SMOKIN FASTBALLS
Tune into a Colorado Rockies game, and you're bound to hear one of the announcers mention the team's most well-known piece of lore: They store baseballs in a humidor. Wait, you may be asking yourself, aren't humidors used for cigars? Indeed, cigar aficionados keep their cigars in a humidity-controlled environment to prevent the tobacco leaves from drying out, which would affect their flavor. The Rockies aren't worried about the flavor of those baseballs, but rather about dried-out balls carrying farther and driving up scores. Why does this matter? Because Coors Field was well on it's way to developing a reputation as a park that was seriously unfriendly to pitchers---and very friendly to home runs.
From the 1995 to 2001 seasons, National League pitchers at Coors Field recorded a horrendous earned run average (ERA) of 6.50, more than two runs a game higher than the 4.37 ERA recorded at other stadiums. Fans and the media attributed the numbers to Denver's mile-high thin air. But in the winter of 2002, based on a hunch that the balls might be drying out and losing weight in Denver's arid climate, engineers at Coors Field installed a humidor for storing game balls. Since then, N.L. pitchers have posted a 5.46 ERA at Coors. But N.L. scientists can't say exactly why it's so effective.
According to a 2004 study by physicist David Kagan of California State University at Chico, keeping the balls at 50 percent relative humidity lowers their coefficient of restitution, a.k.a. bounciness. This means that humidified balls don't bounce off the bat as powerfully as dried-out ones do, making for a less batter-friendly pitch. Edmund Meyer and John Bohn, physics professors at the University of Colorado, later found that the added moisture does not change a ball's size and shape---and thus, its aerodynamics---which seems to verify Kagan's explanation for the humidor's success.
Monday, March 30, 2015
Can People Safely Eat Cat Food?
It makes my fur shiny
Let's take a look at the ingredients in a typical can of cat food: meat by-products, chicken by-product meal, turkey by-product meal, ash, taurine. Nothing too horrible, but in general, these things don't constitute a healthy human diet, says Dawn Jackson Blatner, a registered dietitian with the American Dietetic Association. " that said, I'm fully confident that your body can handle kitty chow.
Your liver, kidneys, and skin do a terrific job of removing foreign substances from your body, especially mild ones like those found in cat food. "Technically, you could safely digest a baseball," Blatner says. But that doesn't mean you should. Perhaps the worst stuff in cat food is the mineral content in the ash, but your body would clear that out quickly, thanks to God.
Let's take a look at the ingredients in a typical can of cat food: meat by-products, chicken by-product meal, turkey by-product meal, ash, taurine. Nothing too horrible, but in general, these things don't constitute a healthy human diet, says Dawn Jackson Blatner, a registered dietitian with the American Dietetic Association. " that said, I'm fully confident that your body can handle kitty chow.
Your liver, kidneys, and skin do a terrific job of removing foreign substances from your body, especially mild ones like those found in cat food. "Technically, you could safely digest a baseball," Blatner says. But that doesn't mean you should. Perhaps the worst stuff in cat food is the mineral content in the ash, but your body would clear that out quickly, thanks to God.
Is it true BIRDS CAN"T FART?
They're too classy
It's not that they can't. They just don't need to, says Mike Murray, a veterinarian at the Monterey Bay Aquarium in California. Birds have the anatomical and physical ability to pass gas, he explains, "but if I saw gas in a bird's gastrointestinal tract on an X-ray, I'd suspect that something abnormal was going on in there."
Birds don't typically carry the same kinds of gas-forming bacteria in their gut as humans and other mammals to help digest food, so there's nothing to let loose. Parrots sometimes emit fartlike sounds, but it's not what you might think. "They like to make playful sounds like they're giving you a raspberry, but it's coming from the north end, not the south, "Murray says.
But can they burp the alphabet?
Scientists are a little less certain about whether birds can release gassy buidup from the mouth, though. There's no official documentation of a bird burp (it's not a common field of research), but most ornithologists suspect that if a bird needed to burp, it would have no trouble doing so. "Birds are able to excrete lots of things through their mouths," says Todd Katzner, the director of conservation and field research at the National Aviary in Pittsburgh. "The fact that birds can regurgitate food for their young suggests that they can also reverse the direction of other things down there. I'd be pretty surprised if birds didn't burp."
It's not that they can't. They just don't need to, says Mike Murray, a veterinarian at the Monterey Bay Aquarium in California. Birds have the anatomical and physical ability to pass gas, he explains, "but if I saw gas in a bird's gastrointestinal tract on an X-ray, I'd suspect that something abnormal was going on in there."
Birds don't typically carry the same kinds of gas-forming bacteria in their gut as humans and other mammals to help digest food, so there's nothing to let loose. Parrots sometimes emit fartlike sounds, but it's not what you might think. "They like to make playful sounds like they're giving you a raspberry, but it's coming from the north end, not the south, "Murray says.
But can they burp the alphabet?
Scientists are a little less certain about whether birds can release gassy buidup from the mouth, though. There's no official documentation of a bird burp (it's not a common field of research), but most ornithologists suspect that if a bird needed to burp, it would have no trouble doing so. "Birds are able to excrete lots of things through their mouths," says Todd Katzner, the director of conservation and field research at the National Aviary in Pittsburgh. "The fact that birds can regurgitate food for their young suggests that they can also reverse the direction of other things down there. I'd be pretty surprised if birds didn't burp."
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