December 3, 2006 by Alison.

Funny…

Courtesy of the University of Chicago Library:

In The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957), the hero is exposed to radioactive toxic waste and finds himself growing smaller and smaller. He is lost to family and friends while fending off the household cat and must make his own way in a world grown monstrously large. He forages food from crumbs and drinks from puddles of condensation. In one famous scene, he defends himself against a house spider by using an abandoned sewing needle, which he has to struggle to lift.

Stop the projector! Time for a little analysis.

When the Incredible Shrinking Man stops shrinking, he is about an inch tall, down by a factor of about 70 in linear dimensions. Thus, the surface area of his body, through which he loses heat, has decreased by a factor of 70 x 70 or about 5,000 times, but the mass of his body, which generates the heat, has decreased by 70 x 70 x 70 or 350,000 times. He’s clearly going to have a hard time maintaining his body temperature (even though his clothes are now conveniently shrinking with him) unless his metabolic rate increases drastically.

Luckily, his lung area has only decreased by 5,000-fold, so he can get the relatively larger supply of oxygen he needs, but he’s going to have to supply his body with much more fuel; like a shrew, he’ll probably have to eat his own weight daily just to stay alive. He’ll also have to give up sleeping and eat 24 hours a day or risk starving before he wakes up in the morning (unless he can learn the trick used by hummingbirds of lowering their body temperatures while they sleep).

Because of these relatively larger surface areas, he’ll be losing water at a proportionally larger rate, so he’ll have to drink a lot, too. We see him drink once in the movie–he dips his hand into a puddle and sips from his cupped palm. The image is unremarkable and natural, but unfortunately wrong for his dimensions: at his size surface tension becomes a force comparable to gravity. More likely, he’d immerse his hand in the pool and withdraw it coated with a drop of water the size of his head. When he put his lips to the drop, the surface tension would force the drop down his throat whether or not he chooses to swallow.

As for the contest with the spider, the battle is indeed biased, but not the way the movie would have you believe. Certainly the spider has a wicked set of poison fangs and some advantage because it wears its skeleton on the outside, where it can function as armor. But our hero, because of his increased metabolic rate, will be bouncing around like a mouse on amphetamines. He wouldn’t struggle to lift the sewing needle–he’d wield it like a rapier because his relative strength has increased about 70 fold. The forces that a muscle can produce are proportional to its cross-sectional area (length squared), while body mass is proportional to volume (length cubed). The ratio of an animal’s ability to generate force to its body mass scales approximately as 1/length; smaller animals are proportionally stronger. This geometric truth explains why an ant can famously life 50 times its body weight, while we can barely get the groceries up the stairs; were we the size of ants, we could lift 50 times our body weight, too. As for the Shrinking Man, pity the poor spider.

Posted in Interesting News/ Facts | No Comments »

November 21, 2006 by Alison.

With election time having just past I’ve found myself caught in the middle of various political conversations. It always pays to know where to go to get up to date government information, don’t rely on your local paper. You have to do some digging, but it’s usually out there and it’s usually free.

FGI recommended blogs/ sites

• Federal Computer Week (FCW) [Feed]
• FDSys blog — The blog of the Government Printing Office’s “Future Digital System (FDSys).” [Feed]
• Government Computer News [Feed]
• Government Publications Library–University of Colorado at Boulder [Feed]
• Government Technology [Feed]
• Memory Blog, the blog for The Memory Hole [Feed]
• Open Access News [RSS Feed, Atom Feed]
• Red Tape Blog — Michigan State University library and GODORT of Michigan [Feed]
• Secrecy News [Feed]
• Swem Government Information [Feed]
• UC Berkeley GovBlog [Feed]

Posted in Interesting News/ Facts | No Comments »

November 21, 2006 by Alison.

There has been a rumor circulating that Vegemite has been temporarily banned by the FDA due to the ingredient folate,an FDA regulated food additive , which in the United States is only allowed in bread and cereal?..not spreads? Whats the difference?..Ok, if this isnt confusing enough, conflicting tales have some saying there is no validity to the Vegemite story, but then it is odd that it seems to be out of stock at most grocery stores.

What exactly is Vegemite? If your not already familiar with the “Men At Work” song “Down Under”..Vegemite is a salty spread used for toast and sandwiches made from yeast extract. The product is imported from Australia.

Why my interest in the ban?…I grew up on Vegemite’s first cousin, Marmite ( the British version and much better in my opinion..sorry Vegemite fans.)
I looked around and could find no such ban on the FDA site. Although I was able to locate seizures of Vegemite and Marmite “at the borders” in the  FDA refusal reports.

Wanna see what people are getting stopped at the border with?

Refusal Reports

Seems as if the conflicting stories are a result of the fact the problem is with Kraft, the US distributor of Vegemite. Kraft it seems , due to the folate issue (labeling perhaps?), is not allowed to import Vegemite for distribution until the problem is resolved, but individuals are allowed to bring Vegemite into the country.

My suggestion: switch to Marmite–its much better.

My recommedation for tasty british treats…Taste of Britain in Norcross– lots of wonderful teas, spreads, treats of all kinds…

Posted in Interesting News/ Facts | No Comments »

November 19, 2006 by Alison.

Really great site explaining Politics and the all powerful dollar.

Open Secrets
Lobbying Overview:
Top Spenders, 2006