Why Venus is hot stuff
QUESTION Why is Venus hotter than Mercury, which is closer to the Sun?
MERCURY nips around the Sun in an 88 Earth-day orbit at a distance of 36 million miles. It spins on its axis slowly, taking nearly 59 Earth days for one revolution.
Having no atmosphere to speak of, Mercury heats up on its day side to a maximum of 427C, with a night temperature of minus 173C. The excess heat radiates back into space during the time of darkness.
Venus travels around the Sun at a distance of 67 million miles. It has a dense atmosphere of carbon dioxide and sulphuric acid at a pressure of 92 times that of our atmosphere. It spins backwards, which means the Sun rises in the West and sets in the East.
Another oddity is that Venus takes 225 Earth days to orbit the Sun and 243 Earth days for a single revolution around its own axis, which means its day is longer than its year.
The surface temperature of Venus is 467C, day and night. This is hot enough to melt lead, due to the Sun’s radiant heat being trapped by the atmosphere. It’s like Dante’s vision of Hell. John Langley, Vectis Astronomical Society,
Newport, Isle of Wight.
QUESTION What is the oddest banner trailed by a plane?
Plane advertising goes back to the Thirties when littlewoods and Vernons football pools were fighting it out for dominance. In 1935, littlewoods sent planes over london pulling the banner: ‘littlewoods above all.’
Arsenal football supporters are fans of the plane banner. By the end of long-time manager Arsene Wenger’s reign, banners calling for his resignation were almost a weekly occurrence.
In March 2017, football fans at West Brom’s Hawthorns ground witnessed the strange sight of rival Arsene Wenger banners flying above the stadium.
Before the match, one said: ‘no contract #Wenger out.’ After Arsenal equalised, a rival banner had: ‘In Arsene We Trust #respectAW’. The match ended in a humiliating 3-1 loss for the Gunners. It later emerged the same company, AirAds Banners, had flown both banners.
It costs between £750 and £950 to fly a banner over the Midlands. Tight air restrictions over london means you are unlikely to see a banner flying over the Emirates Stadium.
Nat Rees, Birmingham.
In 2015, U.S. pay-TV channel Comedy Central flew a massive, eye-catching aerial banner over new York and los Angeles beaches that read: ‘Where’s your plane, peasants?’
It was advertising Another period, a mockumentary about the aristocratic Bellacourt family and their servants.
Natasha Ritter, Lowestoft, Suffolk.
QUESTION How did an apothecary become a chemist and pharmacist?
THESE three titles reflect the changing way in which medicine has been dispensed over the centuries. The word apothecary derives from
apotheca, meaning a place where wines, spices and herbs were stored. An apothecary was the custodian of an
apotheca. As most ancient medicines were derived from herbs, it was the place to buy basic ingredients.
In time, apothecaries started concocting their own remedies. Many of these were effective against day-to-day ailments, such as indigestion and mild fevers, and are still used in herbal and mainstream medicines.
Apothecaries had their own guild. In 1180, they were called the Guild of pepperers and were joined in 1316 by the spicers. The guild dealt en gros (basically) with foodstuffs, giving us the word grocer.
The Honourable Company of Grocers was formed in 1428, subsuming the earlier guild. By the Tudor era, spicers were only concerned with mixing remedies. They operated independently of physicians and people could consult either.
Those practising apothecary skills tried to break away from the grocers, but were prevented from doing so until 1617, when they were granted a Royal Charter to form the Worshipful Company of Apothecaries, which still exists.
pharmacology is the medical discipline involved in the study of medicines and their actions on the human body.
The word derives from the Ancient Greek pharmakeia, meaning the practice of the druggist, and is unrelated to herbs and spices. This discipline goes back at least as far as the Middle Ages.
Strictly speaking, a pharmacist wouldn’t be involved in the selling of drugs. However, to sell drugs legally, a retailer has to have the relevant qualifications and those are in pharmacy, hence the use of the term.
The pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain was established in 1841 to introduce professional standards into a largely unregulated retail trade.
Until then, anyone could sell drugs, many of which were useless and some of which were poisonous. The society lobbied for changes to the law to limit the selling of drugs to those qualified to do so. Their concerns led to changes in the way arsenic was sold.
The first exams were set by the society in 1852 and a degree in pharmacology at the University of london was approved in 1924. In 1988, the Queen granted a charter, making it the Royal pharmaceutical Society.
The term chemist is a catch-all for someone who mixes chemicals. Strictly speaking, it is the discipline within science involved in the study of chemical elements. As a pharmacist also studies the way chemicals work and often mixes them to make drugs, the term became associated with them.
Shops started calling themselves chemists rather than apothecaries around 1841, coinciding with the founding of the pharmaceutical Society.
As a way of reclaiming their professionalism, most chemist shops refer to themselves as pharmacies; the public still use the term chemist; and apothecary has become obsolete.