Posts filed under ‘Despite Popular Belief’
Barefoot Running is Better for Joints Than Running in Shoes
By Chad Upton | Editor
Some people think these shoes look weird:
But, they just look like feet. So, maybe it’s our shoe stressed feet that look weird. If you look at your toes, they’re not spread out like your fingers. Most people’s toes are squished together in the shape of a shoe, even when they’re not in shoes.
That’s weird.
I never really thought about it much, until I saw a pair of these shoes. They’re called “Five Fingers” and they’re made by a company called Vibram. They’re a bit pricey, so you may also want to look at Fila’s similar and slightly cheaper version called “Skele-toes.” This style of footwear are to shoes what winter gloves are to mittens.
These shoes and the growing category of “minimalist running shoes” are a hot trend in running circles right now. There are many reasons why, but the ten most convincing reasons are on the floor in front of you.
We’ve been cramming our feet into unnatural shoes since childhood, but what would our feet look like if we had never worn shoes? Probably something like this:
These feet actually look weird too; we’re used to seeing feet that are shaped like shoes.
The difference is glaring. Look at the straight black line in the first photo, it stretches from the big toe, across the ball of the foot to the heel. You can’t draw a straight line on the second photo that aligns these three important parts of your feet.
Cramping your foot’s style is not cool because that can lead to cramps and strains and lots of heel pains. If you’ve ever had foot pain or discomfort, you may think your shoes don’t have enough cushioning or that your arches have too much or too little support. While there are exceptions, these problems are generally myths perpetuated by the shoe industry that simply wants you to buy new shoes often.
Many of the best runners in the world, who consistently win marathons, run without any shoes at all. Do they have bad feet? No, they have really strong feet. They also have better knees and hips than runners who use thick padded running shoes. One medical study compared running in shoes to barefoot and fount that barefoot running demonstrated 38% lower knee torque and 54% less internal hip rotation torque. This means that running barefoot provides a much more natural motion for your joints. This notion is pretty surprising the first time you hear it, but there are a mountain of medical studies to support it.
Should you throw away your super spongy running shoes and go barefoot tomorrow? Probably not. Just like running in shoes, you need some education to do it the best way possible. Check your area for a local running club where you can learn, or look for some online videos on the subject. I’ve also got some great sources listed below which would make a good starting point.
Also, running on soft shoes might not be a good idea but research shows that running on soft surfaces is better than hard surfaces. Even though grass and dirt may have rocks and pits, these actually work to strengthen your ankles over time. That said, you may also want to consider the type of floors you have at home — you may even want to get something like soft rubber floors.
PS – Neil posted a funny story at 1000awesomethings.com about my first outdoor run earlier this year.
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Sources: PM&R, Shoe Myths, Nature.com, CMAJ.ca, bjsportmed.com
Bumblebee Flight is Not Scientifically Impossible
By Terry D. Johnson
The myth that bumblebee flight is scientifically impossible persists today. Even some presidential hopefuls believe it. Don’t be fooled. This tale’s been floating around since the 1930s, back when aerodynamics was emerging from a science.
Various luminaries in the field of fluid dynamics have been accused of popularizing the idea, which seems to have originated in a collaboration between French entomologist Antoine Magnan and his assistant, the mathematician André Sainte-Laguë. Sainte-Laguë had done a primitive calculation on the aerodynamics of bumblebee flight, assuming that the wings we perfectly smooth and flat. They also ignored more complicated aerodynamics in favor of a simpler model.
These assumptions made the calculation easier…and the answer wrong. Magnan himself wrote: “One shouldn’t be surprised that the results of the calculations don’t square with reality.” That didn’t stop the myth from achieving enough lift to take off.
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Image: Wikimedia (gnu)
Story and Plot are Not the Same Thing
By Chad Upton | Editor
Movies are extremely captivating because of their complex combination of: music, characters, dialogue, lighting, story, plot and everything else. Yes, story and plot.
These two words are often used interchangeably. I don’t have a problem with that, but I do find this little known fact interesting and heck, that’s what this site is all about.
