Pushing F1 to the limit
QUESTION Has a professional driver won a race by coasting across the finish line?
The U.S. Grand Prix at Sebring International Raceway in Florida was the last in the 1959 Formula 1 World Drivers’ Championship. Points leader Australian Jack Brabham was in second place when he ran out of fuel 400 yards short of the finish line.
he pushed his Cooper T51 across the line to finish fourth, earn three points and secure his first driver’s championship.
Nigel Mansell started the 1984 Dallas Grand Prix from pole position — his first in F1. In searing heat, the track was breaking up and several drivers crashed.
On the final lap, Mansell was running in fifth when he hit a wall, causing his gearbox to break. With the finish line in sight, he got out of his Lotus and pushed it across the line before collapsing from exhaustion. he dropped to sixth, earning a single championship point.
Will Dale, Deanshanger, Northants.
QUESTION Could the 200 BC Baghdad battery generate electricity?
The Baghdad battery was found in Khujut Rabu, Iraq, in 1936. It was a 5½ in tall clay container with a stopper made of tar. Sticking through the tar was an iron rod surrounded by a copper cylinder.
German archaeologist Wilhelm Konig discovered that when filled with vinegar, it produced a small electrical potential.
he argued it was a battery used for electroplating 2,000 years before Alessandro Volta produced his battery. This may be fanciful as no electroplated objects are known from this period.
In 1948, an engineer at General electric replicated the jars and created an output of almost two volts. The current was minute, at best delivering 1/40th of the power of an AAA battery, nowhere near enough for electroplating.
In 1978, German scientist Arne eggebrecht claimed that by using a large number of such jars he could electroplate a very thin layer of gold on a silver ornament.
An alternative explanation is that the jars were used for medicinal purposes. The Romans treated gout by standing in pools of electric eels!
however, archaeologists believe they were storage vessels for scrolls and the battery element was fortuitous.
Dr Ian Smith, Cambridge.
QUESTION Are there any songs where the music follows the lyric?
FURTheR examples of musical prosody include Van halen’s Jump, when Dave Lee Roth raises and lowers his voice accordingly on the lyrics: ‘I get UP . . . and nothing gets me DOWN.’
MC hammer abruptly exclaims ‘Stop . . . hammer time!’ for the Rick James Superfreak sampling U Can’t Touch This.
John Travolta sounds as if he’s been given an electric shock when he shudderingly tells Olivia Newton-John ‘Cause the power you’re supplying . . . it’s electrifying’ in You’re The One That I Want.
Get Low by Lil Jon & The east Side Boyz does what it say on the title’s tin with each mention of the song’s refrain.
Similarly, the word ‘higher’ in the hiphop classic White Lines scales up whenever the ‘higher baby’ chorus is rapped.
And on Madness’s The Sun & The Rain, Suggs drops the tone to reflect the lyric: ‘I’ve been feeling so low (low).’
James Hyman, London NW3.