Why Don't Penguins' Feet Freeze?: And 114 Other Questions

New Scientist: Last Word #4

by New Scientist, Mick O'Hare (Editor)

Why Don't Penguins' Feet Freeze? is the latest compilation of readers' answers to the questions in the 'Last Word' column of New Scientist, the world's best-selling science weekly. Following the phenomenal success of Does Anything Eat Wasps? - the Christmas 2005 surprise bestseller - this new collection includes recent answers never before published in book form, and also old favourites from the column's early days.

Yet again, many seemingly simple questions turn out to have complex answers. And some that seem difficult have a very simple explanation. New Scientist's 'Last Word' is regularly voted the magazine's most popular section as it celebrates all questions - the trivial, idiosyncratic, baffling and strange. This new selection of the best is popular science at its most entertaining and enlightening.

Genres: Nonfiction, Science, Reference, Popular Science, Trivia, Humor, Animals

240 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2006

Reviews

[Petra X · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've finished the book and have discovered one gem above all others, but it's too late for me :-( Conkers. If you are British you would almost certainly have played conkers when you were in primary school. Every Autumn term you would pick up the fallen horse chestnuts and applied your chosen treatment to harden it, threaded it up and hoped you'd got the hardest one, a real champion, a ten-er maybe. I never got more than a six-er, but I pickled mine and as it turns out this was not the best treatment.

Everyone had their own method of hardening their conkers. Pickling, baking and even varnishing which was semi-illegal, were the favourites. But this book says that conkers from previous years would have dried out and been harder. The older the conker the harder it would be but they wouldn't be pretty and shiny but just a dull brown.

So that's a good tip. But something tells me old conkers weren't legal. I'm too old to remember though, is there anyone here young enough to know? LOL

________

Gem. Ants being able to run around in a microwave without being toasted. This is because they can sense where the current is and evade it. If you put a plate of marshmallows in the microwave they will cook unevenly (take out the turntable) and you will see the unevenness.

Gem. Hot water in a shallow or ice cube tray will freeze faster than cold water if places on a cold, frosty surface. The surface of the water will cool faster because of accelerated heat exchange and the bottom will melt the frost underneath slightly which will then refreeze and provide a bigger, colder surface to turn the water into ice. The bit that the book left out is that the ice cube tray is now stuck to the bottom of the freezer so you can't get it out and use the ice cubes anyway.

______

Not really a good book for reading but kind of ok for being stuck in queues where you expect to be called at any minute and can't really concentrate. Three stars is generous but that's me!

[Nandakishore Mridula · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sometimes, you find gems on the roadside, justifying the concept of serendipity. This book was such a find.

I was walking around town, looking for the office of my share-broker who had shifted, when I noticed this old guy with a pile of second-hand books on the pavement. 3 of them cost Indian Rupees 200/- (which is a bit over 2.5 Dollars, you Americans!), and most were in good condition. And most importantly, it had a lot of books apart from the run-of-the-mill romances and thrillers you find in such places.

Being a pop-science junkie, this book immediately caught my eye. A brief glance convinced me to buy it - and boy, did I make a good decision!

If we look around us, we can see a lot of phenomena which will set us wondering what were their causes. Children have this curiosity and keep on questioning - I remember my son, when he was three years old, pestering me continuously about the origin of lightning - but as we grow up, we slowly lose our sense of wonder and start accepting things as they are. But there are people who don't, and they send their questions to magazines like the New Scientist where they are answered by other readers - the experts and the not-so-experts. This happens in a column named "Last Word", and the questions and the discussion are fantastic. This book is a compilation of the best of them.

You can dip into the book at intervals, or read it at a stretch - you won't be bored if you like science. And BTW, the conversation is still going on here, at the New Scientist.

[roz_anthi · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's a nicely organised book, offering lots of answers to questions you'd never expect to have. The content was funny and witty, and most of the times, a person with minimal understanding of the physical world would get the general idea behind the given explanations. However, I found the absense of explanatory diagrammes and schemes quite disturbing. You can't describe experiments only with words or explain phenomena without some sort of visual help.

[Nicky · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty much like any of the other New Scientist books: full of information, some of it more interesting to me, some of it less. Some of the chosen answers are quite funny, and quite a few of the questions are quite weird. Some of the answers are very similar to principles in the other books, but for the most part there's a good spread of different information here. Well categorised, too: a section on human bodies, on food, on domestic science...

Also noticed that it works as a flipbook with a fishing penguin. Ha.

[Kirsty · Rating 4 out of 5]

I learnt some interesting things, and found I could read this book either in long stints (e.g. on a long train ride) or by the occasional peruse. This is because the layout was based on the questions and answers. So if you only have a few minutes (e.g. in the doctor's waiting room), you could just read one question and the provided answers.

One thing I did find a little annoying was that for some of the questions, there were several answers that provided the exact same explanation, the additional answers provided did not reveal anything new. I found myself skipping a few pages because of this. However, there were many times were the extra answers provided were interesting. They either sparked debate, provided additional information, or purely comedic value.