Whether you’re talking about books, films or campfire tales, the differentiation between story and plot applies. I’ll start by oversimplifying the difference:
Story is what happens; plot is how those events are presented.
To be more specific: the story is a chronological arrangement of the events, including everything you’re presented with and also the implied or assumed events that you are not explicitly given. On the other hand, the plot includes everything that contributes to how you experience the story, including everything you see and hear, but not including the story events that are implied or assumed.
These two words are confusing because the elements they describe have some overlap — the parts of the story that you see are also part of the plot. While they do have this overlap, it is important to note that both plot and story include elements that do not overlap. Lets look at a popular film for example.
By now, I think most people have seen The Hangover (2009). If you haven’t, that’s ok, there are no spoilers beyond this point, but there is a basic description of the story and plot.
At a high level, it’s a comedy about four guys who go to Las Vegas and lose their friend, then retrace their steps to find him.
At the start of the film, the main characters are already friends; the film doesn’t show you how the core group of people met or became friends. Because we don’t see when they originally met, the formation of their friendship is part of the story, but not the plot.
The second act begins with the characters waking up from a blackout. Their hotelroom is a mess, but they can’t remember what happened the night before. The plot jumps from the night before to the morning after and skips everything in between. Because we did not see what happened, the events the plot skipped are just part of the story at this point.
The story ends by revealing something that happened the night before. Because the events in the story are rearranged (the plot), the viewer is part of the adventure, they know just as much as the characters. The plot makes the story more captivating because we want to know what happened, just as bad as the characters.
In movies, the plot also includes the music and credits because these are not generally part of the story — they’re not things the characters experience, but they do affect how viewers experience the story. This is where The Hangover does something really interesting; during the credits they show some still “pictures” from parts of the story that were skipped in the plot, bringing those elements that were once only part of the story into the plot too.
Bonus fact: music can be part of the story if, for example, there is a person/band/radio in the scene that is playing music.
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Sources: Film Art (ISBN 0073386162)
Calculating the Distance to Lightning Strikes
By Chad Upton | Editor
I love watching electrical storms. The time between strikes builds anticipation; the light show is epic and the sound is awe inspiring.
As a kid, I heard that if you count the seconds between the sight of the lightning and the sound of the thunder, the distance to the strike is one mile for every second you count. It’s a simple model, but it’s far from accurate.
It’s actually closer to 5 seconds for every mile.
For those who don’t know, you see the lightning before you hear the thunder because light travels much faster than sound, about 200,000 km per second faster (186,282 miles per second).
Depending on the environment, sound travels at about 350 meters per second (1150 feet per second). To calculate the distance, you can multiply the number of seconds by the speed of sound in your preferred units above.
If you count 10 seconds between the lightning and the thunder, the strike was about 3.5 km (2.17 miles away). To make it easier, use this lightning distance calculator.
Thanks to Kristen for this suggestion.
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Image: John Fowler (cc)
Sources: Lightning Strike Distance Calculator, Wikipedia (Speed of Light, Speed of Sound)
Urinals are Not Just for Men
By Chad Upton | Editor
Urinals are common in most men’s bathrooms, but they’re rarely seen in the ladies room. But, Urinals.net maintains a short list of ladies rooms with urinals built just for women. It’s not a complete list, but it’s a curious one.
Ladies’ urinals haven’t caught on for a variety of reason. First of all, they’re confusing. They are often very different from men’s urinals, so women aren’t sure if they should be used forward or backward. Also, they’re not as practical for females because of differences in anatomy and the types of clothing that men and women wear.
Urinals are very common in men’s rooms of course. But, there are some surprises there too.
For example, most guys have probably come across this in a bar at some point, whether they remember it or not: some bars and clubs fill the men’s urinals with ice during busy times.
People are inherently bad at flushing public toilets, likely because they want as little contact as possible with these appliances. Therefore, many public restrooms have automatic flush toilets. But, a much cheaper option is to use ice. You see, when urine melts the ice, the water from the melted ice dilutes the urine and flushes away the smell. It’s a low-tech automatic flush system.
