STRANGE BUT TRUE
Q: What do the following four statements have in common: The color red makes bulls angry. The rust on a dirty nail causes tetanus. Bananas grow on trees, and those trees can walk. Cockroaches can survive a nuclear apocalypse.
A: They are all common science myths, as reported in “How It Works: Book of Amazing Science.”
1. Take those red capes, for example. While humans “can see light in red, green and blue wave lengths, bulls, like most other mammals, only have two-colored vision,” rendering them red-green color blind. It’s not the color of the cape but its movement that attracts the bull’s attention.
2. And now for a short lesson on tetanus. Tetanus is caused by a bacterial infection that exists as spores in the soil, surviving for long periods of time. So that rusty nail probably has been outside for some time, “making it more likely to have come into contact with the bacteria.” Be sure that your vaccinations are up to date.
3. Here’s something you may not know about bananas. They’re actually classified as berries, growing on plants that might look like trees but are really herbs with “trunks” made from tightly wrapped leaves. The plants have a network of sideways-branching roots that spread out laterally and creep away under the soil. From these roots, “new leaves can spring up far from the original stem, making it appear as if the banana plant has moved.”
4. And finally on to those seemingly indestructible cockroaches. It is true that they can withstand much higher levels of radiation than humans. “However, while adult roaches can survive radiation levels equivalent to those released by the Hiroshima nuclear bomb, their fertility is adversely affected by much lower levels of radiation.”
Q: When children have been asked to draw a scientist, the typical lab coats and bubbling beakers emerge, but the person wearing the lab coat is shifting. How so?
A: From 1966-1977, the first “draw-a-scientist” studies included 5,000 children, but only 28 drawings (0.6 percent) depicted a female, says Erika Engelhaupt in “Science News” magazine. When Ph.D. psychology candidate David Miller and colleagues looked at studies from 1985-2016 involving children from kindergarten through 12th grade, they discovered that, on average, 28 percent of participants now drew female scientists (“Child Development” online). But, concludes Engelhaupt, “What hasn’t changed much: Kids pick up gender stereotypes as they grow up. At age 6, girls in the more recent studies drew female scientists about 70 percent of the time. By age 16, only 25 percent did so.”
Q: In the early 1990s, Iceland had a serious problem: “its young people were abusing drugs and alcohol and becoming a social menace.” What relatively simple solution did officials successfully execute?
A: Based on the advice of addiction expert Harvey Milkman at Denver, Colorado’s Metropolitan State University, they worked to “give teens the high they craved in a healthier form — sports,” says Laura Spinney in “New Scientist” magazine. They imposed a nighttime curfew for 13-16-year-olds; the state funded sports, dance and arts programs; and parents, teachers, politicians and journalists all worked together to replace the drug-oriented social norm with one based on participation in sport and the arts. Today this approach has been proclaimed “an unqualified success.” As Spinney concludes, “Icelanders even credit the new norm with contributing to their victory over England in the 2016 European football championship.”
Send STRANGE questions to brothers Bill and Rich Sones at sbtcolumn@gmail.com.