The Straight Dope 04/23/2004

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

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THE STRAIGHT DOPE 04/23/2004

Dear Cecil:

Having just finished watching Pirates of the Caribbean I am wondering
about cannonballs. It seems that Hollywood always has them exploding on
contact. How is it that a solid iron ball explodes? You would need a
hollowed ball filled with TNT, wouldn't you? And if you have a
cannonball that's hollow, how do you fill it without an opening? And if
you make an opening, how do you seal it? Finally, how do you keep it
from exploding when fired from the cannon? --daedalys, via the Internet

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Cecil replies:

Seriously now, daedalys. (By the way, not to be old-fashioned, but would
it be asking too much for you people to conclude your letters with, say,
a proper name?) How many times do I have to tell you--there's Hollywood,
there's real life, and the two only accidentally coincide. Particularly,
if I may say so, in the case of Pirates of the Caribbean. This flick has
a crew of pirates who, when they walk into moonlight, are revealed to be
ghosts or something, although ghosts of the meaty, decaying,
I-really-need-to-clean-out-the-fridge-more-often variety; it's got an
Ali Baba-type cave filled with glittering heaps of pirate booty; and
above all it has Johnny Depp, playing the most over-the-top combination
of macho and mince since Tim Curry in The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Do
you think the guys who made this movie got together at any point and
asked each other: How can we make this thing more realistic?

For more, see:
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/040423.html

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STAFF REPORT

Dear Straight Dope:

OK, Uncle Cecil, we need an bet settled. The other night while trying to
light a fire in the backyard, my wife claimed that the hottest part of
her lighter was the blue flame near the lighter, I corrected her,
letting her know the tip of the flame is the hottest. I distinctly
remember being told that the closer (brighter?) the flame is to white,
the hotter it is. Please settle this bet so I can avoid doing laundry
for 2 --Damien Rowe

SDSTAFF Una replies:

Two problems, Damien. First, Uncle Cecil is busy, so you don't have him
answering your question, you've got me. Second, you wrote this question
in 2001. That laundry must be really piling up.

I'll try to make this answer worth the wait. Analysis of a flame can be
quite complex. Coal and solid fuel flames (my specialty) are the most
complex, followed in difficulty by liquid fuel flames, and finally
gaseous fuel flames. I'll assume that for your backyard experiments with
the wife you're using a simple gas flame from a butane or propane
lighter. I'm also going to assume we're dealing with a premixed laminar
flame   in lay terms, "a flame that has its fuel mixed with air before
burning, and which has a relatively steady shape."

Although a lighter or candle flame appears to be a solid mass of light . . .

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

STRAIGHT DOPE CLASSIC - 08/19/1977

Dear Cecil: 

I just realized the other day that I have never understood how they
walked upside down in the spaceship in the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey.
It looked like they walked around the inside of a cylinder. How'd they
do it, Cecil? --Paul S., Skokie, Illinois

Dear Paul:

This may disappoint you fans of high-tech special effects, but several
sequences in 2001 made use of a technique that had once been used in a
Fred Astaire movie, of all things. One number in Stanley Donen's 1951
musical Royal Wedding required Astaire to dance over the walls and
ceiling of his London apartment, an effect accomplished by . . .

For more, see:
http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a1_361.html

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