Also, melting ice is fun, so it improves aim and that reduces the number of bathroom cleanings that are required.
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Sources: Wikipedia (Urinals)
Photo: Christian Church (cc)
People Don’t Explode in Space
By Terry D Johnson
Countless science fiction films have exposed their characters to the vacuum of space – often, with explosive results. Outland’s victims of explosive decompression leave behind gory, reddened walls reminiscent of a Jackson Pollock painting. Perhaps most famously, in Total Recall Arnold Schwarzenegger played an increasingly bug-eyed Quaid when he ventured unprotected onto the airless plains of Mars. Grotesque decompression deaths are a staple of the genre.
These displays of spectacular tissue damage might seem like reasonable speculation, yet we’ve known otherwise for centuries. As early as 1660, the scientist Robert Boyle was exposing animals to vacuum without detonating them. Unconsciousness came quickly to the experimental subjects, but fresh air would quickly revive most subjects if administered before several minutes had passed. Those animals that died of oxygen deprivation did so without painting the walls.
There are several accounts of human beings accidentally exposed to near vacuum. Most dramatically, a test subject at NASA’s Johnson Space Center with a leaky spacesuit experienced a near vacuum. He was unconscious after 14 seconds and remembers feeling the saliva on his tongue beginning to boil, but after the test chamber was repressurized he recovered quickly.
If ever you’re exposed to space for a brief period, don’t try to hold your breath – the pressure difference between your air-filled lungs and the vacuum is likely to cause some damage. Don’t worry about the cold, either – space is chilly, yes, but the lack of air will make the transfer of heat from your body quite slow. There might be some painful swelling, but nothing so dramatic as a messy and very personal explosion.
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Photo: Wikimedia Commons (gnu)
Sources: NASA, WP An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump, WP Robert Boyle
More US Money is Printed Than MONOPOLY Money
By Chad Upton | Editor
I was reading a recent story on cnbc.com and one “fact” seemed particularly unbelievable. It stated that each year, Parker Brothers prints more MONOPOLY money than the US government prints real currency. They even went so far as to say, “You can bet your little, old shoe that money fact is true!”
CNBC, I will take your bet.
In my attempt to track down the truth, I found that this myth is very wide spread. It’s not just CNBC, dozens of other sites make the same claim. I’m not sure where all of these sites got their info, but I like to go to the source.
The US bureau of Engraving and Printing is responsible for printing paper currency in the US. Their website has a page that details exactly how much currency has been printed each year since 1980. It’s very detailed and includes 4 years when $2 bills were printed, totaling about 500 million $2 bills printed since 1980.
Another interesting fact appears at the bottom of that page: 26 million currency notes are printed each day, with a face value of approximately $974 million. In fact, CNBC has this fact on their page too. Although, they quote it as per year rather than per day. I will give them a bit of credit here, the sentence is confusing and could be interpreted as “per year”, but a quick scan of the page can easily correct that interpretation. For example, more than 974 million $1 bills were printed in 2010. Even more $100 bills were printed. So, it can’t be a per year number.
In 2009, the US government printed a total of $2.1 trillion and in 2010 it was just over $2.0 trillion. That’s a lot of money and 95% of it replaces old money that is worn out.
Next, I tracked down how much money Parker Brothers, a subsidiary of Hasbro, has printed. They started making MONOPOLY in 1935. Until 1998, $15,140 worth of MONOPOLY money was included in each game; current editions include $20,580.
Hasbro states that 250 million copies of MONOPOLY have been sold since 1935 (in 103 Countries and 37 languages). They’ve sold an average of 3.3 million copies per year. If we use the current edition, that would mean they print $67.7 billion during an average year.
At $2 trillion per year, the US government prints much more money than Parker Brothers. In fact, a few years of US currency printing exceeds all 76 years of Parker Brothers printing.
