Up until now in this series, I’ve been raging a Full Bullwinkle[1] and presenting both my confounding questions and their answers. But I hardly know everything. Geez, I don’t even have a traditional Master’s Degree in a scientific discipline[2], let alone a Ph.D.-doctorate thingy.
Here are a few confounding questions that confound me personally. Let me emphasize that these are NOT the sort of questions that confound the researchers at universities and think tanks across the land. I’m not talking today about grand mysteries of the cosmos or the fine points of particle physics or why the vacuum won’t clean up all the pet hair. No, I’m asking a few questions that experts SHOULD already be able to answer, but somehow don’t, at least in the science textbooks that I’m charged with editing and/or publishing.[3] So here goes nuttin’.
Question 13: Why do we listen to radio waves and cook with microwave ovens?
Each sector of the electromagnetic spectrum has a different name. I assume they were discovered separately, and only afterward did scientists realize they were all manifestations of the same general phenomenon. Radio waves have the longest wavelengths, shortest frequencies, and least energy. Holding the opposite set of descriptions are gamma rays, which means they’re positioned at the opposite end of the spectrum. (Try to avoid spending time around gamma rays; they will knock the socks off your DNA and cause other assorted havoc.) In the middle of the spectrum, spanning a relatively narrow band, are the wavelengths and frequencies that make up visible light. You can see them attractively displayed in a rainbow, a topic that will come up again in a few paragraphs.
My complaint, though, is that the properties of the different types of radiation are not neatly explained by the previous paragraph—which is more or less all you get in a high school textbook. For example, radio waves can penetrate through walls, which is why you can listen to the radio indoors, and X-rays can penetrate through skin and other soft materials, which is useful to doctors for diagnosing broken bones, not to mention airport security for confiscating the toothpaste you’re trying to smuggle aboard your flight.[4] But visible light doesn’t penetrate through much of anything solid, apart from clear glass or plastic. Why is that? And what’s the deal with microwave ovens? Microwaves are just slightly more energetic than radio waves. Why should we be able to cook with them? Your television set—back when it received EM waves through the rabbit ears—was not useful for warming up the evening’s TV dinner. Neither could a microwave oven pick up Ozzie and Harriet. Why not? I have no idea.
Question 14: What determines the apparent distance of a rainbow?
Your basic rainbow is formed by tiny water droplets suspended in the air. The droplets act as miniature lenses and mirrors, separating sunlight into its component colors and reflecting them into the surrounding air. That part I get. But why is the image a rainbow, meaning an arc of colored lights, and why does the rainbow form in the specific location where it forms?
Presumably the answer depends on the refractive power of the water droplets. We also can apply equations that relate the distances of the object and its image from the central lens. But water droplets aren’t like the lens of a movie projector, are they? The droplets are spread diffusely in the air. Some are near, some are far—how do they form a single image in the middle of nothing, and a circular image at that? BEATS ME!
Question 15: What happens to all the energy?
This confounding question actually has a simple answer, and one that I both understand and can communicate easily. I just don’t quite believe it, that’s all.
Picture me at a ski resort. Ideally Vail, in Colorado, which is my favorite, but you’re the reader, so feel free to choose any resort you want. I spend the day going up the chairlifts (or gondolas, or T-bars or poma lifts, or rope tows—any lift at all, doesn’t matter.) Then I ski downward—the blue intermediate runs, typically, but I can do a black expert if it isn’t too mogully.[5] Eventually I reach the bottom of the hill or mountain. Repeat throughout the day. Then I take off the ski boots and decamp elsewhere.
Aaaahhh, what a nice day. Skiing is great. Um, where was I? Oh right, energy.
With every ride up a chairlift, I gain gravitational potential energy. This energy is transformed into kinetic energy—that is, me schussing down the slopes. But then, when I come to rest at the base, my complement of mechanical energy—specifically, the amount transferred to me from the ride up the chairlift—is effectively zero.
Where did the energy go? Per all the experts and all the textbooks I have worked on over the years, the answer is that the mechanical energy has been transformed completely into thermal energy. At the end of my ski day, all I have accomplished is a slight warming of the snow, the air, and other components of the environment. In theory this thermal energy is eventually radiated into space, which is why ski areas—and the rest of Earth’s surface—do not become gradually warmer from one day to the next, even in winter.
That’s the official explanation. Sorry, though, I don’t quite believe it. Somebody needs to do a study at Vail to provide some solid evidence. Don’t ask me how, but my guess is that a scientific procedure can be devised. I’ll be happy to volunteer, assuming the researchers will pay for my lift ticket. As well as lunch at one of the on-mountain restaurants. And I’m a little rusty, so I could use a lesson, too.
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This concludes another entry of Confounding Questions in Science.
[1] In his guise as Mr. Know It All, check out an example:
https://youtu.be/WvZTYAIz-kQ?si=8fmT8ZpMbjLSCnnE
[2] I passed part 1 of the board exams for medical students, which I was told, at the time, earns me the equivalent of a Master’s Degree. But that and ten cents…
[3] My bread and butter since 1993. It’s been a heckuva career so far.
[4] Scouts honor, I witnessed this happen at the Minneapolis airport to none other than Jesse Ventura, by then the former governor of the state. He made a big show of this mistreatment, as he called it.
[5] You may be wondering why this science essay has taken such as turn off-topic. You may continue to wonder that as you keep reading.
