was unable to reproduce the Mpemba effect.

I also tried a container of previously boiled water, now at room temperature. It froze in 60 minutes—more time (not less) than the unboiled water had taken, but not by much.

Boiling Water (Hot vs. Cold): I put a liter (about 34 fl. oz.) of water at room temperature in a pan at room temperature and set it on a high flame. It boiled in 6 minutes. I then cooled the pan back to room temperature and put in a liter of hot (115°F/46°C) tap water. With the flame unchanged, the hot water boiled in 4 minutes, 30 seconds. My verdict: hot water does boil significantly faster, just as you’d expect.

Boiling Previously Boiled Water: I put a liter of water that had previously been boiled, now cooled to room temperature, into a pan at room temperature. With the flame unchanged from the last experiment, this water boiled in 6 minutes, 11 seconds. My verdict: essentially the same as water that hadn’t been boiled.

Boiling Water (with salt): I added a generous 2 tablespoons of table salt—much more than most people would ever use for boiling pasta or vegetables—to a mere 1 liter of water. It boiled in 6 minutes, 33 seconds (versus 6 minutes for unsalted, room-temperature water) and reached a temperature, according to my thermometer, of 216°F (102°C). So clearly the salt had an effect, but not much of one—and this was with an uncommonly high concentration. My verdict: Add salt to water if you want to season it, but don’t expect it to make any significant change in the water’s boiling time or temperature.

Now, I freely admit that my kitchen is no laboratory, and that any number of variables could have influenced the outcome. My measurements may have been imprecise. My freezer may have had uneven zones of warmer or colder air. My glassware may have been contaminated. And so on. But whatever may occur under ideal conditions in a laboratory, when it comes to freezing or boiling water in an ordinary kitchen, common sense prevails.

Note: This is an updated version of an article that originally appeared on Interesting Thing of the Day on April 16, 2005.

Image credit: Scott Akerman [CC BY 2.0], via Flickr

I’ve always been a huge fan of the word OK, and I was fascinated to read its history in Allan Metcalf’s book OK: The Improbable Story Of America’s Greatest Word. It first appeared in print on this date in 1839 (with the spelling “o.k.” and an explanatory note indicating that it was short for “all correct,” which is to say the slang spelling “oll korrect”), so OK is 180 years old today!

Yes, a lot of people have taken to spelling it “okay,” which is a pity because it breaks the word’s etymology, apart from being a waste of two letters that could undoubtedly be put to good use somewhere else. Today, in honor of this noble word’s heritage, just cut it out…OK?

Image credit: Pixabay