C. Claiborne Ray - The New York Times Book of Science Questions & Answers: 200 of the best, most intriguing and just plain bizarre inquiries into everyday scientific mysteries

Copyright 1997 by The New York Times
Illustrations copyright 1997 by Victoria Roberts

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.
Published in the United States by Anchor Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

A NCHOR B OOKS and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Ray, C. Claiborne.
The New York Times book of science questions and answers : answers by leading scientists to the most commonly asked science questions / by C. Claiborne Ray ; Drawings by Victoria Roberts.

p. cm.
1. ScienceMiscellanea. I. Title.
Q173.R39 1997
500dc21 96-36828

eISBN: 978-0-307-81352-7

www.anchorbooks.com

v3.1

Contents

BOOK OF
Science
Questions &
Answers

Introduction

For every thousand people who have wondered why ice floats and why glass is clear, whether your hair can turn gray overnight and why your nose runs, or why dogs bark and why cats purr, at least one seems to have taken pen or keyboard in hand to write to the science Q&A column of The New York Times. That means a huge backlog of unanswered mail, spilling out of boxes in a surprisingly small and cluttered office that houses Science Times, the weekly section that first appeared in 1978. Since 1988, those boxes have been on, under and around my desk.

Many of these inquirers are asking questions that have already been answered in the column; some are asking questions that may never have been asked of anyone or that would require a lifetime of research to answer. To these wonderful and persistent people, this book is dedicated, and also to every school class practicing the business letter by writing to The Times, and to every parent who has helped a five-year-old scrawl a question in crayon. The unquenchable human curiosity about why things are as they are is, after all, the driving force behind all science.

The Times has one great advantage over most of the curious: the experts, both those who know a lot about a little and those who seem to know a lot about almost everything, will actually answer phone calls from Times reporters and columnists. (My late father always said a journalist doesnt have to know anything, he, or in this case she, just has to know whom to ask.) My thanks for the generosity of all those experts who have taken the time to respond with fascinating explanations of why and how and whether, and sometimes with equally fascinating explanations of why nobody knows.

The search for definitive answers to all questions will continue to elude both the general public and its most specialized scientists. For example, The Times has printed at least three different answers to the question why spiders dont stick to their webs, and the answer is still uncertain, at last attempt.

But here is a compendium of some of the latest best guesses by some of Americas true experts, interspersed with the graceful and witty illustrations of Victoria Roberts, which have added so much to the popularity of the Q & A column over the past few years. The experts are identified at the back of the book, most of them with their title and affiliation at the time the question arose.

What do people want to know about? Though they come from many places, many of these questions reflect a sidewalk-bound New Yorkers suspicion of the natural world, perhaps masking an ignorance and awe that come from seeing it mainly in Central Park and on the Discovery Channel.

One subject of universal interest is animals, of all sorts, which are discussed in chapters called A Modern Bestiary, Domestic Animals, Petsand Cats and Insects, Bugs and Creepy-Crawlies. Bird queries are voluminous. A readers complaint that the column too often discussed birds was met with a reasonable response from the then Science and Health editor, Nicholas Wade: Maybe it is just that birds are the only wild animals many urban dwellers encounter.

After animals, there must follow vegetables: vegetation both edible and inedible. The comedian Dick Gregorys abstemious philosophy to the contrary, eating is not just a bad habit for most people, it is a continuing fascination, even obsession. Questions about the foods and nutrients and potential poisons one might ingest, and especially those ones children might eat, are ubiquitous. People are afraid of not getting enough, of getting too much, even of being poisoned (sometimes with some justification) by the foods and vitamins they consume. And where did these allegedly edible things come from in the first place? Some answers are in the chapter Watch What You Put in Your Mouth.

Urbanites do still see a few growing things outside supermarkets, thanks to the street trees that grow in Brooklyn and our generous botanical gardens in Brooklyn and the Bronx. And there is a remarkable stand of hot-pink potted oleanders outside a long-established eating place in Manhattan; I have often wondered if the proprietors know how poisonous they are. Check out some other suspect greenery in Its a Jungle Out There: Plants.

After the animal and vegetable categories, we inevitably come to minerals, the material world: elements, chemicals, the very soil we walk on, in short, The Earth Below. Then, looking up from the mud to the sky, we must do something about The Sky Above: Weather Report, then regard Heavens! The View from Spaceship Earth, then consider our own tentative missions off that ship, in a chapter called Outward Bound: Space Travel for Beginners.

Then there are the Industrial Secrets that industry is surprisingly eager to share with the public: Du Ponts Better Things for Better Living Through Chemistry is just the tip of the iceberg. Speaking of icebergs, dont forget By the Sea.

But lets face it, what really holds peoples attention is their own earthbound bodies, in sickness and in health, from fingernails to hiccups. For details, see Sound Bodies and Unsound Bodies.

It was the ancient Greek philosopher Protagoras who first said that Man Is the Measure of All Things. The foot may no longer be Henry VIIIs shoe size, but humankind is still trying to lay a yardstick, or a meter bar, on everything from mountains to the ingredients in a recipe.

And finally, True Lies are things your grandmother told you, facts your neighbors know for certain, folk wisdom from the old country and brand-new urban legends. Believe it or not, some of them turn out to contain at least a grain of truth when held up to scientific scrutiny. Centuries of weather observations by outdoor people living in hunting and agricultural societies were bound to offer some empirical knowledge. On the other hand, your cactus from Ikea is probably not full of tarantulas, and your house plants will not completely suffocate you in the night.