Your Left Side Is Likely Your "Good Side"

Straight from September's issue of Reader's Digest:

Your "good" side is more science than pose. Scientists at Wake Forest University showed research subjects photographs of 20 male and female faces taken from opposite angles. The participants uniformly found the left side of the faces more appealing than the right. 

Since the brain's right hemisphere is better at signaling emotion than the left - and controls the left side of the face - facial expressions tend to be stronger on the left. 

Perhaps that's why iconic paintings like Vermeer's Girl With The Pearl Earring lead with the left side.

Which photo of Angelina do you think looks better? 

Science says the one on the right!

How Many Spaces To Use After A Sentence?

Apparently the answer is ONE. I can already feel myself wanting to use two spaces after each.  sentence.  I.  write!

According to an article on The Atlantic, the only reason that we ever used two spaces after the end of a sentence was because of a flaw in typewriters, and now every major style guide recommends just one space. Why did typewriters lead us to use two?

Well, with typewriters, all letters, numbers, and symbols all occupied the same amount of space (called "monospaced type"). So an "i" would take up the same amount of space on a line as a "W", thus leaving much more white space on the page. With more white space, it was harder to detect when a sentence ended, so the standard became to use two spaces.

Here's a great example from The Skilled Workman (which has a ton of typography tips for publishing):

Now, and since the 1970s, besides the little-used "courier" font, we use "proportional fonts" where the letters only take up the space they need. As a result, it's much easier to see where sentences end and begin. So the extra space has been dubbed "unnecessary".

To read the entire explanation from The Atlantic, click here. And for an interesting counter-argument, click here. :)

Typewriters didn't only affect our sentence-spacing, but the beginning (and arguably modern misuse) of the "Caps Lock" key. Check out a great article about that, too, on Slate.com: Click here!

Customer Service App

In the "Money Digest" section of February's issue of Reader's Digest, it suggests this app if you need to talk to a customer service representative and are fed up trying to get through the automated system:

FastCustomer is a free iPhone and Android app that calls customer service numbers, navigate those maddening phone trees, and notifies you when a service rep is on the line.

Almost makes me want to get an iphone!

Adele's "Someone Like You" = A Perfect Recipe For A Tear-Jerker

Michaeleen Doucleff, Scientific Editor at the Cell journal, claims that there is a scientific formula for writing songs that are "tear jerkers". A recent Wall Street Journal Article explains her take on why Adele's "Someone Like You" fills people with such deep emotion.

In the 1990s, a british psychologist John Sloboda did a study where he asked people to name parts of songs that affected them or drove them to goosebumps, tears, etc, and then analyzed the properties of that music. He found that 18 of 20 of the songs contained "appoggiatura", defined by the article as:

An appoggiatura is a type of ornamental note that clashes with the melody just enough to create a dissonant sound. "This generates tension in the listener," said Martin Guhn, a psychologist at the University of British Columbia who co-wrote a 2007 study on the subject. "When the notes return to the anticipated melody, the tension resolves, and it feels good."

Putting multiple appoggiaturas in a row creates and releases tension in the listener, and may eventually drive them to tears.

Adele's "Someone Like You" has small appoggiaturas throughout, but there is a point in the chorus where she modulates her pitch to create "mini-roller coasters of tension and resolution". Adele also has sincere lyrics and a soulful sound to help, too!

The article is fascinating and has examples of Adele's and other music that does this. To read it: Click here. Maybe you can write your own chart-busting emotional hit!

How A Candle Burns

People have been burning candles for thousands of years... and I know I, at least, have been taking the science for granted.  It wasn't until I listened to last week's "Science Friday" on NPR that I finally "got" why the candle works.

Host Ira Flatow and staffer Flora Lichtman talked about how Brigham Young engineers have been taking high-speed videos of flames in order to figure out how to reproduce one in digital 3-D. Lichtman spent some time with these engineers as they accomplished this task, and shared what she had learned with Flatow:

LICHTMAN: But - here's one that I thought was pretty amazing. A flame, a candle flame, for example, is just an envelope of fire around this sort of center area. So the wax, which is the fuel, goes up through the wick. It melts, goes up through the wick, and then evaporates into a gas. And that is - the part around the wick is actually not on fire. So the wick is actually not on fire. 

FLATOW: That's why it doesn't burn away, I guess. 

LICHTMAN: That's why. 

FLATOW: Yeah. Hey, you're right. You know, the wick is not on fire - so there's an envelope of gas around the wick, and it's the gas that's burning. 

LICHTMAN: And it's the gas that's burning, and it only burns when it hits oxygen. So the gas on the inside that doesn't have access to oxygen isn't burning, and it's actually cool inside the flame.

And then they posted the following video of the candle wick "sucking up" the wax (among with other interesting fire facts). It's very cool!



You can listen to the whole interview here. It's full of good stuff!

Walking On Hot Coals

How can people walk barefoot on hot coals without getting burned?  Is it some mind trick?

Actually it's just science... and you can do it, too!

Physicist David Willey from the University of Pittsburgh physics department and 20/20 anchor John Stossel show how it's done:

Willey laid out 165 feet of lumber and set it aflame. As [they] waited for the lumber to turn into hot coals, he said that anyone can "fire-walk" in their bare feet, provided they keep moving, because when you touch burning wood or charcoal, the heat doesn't go instantly to your feet. You'd be burned if you walk on hot metal, but wood and charcoal don't conduct heat very well.