On the other hand, the US mint produces 14-20 billion coins per year. They don’t give a breakdown of the denominations, so it’s impossible to calculate the exact dollar value. Perhaps this myth started as a comparison to the number of coins the US Mint makes each year.
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Sources: Hasbro.com (faq, corporate info), US Bureau of Engraving and Printing, US Mint, CNBC, Wikipedia (Monopoly)
Chewing Gum Digests Within a Few Days
By Chad Upton | Editor
An old wives tale states that gum stays in your stomach for up to seven years, but that is far from the truth.
Although it’s pretty sticky between your fingers, a single piece of gum doesn’t present a great challenge to your digestive enzymes — gum generally moves through your digestive system pretty quickly.
Food digests in as little as a few hours, and although gum can move at the same speed, it is sometimes slower than normal food, and it passes through our digestive system within a few days at the most.
The confusion comes from the fact that gum cannot be broken down. It’s the same as small coins, they cannot be broken down but they usually pass through within a couple of days. That earns gum the designation of “indigestible”, but that doesn’t mean it won’t pass through the digestive system, it just means it can’t be broken down into smaller pieces. I guess it goes in the same category as corn.
That means habitual swallowers can suffer from blockages and constipation if a large amount of gum builds up, especially children who swallow gum frequently. But, a single piece of gum usually passes without a problem.
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Sources: Scientific American, Snopes, How Stuff Works
The Swastika Was Once a Symbol of Good Luck
By Chad Upton | Editor
Today, the swastika is frequently associated with one of the most horrible and unfortunate times in human history — it was the symbol of Nazi Germany (1933-1945).
Because its recent history is awful, the swastika is nearly taboo in many cultures. But, the symbol has been around for thousands of years, most of those years as a very peaceful symbol.
The name “swastika” comes from the Sanskrit word svastika, meaning “lucky” or “well being.” It is generally used on people and things to denote good luck or wish well being. It goes by many names in many different places: hook cross, crooked cross, angled cross, sun cross, sun wheel, hakenkreuz (German), among others.
The swastika can be traced back about 11,500 years, to the Neolithic period. It’s past and present are deeply rooted primarily in Eastern religions although there are many examples of it in other religions. Long before it had any negative connotation, it was popular in religions and cultures including: Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, Chinese and Japanese art and many others.
Many people are unfamiliar with the swastika’s relationship to Christianity. They used it to symbolize Christ’s victory over death. Some cathedrals built during the Romanesque and Gothic eras are decorated with swastikas, including the tile floor of this Roman Catholic Church in France (Amiens Cathedral).
Matilde Moisant, the second woman to get her pilot’s license, wore a swastika pendant on her 1912 uniform for good luck. This was a common practice among early aviators and test pilots.
Although the swastika is generally associated with an awful time, its original meaning is still an important symbol in many cultures, so it’s important to understand that it was a positive symbol for most of its life.
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Sources: About, Wikipedia (Swastika, Matilde Moisant, Amiens Cathedral)
Hair and Nails Grow Faster in the Summer
By Chad Upton | Editor
Actually, your hair and nails grow faster in sunlight, and we generally have more daylight available and spend more time exposed to it in the summer.
This is because your body produces more vitamin D in daylight, which is important for nail growth. In fact, hair and nails are just a basic form of skin. The epidermis layer of skin is made up of a few types of cells, hair and nails are made from one of those types of cells: keratinocytes.
Fingernails also grow faster on your dominant hand, due to better blood flow. Also, on your dominant hand, the finger nail on your middle finger usually grows the fastest and slowest on your thumb. Fingernails grow about five times faster than toenails.
Despite popular belief, hair and fingernails do not continue to grow after death. As a dead body dehydrates, the skin retracts, which gives the appearance that the hair and nails have grown. But, even while you’re alive, hair and nails are made from dead cells, which is why it doesn’t hurt to cut them.
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Photo: Ibrahim Iujaz (cc)
Sources: Straight Dope, Wisegeek, KidsHealth, eHow, Wikipedia
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