AIRport

Here's a completely pointless insight into where my head was a few days ago. I was standing at the airport waiting in the very slow line to check in my bags, and this old guy spent about ten minutes at one of the four counters, moving cloths and items of luggage from one bag to another, trying to get the weights right. I thought to myself; if you've got too much weight old-timer, it doesn't matter where you put it, you're still going to be over-weight and have to pay the excess baggage fee. Then I thought; maybe he's trying to reduce the amount of 'air' in his bag in a misguided attempt to avoid paying for the extra weight that air provided, (so futile did his efforts look to me). Immediately my mind went off on one of its tangents of strange thoughts, which I will try to recreate in this blog:

When I was younger I saw a TV show which proved that air has mass by by the following 'demonstration':

They created a makeshift set of scales and at each end they placed a balloon. They then balanced the scales. Then they inflated one of the balloons, and sure enough, the one with air in it was heavier and tipped the scales.

I suppose then, that to demonstrate that air has mass the test is okay. BUT; does that mean that if you had two empty luggage bags on scales and they were exactly the same except one was full of air, and the other was crushed down with minimal air, the one with air would be heavier?

The answer is no, they would weight the same, the experiment was a better demonstration of elasticity, pressure, buoyancy and weight than it was a demonstration of mass.

The balloon, being elastic, pushes in on the air contained within it. This inward push caused by the elasticity means that the air within the balloon is at a higher pressure than that of the atmosphere around it. The high pressure air inside the balloon wants to push outwards on the interior surface of the balloon until the pressure is the same as the atmosphere, however the elasticity of the balloon (pushing inwards) balances with the pressure inside it (pushing outwards) and prevents this from happening. Balloons burst when the material reaches its elastic limit and the balloon can no longer expand elastically, so the pressure inside it then causes the material to fail, the balloon ruptures and the air rapidly reverts to atmospheric pressure, causing a 'pop' or explosion.

Assuming the air inside the balloon is the same temperature as the atmosphere around it (I will come back to this later), the pressure inside the balloon will be directly proportional to the number of air 'particles' inside the balloon, which move about randomly, colliding with the walls of the balloon, pushing outwards on it, so higher pressure means that there are more air particles inside the balloon than there are in the same volume of air outside, i.e. the air is more dense.

Now we get onto the issue of buoyancy; the basic rule is that every object with volume has a buoyancy force acting on it equal to the weight of the matter (be it air or water) displaced, (that is why you are more buoyant in water, because water is heavier than air, you are displacing more weight and as such are more buoyant. Now, because the balloon has denser air contained within it, it contains more mass, and as such has more weight than the atmospheric air it is displacing. Therefore, the weight force pulling the balloon downwards is now greater than the buoyancy force trying to lift the balloon. This along with the weight of the balloon itself is why balloons inflated with normal air fall to the ground, however they fall quite slowly (because even though it has more weight than buoyancy, the difference is quite small compared to a rock or a person).

In the case in which there are two balloons on scales, one inflated and one deflated, the mass of the balloons cancel out, it is the pressure exerted by the inflated balloon which makes the air within it denser and causes it to tip the scale. So yes, it does demonstrate that air has mass. However, if you were to conduct the same test using plastic shopping bags instead of balloons, with one bag filled with air at atmospheric pressure, and the other crushed down so it contains no air, the scales would still balance because the buoyancy of the air in the inflated bag would be equal to its weight. So the only element that would affect the scales would be the bag itself, which cancels with the crushed bag on the other end of the scales.

So, air has mass, that's true. But at atmospheric pressure, while surrounded with air at the same pressure and temperature, the air does not have a net weight (as it cancels with its buoyancy.)

So in summary, if you're at the airport, trying to crush down your bags so they have less air in them so you're less likely to tip the scales and pay excess baggage, you're wasting your time and perhaps you shouldn't have cut it so close in the first place.

In this example I am completely ignoring things like: The fact that air is warmer when it is exhaled from the body, which would increase pressure for a short period until the temperature normalises, and the fact that exhaled air has less oxygen and more carbon dioxide in it, and as such may be heavier particles, however these are negligible factors which don't have a significant effect on this argument.