Hot coals can (slowly) roast a marshmallow and burn at a temperature of approximately 1000 degrees F. But it's a poor thermal conductor, so it takes a while to "conduct" (move) the heat from itself to whatever it's touching.  If you keep walking at an even pace on the coals your feet won't keep in contact with any coal long enough to burn them!  Plus, and this is pure speculation, the fact that the skin on your feet is so thick probably delays the heat transfer as well.

You're not so scary anymore, are ya?

The Difference Between http:// And https://

This may seem obvious, but I was completely unaware of the subtle difference until recently!

If you go to a website, you'll notice the address usually contains a http:// at the beginning. It stands for "HyperText Transfer Protocol" and is the standard way of transferring text to the internet.

If there is an "s" at the end of the abbreviation - https:// - that means that the site is "secure". A site becomes "secure" when the information on it will get encrypted (changed so that only the person with a key or password can see it) so that third parties can't view that information.

If you are entering personal or account information onto a website, make sure that little "s" is in the address!

Is DDT Dangerous?

DDT, the chemical used as a bug and mosquito repellent in farming, has been pretty controversial since started being more widely used in the 1950s & 60s. People believe that it's been a cause of cancer and possibly worse.  Recently I read some research to the contrary:

Despite [DDT's] overuse, there was no surge in cancer or any other human injury. Scientists found no evidence that spraying DDT seriously hurt people. 

It did cause some harm: It threatened bird populations by thinning the shells of their eggs. 

In 1962, the book Silent Spring by Rachel Carson make the damage famous and helped instill our fear of chemicals. The book raised some serious questions about the use of DDT, but the legitimate nature of those questions was lost in the media feeding frenzy that followed. DDT was a "Killer Chemical!" and the press was off on another fear campaign. 

It turns out DDT itself wasn't the problem -- the problem was that much too much was sprayed... 

In the late 1950s we sprayed DDT indiscriminately, but it only takes a tiny amount to prevent the spread of malaria. If sprayed on the walls of an African hut, a small amount will keep mosquitoes at bay for a year. That makes it a wonderful malaria fighter. But today DDT is rarely used to fight malaria because environmentalists' demonization of it causes others to shun it.

It's interesting how media coverage of a chemical can influence people's views on it more than science can. If the above paragraphs are true, it's tragic, considering how many people die of malaria each year...

[source: Myths, Lies, and Downright Stupidity by John Stossel]

White Noise Ringtones Help You Hear Your Phone

Lifehacker Lessons, #5

Topic:

"Use a White Noise Ringtone to Find Your Lost Cellphone Faster"

(from 6/13/11)

Summary:

It's easier for our ears to find the location of the source of white noise over bells or limited-frequency tones. Having your ringtone be white noise can not only help you find your cellphone is lost, but can also help you identify its location quicker in your house or bag.

From Lifehacker:

After the author experienced a fire drill in England that used white noise generators over exit doors, he learned:

...it is easier to locate the fire door in a smoke filled room if this white noise generator is squawking at you rather than ringing a bell.

Okay, several days later and this information is still rolling around my head (there's not much to impede it) when my cellphone rang. I couldn't quite locate it—you know how that is sometimes, you put it down somewhere and then forget where, it sounds like it's everywhere. Guess what, I thought about that fire alarm back in England. So, I got one of the interns at work to make me a ring tone which was just pulses of white noise. We put it on my phone then got someone to hide it. We called the number and were able to pinpoint the phone's location exactly.

So, the tip is: make a white noise ring tone for calls you don't want to miss (boss, mom or dad). Something like this works pretty well. Not only is the phone more easily locatable but the sound carries farther and is instantly recognizable as your phone. It's a little antisocial I guess but so am I.

Other Lifehacker Tips for finding your phone:

- Google Voice

- PhoneMyPhone

- Google Maps Click-to-Call

How Did Marvel Comic's Spider-Man Make Webs?

Believe it or not, movies that are based on comic books are not always true to the original story!

Recently, one of my 10-grade students told me that despite what the 2002 Tobey Maguire film showed, comic-book Spider-Man did not receive the ability to shoot webs out of his wrists after he got bitten by the radioactive spider.

He actually used web-shooters which attached to cuffs on his wrists. Here's an explanation of them via Wikipedia:

Peter had reasoned that a spider (even a human one) needed a web. Since the radioactive spider-bite did not initially grant him the power to spin webs, he had instead found a way to produce them artificially. The wrist-mounted devices fire an adhesive "webbing" through a threaded adjustable nozzle...

Spider-Man must steadily replenish his webbing supply, reloading his web-shooters with small cartridges of web fluid... His web-shooters require constant maintenance and on more than one occasion suffer jams or malfunctions...

Occasionally, the web-shooters are modified to expel other liquids.

So, my first question upon hearing this was "What good did come from him being bitten by the spider then?" My student answered with pretty much the same answer as Wikipedia does:

Immediately after the bite, he was granted his original powers: primarily superhuman strength, reflexes, and equilibrium; the ability to cling tenaciously to most surfaces; and a subconscious precognitive sense of danger, which he called a "spider-sense."

I suppose that's enough. :) But I guess that Spider-Man just had to use more ingenuity and engineering in the comic books than in the movie. After all:

Before the radioactive spider bite, Peter Parker was already a gifted academic student with considerable expertise in many fields, such as chemistry, biology, physics, engineering, and advanced technology. Through these skills he was able to create his artificial web fluid, his web-shooters and other Spider-man equipment. His scientific knowledge has often been used to defeat his adversaries when his powers are not sufficient enough.

Impressive!

Easier said than done, movie Spidey.