The Straight Dope 11/17/2006

The Straight Dope -- By Cecil Adams
http://www.straightdope.com

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THE STRAIGHT DOPE 11/17/2006

Dear Cecil:

In Judith A. Jance's mystery novel Partner in Crime (2002),
the murder weapon is sodium azide, a chemical used in auto
air bags. She got her story idea from a magazine article
about how poisonous sodium azide is. The chemical is not
deactivated when cars are sent to junkyards. Since this book
was written, has anyone cared enough to address this problem
in our environment?   Frances R., Morrisville, Vermont

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Cecil replies:

Let's put it this way: some thought has been given to it.
This shows you the benefit of stringent environmental
regulation. In the old days, people would use chemicals with
nary a clue about whether they were toxic. Now we know damn
well.

Judith Jance covers the basics of sodium azide (NaN3) in her
book. It's a white, odorless crystalline solid resembling
salt. It's highly poisonous, and when added to an acid, or
just acidic water, turns into a toxic gas with a sharp odor.
The chemical's toxicity makes it useful as a pesticide and
as an antibacterial preservative in hospitals and
laboratories. Sodium azide reacts violently when it touches
certain common metals, making cleanup in the lab pretty
entertaining   if you pour it down a metal drainpipe, it
explodes.

This explosiveness is put to use in auto air bags.

For more, see:
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/061117.html

STRAIGHT DOPE CLASSIC #1 - 08/04/1989

Dear Straight Dope:

Dear Cecil:  Our high school French teacher always insisted
learning French was important because it was going to become
the international language of business. Now I hear English
is mandatory in international aviation, and the Chinese
students in Beijing spoke English to the international
media. Was our French teacher shucking us? Merde! -- Les
Petites, South Boston  

Cecil replies:  

Now, now. He/she probably just didn't know any better.
French teachers lead such empty lives as it is that no one
has the heart to tell them the awful truth, which is that
French is a language on the way down, not up. Once the
language of diplomacy, French was used in the royal courts
of Germany, Russia, and Italy during the 19th century. Fifty
years ago Somerset Maugham called it "the common language of
educated men" (women too, one presumes). But it's been in a
state of decline since World War II, having long ago been
supplanted by--you guessed it--English.  

English is the primary language of more than 400 million
people and is the second language of hundreds of millions
more. It's essential in science, technology, economics, and
finance. It's the official language of airport control
towers, might as well be the official language of computer
software, and of course is vital to a perfect comprehension
of MTV, Madonna, and other pillars of modern culture. French
is the primary language of maybe 114 million, including such
outposts of world commerce as Haiti, Cameroon, and Burkina
Faso, and is essential chiefly to reading menus at Le
Cirque. 

For more, see:
http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a3_261.html

STRAIGHT DOPE CLASSIC #2 - 08/18/1989

Dear Cecil: 

Why is there an I Street and a K Street but no J Street in
Washington, D.C.? At least one other federally spawned burg,
Anchorage, Alaska, uses a similar street-naming scheme also
lacking J. My daughter claimed the streets were named before
the invention of Js, but recanted that theory upon reaching
junior high school. --John Beard, Arlington, Virginia

Dear John:

That's what you get for subjecting her to higher
education--her first guess was a lot closer to the mark than
her second. J is a late addition to the alphabet, having
initially been introduced as an alternative form of I. It
began to be used to signify our modern consonant J around
1600, but the two letters continued to be used
interchangeably for years thereafter, e.g., jngeniously,
ieweller. As late as 1820 some dictionaries still weren't
alphabetizing I and J words separately.

D.C. planner Pierre L'Enfant undoubtedly didn't include a J
Street because he considered I and J basically the same
letter. (It certainly wasn't because he disliked the
statesman John Jay, as legend has it.) A similar confusion
attended the letters U and V, which were also used
interchangeably. The D.C. plan included both U and V
streets, but using capital V to indicate both U and V on
buildings (e.g., VNITED STATES POST OFFICE) survived until
the 1930s, no doubt in imitation of such classical
inscriptions as IVLIVS CAESAR.

For more, see:
http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a3_262b.html
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