Dr. Forbush Answers Back

Ask a Question

dr_forbush@mad.scientist.com

Why is it that when I take my car into the shop, it always comes back with more stuff wrong with it?

Your car is talking to you. It is asking you to put it out of its misery. Cars are like people, they have an expected life span. You can extend its life span by repairing and replacing parts on your car just as a doctor does to you. At some point the majority of parts on your car reach their expected life span and begin to fail. Repairing and replacing parts as they fail will add life to that part, but your car is only as good as its weakest part. Sometimes a new properly working part can effect older parts by putting higher stress on the older part.

Then again, you could have a poor mechanic who jars properly working parts as he attempts to fix a failed part, creating a lucrative cash flow for the mechanic. Parts need to fit together in order to work together. A mechanic may improperly install a part creating increased wear and higher probability of failure.

What is the minimum safe distance to keep, if we move to a house near power lines?

You could live right under the power lines if the transformers and capacitors on the lines are working properly. If the components have failed I would call the power company immediately to correct the problem.

The question then becomes how do I know when a power line component fails. A power line component has failed if it is leaking, or sparking. Sparking is easy to detect. Just go outside by the power line at night and look and listen for the sparking. If the problem is particularly bad you will be able to smell the ozone in the air. Leaking is more difficult to detect. A slow leak from 100 feet up may be spread by wind for thousands of yards. Since winds blow from the north west most often (in the northern hemisphere), the south east of a tower would be the worst location, but no guarantee.

If you don't want to worry about the failure of the power lines at all, I'd say live a few thousand yards away from high tension towers.

Note: the key is the tower, not necessarily the power line.

Just how dangerous is it to live close to the power plant that feeds a city of approximate 12,000 people or the electric lines feeding out of it? We are considering purchasing property and building a home and the plant is approx. 300 eds. away and the lines are approx. 100 feet from the house.

This is a very good question. If you haven't already, I suggest you read my paper on power lines. Basically the scientific community believes the effect of electromagnetic fields from power lines does not effect biological systems such as humans. My paper suggests one should consider the other effects of power lines and assess the risks. My paper only suggests an alternative explanation for epidemiological evidence pointing toward cancer occurring around power lines.

I would consider looking at the power lines both during the day and at night. During the day one could find the transformers and capacitors and determine whether exploding or leaking components would contaminate your property. At night one could look for the blue electrical sparking which produces ozone. This sparking is usually accompanied by a buzzing sound. If you live in a place where there is little breeze the ozone could settle down to the ground as it is produced and you may even smell it, which indicates a high concentration.

If everything is fine and you buy the property make sure you keep an eye on these details and call the utility company if something changes.

Why do you put this smart and complicated?

This is a very difficult question, mainly because of the pronoun "this" in the question. If the "this" refers to the current web page written by me, then it is put smart and complicated because I am a smart and complicated sort of guy.

How does a "fog machine" work?

First of all, I assume by a fog machine you mean the device used to create fog in a disco. These devices are very simple, although the fog liquid is the secret to their operation. The device itself is no more than a hot electrical coil. A good homemade fog machine may consist of an old iron which is no longer needed. The fog liquid is then poured onto the hot coil and it quickly boils. The chemicals in the fog liquid become air born, and do not evaporate quickly, leaving the so-called fog.

Where did Scots get their reputation for thrift?

This is both an easy and a difficult question to answer. I am sure there is no documented evidence for exactly where the Scots got this reputation, but if we are allowed to generalize we could make a good guess. Scotland has never been known as a land of plenty, in fact the growing season is quite short and the soil is quite rocky. Based on this knowledge we could imagine life in Scotland a difficult venture to say the least. Based on this information it would not be a difficult leap in logic to assume a high cultural value on being thrifty. When people move about they tend to bring their cultural values with them even if these values don't make the same sense in the new location.

Do you really feel Environment is the proper topic for this page?

This page, although it does have a question on smog, should not be in the Society:Issues:Environment section. I do have a page on Power Lines which should be in the environment section. (click on Power Lines to read it.) I have no control over the topic assigned to each of my pages. Do you really think I would put my genealogy pages in Entertainment:TV:Soaps?

How long is the biggest white shark?

Imagine for a moment how one might go about answering this question, then you will see how difficult it would be to learn the length of the biggest white shark. First of all, the ocean is very large and there are a great number of sharks swimming in them. We could begin by catching all of the sharks. We would only need to keep the biggest one, and let the rest go, however, we would not know when we have found all of the sharks unless we had some method to keep track of the sharks already caught and measured. I am sure this would prove quite difficult. Even if we were able to catch all the sharks and know when we have already caught and measured all sharks we would have missed a large number of candidates in all the white sharks that have lived before this measurement began. Sharks are a very old species, and being able to measure all white sharks since sharks evolved from protosharks (or whatever the preshark species is called) would be quite impossible because we do not have time machines or the remains of all white sharks which have lived.

