The Straight Dope 07/18/2003

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The Straight Dope -- By Cecil Adams
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THE STRAIGHT DOPE 07/18/2003

Dear Cecil:

Where did the attempts to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel
come from and has anyone successfully done it? 
--Anonymous, via the Internet

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Cecil replies:

What do you mean, where did they come from? They came from
the same dread of anonymity that gnaws at us all. (Well,
maybe not you.) A better question is where they--that is,
the attempts- -went. Answer: Straight into the memory hole,
for the most part. Someone has gone over Niagara Falls as
recently as 1995--not in a barrel but on a jet ski.
(He died.) In fact, of the 15 people who've ever made the
attempt "in or on a device," as the tourist Web site 
InfoNiagara.com puts it, 8 have done so in the past 20
years. Hear about any of them? I didn't, and I hear about
everything. These days even mighty Niagara Falls gets
drowned out by the mad media din.

For more, see:
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/030718.html

STAFF REPORT

Dear Straight Dope:

Why do fluorescent light fixtures buzz? Are the lights going
bad, or is it the fixture itself? Is it a sign someone has
placed monitoring devices in my house? Is there any danger
involved--say, a potential electrical short, or an
explosion? Or, is it perhaps an attempt to communicate with
me from outside the atmosphere? Inquiring minds want to
know. --Jon Jackson

Guest contributor Q.E.D. replies:

Let's start with a bit of history. General Electric
introduced fluorescent lamps to the public in 1939 at the
New York World's Fair. ("Myrtle! Get a load of this! 
Fluorescent lights!" Oh, for those simpler days.) Invented
in 1926 by a German team consisting of Friedrich Meyer,
Hans Spanner and Edmund Germer, whose patent GE purchased
for $180,000, fluorescent lamps quickly became popular in
industrial and commercial buildings due to their long
operating life and low cost-per-lumen (a lumen is a measure
of light output). However, they failed to gain much
popularity among residential consumers, at least until
fairly recently, due to the loud hum or buzz they sometimes
produced, the blinking they did when first turned on, and the
unnatural color balance of the light they emitted.

What causes the buzz? Basically . . .

For more, see: 
http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mbuzzingbulb.html


STRAIGHT DOPE CLASSIC - 10/23/1981

Dear Cecil: 

I have this friend and he isn't playing with a full deck, if
you know what I mean, and he said if you drop a penny from
the top of the Empire State Building and it happened to hit
someone in the head it would go through just like that.
Is this true? --Joe D., Towson, Maryland

Dear Joe: 

I'm explaining this only on condition you don't try the 
experiment yourself.  Given that the Empire State Building is
1,250 feet tall and ignoring such factors as wind resistance
for the moment, a penny dropped from the top would hit the
ground in approximately 8.8 seconds, having reach a speed of
roughly 280 feet per second.  This is not particularly fast.
A low-powered .22 or .25 caliber handgun bullet, to which a
penny is vaguely comparable in terms of mass, typically has
a muzzle velocity of 800 to 1,100 FPS, with maybe 75 
foot-pounds of energy.  

For more, see:
http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a1_225.html

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