Question: In the classic theoretical falling elevator of physics classes everywhere, the occupants go into astronaut-like free fall, momentarily weightless, but soon meet a rude fate below. What might happen when a real elevator falls?
Answer: In one of the rare cases on record, a safety elevator plummeted from the 38th floor of the Empire State Building in 1945, when a military plane struck the building above and cut all the cables, says Louis A. Bloomfield in "How Things Work: The Physics of Everyday Life."
The car dropped to the basement, but the accordion-like squashed air in the shaft built up a back pressure, plus a mountain of severed cables served as cushion below. Add on the effect of the emergency bumper at the bottom of the shaft, and the "only occupant of the car, a 20-year-old elevator operator, survived without serious injury."
Question: Apples are harvested everywhere in late summer or early fall. So what is it that makes year-round juicy apples possible?
Answer: Credit "controlled-atmosphere storage," begun before World War II when farmers discovered produce kept longer in an airtight room, reports BestApples.com. Apples consume oxygen and give off carbon dioxide — "breathing" — as starches in the flesh turn to sugar. But in an airtight room, as oxygen was used up, apple ripening actually slowed!
An apple boom was born. Today controlled-ripening is big business, with harvested fruit placed in large refrigerated storage rooms 15,000-25,000 bushels strong, where oxygen levels are dropped from the 21 percent of air we breathe to 1 percent to 2 percent as nitrogen is pumped in, says Cornell plant pathologist David Rosenberger. Humidity and carbon dioxide are closely monitored, as often is the ethylene gas apples naturally emit while ripening. The apples slip into slow rate metabolism, awaiting someone's offseason fruitbowl.
The ethylene gas factor helps explain the old adage "one bad apple (in a barrel) spoils the bunch," because a wormy or fungusy apple emits more self-ripening ethylene, prompting premature aging among its applemates.
Question: With only a handful of thumb tacks and a box of matches, devise a way to mount a short inch-thick candle on a bulletin board. Hint: Beware boxed-in thinking.
Answer: Solving this requires realizing that a box need not always serve as a container, says David G. Myers in "Psychology." Just empty the matchbox, tack it up on the board, and drip-stick the candle onto a horizontal surface.
Another classic: Try to connect nine dots in a 3-by-3 array, using four straight lines and no re-tracings or picking up your pencil. Can't do it until you see to go outside the "box," then it's easy.
Rather more fanciful flex-thinking let '60s celluloid hero James Bond, armed with only a ballpoint pen filled with poisonous ink, escape a small island surrounded by alligators, in the movie "Live and Let Die," says Erick Lauber on his "Cognitive Psychology Tutor" Web site. "With death imminent, Bond notices that five alligators have lined themselves in a row stretching from the island to the mainland. Rather than try to outswim the beasts or kill them with his pen, he runs to the safety of the shore by stepping on the tops of the alligators' heads."
Some steppingstones! (DON'T TRY THIS!)
Send STRANGE questions to brothers Bill and Rich at strangetrue@compuserve.com