Have you been to Scotland?

Well, not quite. I have been to London several times, so I've been on the island, but I've never been that far north. I lived in Hamburg, Germany for three years, but I never found the time to go to Scotland. In fact I never knew for sure that I was Scottish until about 5 years ago when I discover the book: "Forbes and Forbush Genealogy The Descendants of Daniel Forbush" by Frederick Clifton Pierce I hope to make it to Scotland sometime in the next few years. We have made it to Slovenia just after they became an independent country to search our Slovenian roots. We do need to make a trip to Ireland to search our Hart and Carroll roots.



How many planets are there?

There are many planets in the universe. One could estimate the number of planets in the Universe by first estimating the number of galaxies in the Universe based on the even distribution of galaxies and the number of galaxies observed in a survey of a portion of the sky. This would be an incorrect assumption based on the latest survey results that show that there is large scale structure in the Universe. Even based on this large scale structure one could estimate the total number of galaxies by order of magnitude to be 10^9 Each galaxy contains a large number of stars, perhaps 10^10 stars. Next, we must define what we mean by a planets, because there are many bodies that orbit the sun, but we consider them asteroids when they are "too small." In other star systems we know that stars, black holes and neutron stars may also orbit a star. We could consider our solar system to be a "typical star system" and use 10 planets/star as an estimate. By doing this we estimate the total number of planets in this Universe to be 10^20.

My numbers are just estimates based on what I recall, but more accurate numbers may be available.

In millions of kilometers – how far are we from the sun?

This is much easier: 93 million miles * 1.6 kilometers/mile = 148.8 million kilometers

What makes smog?

Usually the burning of some material creates smog which is defined as smoky fog. In the In the times before man nature could create fog from volcanic gasses or naturally created forest fires. Man has recently stressed the environment by increasing the load to the ecosystem by first burning large quantities of coal during the Industrial Revolution in the late 1800’s. Dickens described the smog that hung over London. More recently man has stressed the environment by making iron and tires in the automobile industry in large quantities. In these processes more than just Carbon oxygen compounds were made (which are present in the burning of wood or coal), such as sulfur compounds. Typical smog caused during inversion layers in places such as Mexico City or Los Angeles are caused automobile exhaust (burnt gasoline) which get trapped in a valley. The carbon dioxide part of the smog can be reabsorbed into the ecosystem by plants. However, this process takes time and if we destroy large amounts of Rain Forest the plants will not be able to absorb the large amount of CO2 in the atmosphere.

If you were going to get hit by lightning, where would you like to get hit at?

If I had a choice I would like to be in a forest surrounded by trees. Then most of the electrons flowing from the ground to the clouds would have many paths to follow. This being the case, only a small current (hopefully less than 10mA) would travel through my body and I would not be put in any serious danger.

What are waterspouts?

Waterspouts are tornadoes created over water. When the tornado touches the water the force can suck the water up off the surface making a spout.

How often does Old Faithful erupt?

This is an interesting question, because Old Faithful was named for reliability, but in fact we can plot the number of times that the geyser erupts verses the amount of time from the last eruption from the eruptions over 2 weeks or so.

Now, the really cool thing is that if you plot the interval time verses the duration you see:

As you can see, there is a correlation between the duration of the eruption and the interval between each eruption. Therefore, you can say that the average time between eruptions is 71 seconds, while the length of time before the next eruption depends on how long the duration of the previous one was.

Do we need fat and calories?
Of course we need both fat and calories. Children especially need fat during development. The brain consists of a high percentage of fat and will not develop properly without a proper amount of fat usually obtained from milk in the first year of life. If you define fat as a general term for lipids and cholesterol there are many biological functions that require these to function. One of the most important of these is storing energy to be used later, as well as thermal insulation. Calories are just a unit of measure an amount of energy. In dietary circles calories are used as a measure of the amount of energy obtained from a certain type of food. Some foods are more energy rich than others. For example 8 oz of celery will contain less energy than 8 oz of chocolate. Therefore, we need energy for our bodies to function. Since the body tries to be efficient it will store the excess energy in the form of fat. This could be handy, if there is a famine and you can not eat for several days. Your body will produce energy by breaking down the fat in your body and turning it into energy. This can also be dangerous if it is overdone, remember that the brain consists of a large percentage of fat that will break down during a hunger strike.

If you were diving off a waterfall would you keep on going straight down or start going into the waterfall?
This depends on the waterfall and the assumptions made in this question. For real waterfall one must consider of the forces in the problem. The gravitational force will in general be in the same direction that the water is falling. If we begin to consider the air currents created by the falling water there may be forces that could push you in other directions.

Is a glassier bigger on the top or on the bottom?
This must be a trick question, because my dictionary does not define glassier.

The Danger of Power Lines