Breaching the subject

The other day, R was talking about something and she said the phrase: "broach the subject".

That sounded wrong to me, so I immediately pulled her up: "What did you say??? Broach the subject???" I corrected her saying that it was in fact 'BREACH the subject." My justification for this was the differing meanings of the words:

Broach: I must admit I was thinking of Brooch, being a piece of jewelry, so in my mind to brooch a subject made no sense except perhaps to hang jewelry on it.
Breach: I was thinking of the noun being a break in a fortification, or the verb meaning to make a breach or opening. Therefore, in my mind to breach a topic was to break into it, to break the ice, to get it started.

I was wrong, R was right, according to dictionary.com. Now I have to tell her and face the inevitable barrage of 'you were wrong, I was right, na ner na ner na ner' style comments.

I hate being wrong... grrr

Gossip queen

It seems that people love gossip, especially celebrity gossip (no news there, no pun intended). If you tune in to commercial radio or weekday morning TV shows, you'll no doubt eventually come across a gossip segment.

My question is, why does it ALWAYS have to be done by a guy who sounds like he was rejected from the cast of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy for being too flamboyant.

It's almost as though the radio and TV producers think people won't believe their gossip unless it's filled with classic gay catch-phrases like 'don't go there' and... um... actually I can't think of any others, I can't say I'm really well practiced in my 'over the top gay lingo', but I think you'll be likely to hear the occasional 'honey' and 'girlfriend' thrown in when they're talking to women (and maybe sometimes men too).

And before you (assuming there is anyone out there who is actually reading this) start throwing words around like 'Homophobe'. I don't actually have a problem with this trend, I'm simply making an observation. If that kind of thing gets people watching or listening, then all power to them.

... and while I'm at it

Speaking of conferences and phobias, what about a conference for people Agoraphobia, (not Agraphobia as I had initially thought, which is actually a fear of sexual abuse, according to phobialist.com). Agoraphobia is a fear of open spaces or of being in crowded, public places like markets (once again according to phobialist.com). This is the phobia we traditionally attribute to people who are afraid of crowds.

So surely nobody would show up to the conference.

Or perhaps if they did you could immediately start to assume that they are either malingerers or people suffering from Factitious Disorder.

I wonder if there are any people out there who suffer from Agoraphobicphobia, I just made it up on the spot, but it would be a fear of people who are afraid of crowds. Imagine if there was a conference for people with Agoraphobicphobia, everyone there would be fine because nobody is actually afraid of the crowd itself, just people who are afraid of crowds. But then, imagine that someone with Agoraphobia reads the sign wrong and accidentally walks in and starts freaking out because they see the crowd Agoraphobicphobes. The crowd of Agoraphobicphobes see the Agoraphobic person freaking out and immediately start freaking out as well and all of a sudden the once peaceful conference descends into mayhem as nobody is able to tell who is freaking out because of the crowd, and who is freaking out because of the people freaking out because of the crowd.

There is absolutely no valid reason for this blog or the one before it, my mind was just going off on one of its tangents this morning, so I thought I'd write about it.

All occasions

We had a Christmas Party recently with our friends. Everyone brought nibblies or foods around, which was great. As is often the case at these things, some people left the food they brought behind. One of the things left behind was a box of cheeses, there was so much food at the party that it hadn't been opened. On the front of the box, the name of the cheeses was displayed, it was:

All Occasions Cheeses

ALL OCCASIONS?!?!?!

I think not you monkeys!!!

What about the Annual Conference for Lactose Intolerant People. Or a meeting of Turophobics Anonymous, (I had to look up Google to discover that Turophobia was a fear of cheese).

Perhaps I would be happier if they re-named their product 'Most Occasions Cheeses', or 'Some Occasions Cheeses,' perhaps even went all out and called it 'Cheeses for Occasions'. Perhaps not as catchy, but certainly more accurate, as I have just proposed two examples of occasions where it would not be suitable.