If I was given the remaining books as a present, I would certainly read them.

[Binibining `E (of The Ugly Writers) · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book puts me to sleep, hahaha but seriously this is informative and well informative haha!

[Alatea · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some things were more interesting, some things were less interesting. A nice change after all that fiction that I've read recently :)

[Jaki · Rating 3 out of 5]

Small tidbits of information about a lot of different and random topics. It sort of feels like a bartender has written this as bartenders know a little about a lot of things, but not a lot about many things. The title drags you in because who doesn't want to know why penguins' feet don't freeze?! Then it takes you on a random journey or facts. Like being on a trivia show.

I liked that the book was narrated by many different people, which assisted in the question and answer format, but especially since the answers were provided by not only scientists from around the world but anyone who knew the answer and wrote it with it. Sometimes there were multiple answers, and even contradicting answers when a definitive answer has not been reached by consensus in the scientific community. There was even a very descriptive and informative answer given by a primary school student.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book answered many questions across the science fields. Overall, it was very quick, interesting read. The questions and answers come from a column in the magazine New Scientist. The only drawback, in my opinion, is that the qualifications of those answering are seldom listed. Once in a while, someone lists that they are a professor at such-and-such university, or work at a company that directly relates to the question, so they can give a unique insight into the product/process being asked about, but for the most part, it is just a name, giving me more reason to doubt their qualifications vs those who specify why they know the answer.

[loonchies · Rating 4 out of 5]

หนังสือรวมคำตอบของคำถามที่น่าสนใจหลาย ๆ หัวข้อ บางคำถามก็เป็นคำถามวิชาการ บางคำถามก็มาจากการสังเกตปรากฏการณ์ทั่วไปที่เจอได้ในชีวิตประจำวัน หรือคำถามประหลาดที่คนทั่วไปคงไม่สงสัยกันแต่มีคนอยากรู้ขึ้นมา เหมือนที่ตอนเด็ก ๆ สงสัยสิ่งต่าง ๆ และอยากรู้คำอธิบายที่มาที่ไปของสิ่งหนึ่งหรือเหตุการณ์หนึ่ง

ที่น่าสนใจคือคำตอบ บางคำถามอาจมี 1-3 คนตอบเลย แล้วไม่ใช่เป็นการตอบทื่อ ๆ ถาม A ตอบ B
คงพยายามเอาคนจากสหวิชาชีพมาตอบ ดังนั้นคำตอบบางทีก็จะแสดงมุมมองที่เรานึกไม่ถึงด้วย มีหลายมุมมาก คนเรามาจากต่างพื้นเพก็อาจจะมองอะไรได้ต่างกัน แม้ว่าจะเป็นคำตอบสั้น ๆ แต่น่าสนใจมาก
บางคำถามที่เรารู้คำตอบแล้ว ก็จะมีคำตอบแนวอื่น ทั้งมุมมองทางวิทย์ ทั้งมุมมองทางสังคมประวัติศาสตร์ และอีกหลาย ๆ มุม
ยิ่งทำให้รู้สึกชื่นชมกับความรู้ศาสตร์ต่าง ๆ มาก และเข้าใจความจำเป็นของ multidisciplinary
หรือบางทีคำตอบก็ไม่ได้ตอบตรง ๆ เพราะมันตอบไม่ได้หรอก คำตอบจึงเป็นแนวอธิบายแทน ว่าน่าจะเป็นอย่างไรได้บ้างนะ ใช้แนวคิดไหนมาจับดีนะ บางทีก็มาเป็นข้อสันนิษฐานชวนคิดที่น่าสนใจและตลกดี
อ่านไปก็อารมณ์ดีและพลางคิดไปว่านี่คิดได้ยังไงกัน

บางทีคิดว่าได้คำตอบพอละ แต่ก็ยังตอบต่อเชื่อมโยงไปเหตุการณ์น่าสนใจอื่น ๆ อีก
เลยอ่านสนุกดี ได้เจออะไรใหม่ ๆ เปิดหูเปิดตามาก

บางคำถามที่มีคนตอบมากกว่าหนึ่ง
จะเป็นคำตอบ thread ลงมา
ไม่ใช่ว่าคนแรกจะอธิบายถูกเสมอไป
บางทีคนที่สองก็มาอธิบายว่าที่คนแรกว่าไว้ไม่น่าจะใช่นะ น่าจะเป็นอันนี้มากกว่า
แบบนี้ก็ดี รู้สึกมีคนมาเถียงในหัวแทนให้
อย่าเชื่ออะไรง่าย ๆ ให้ลองคิดไตร่ตรองดูก่อนนะ

หรือบางคำตอบก็ตั้งใจมาเล่นมุกอย่างเดียวเลย ก็ขำ ๆ แป๊ก ๆ แต่ตลกดีแบบมุก geek ๆ อะ

——-

เรื่องน่าสนใจที่มีคำอธิบายที่ชอบ เช่น
แชมพูขจัดรังแคทำงานยังไง?
ทำไมสูดฮีเลียมพูดออกมาแล้วเสียงเล็กแหลม?
ทำไมบางคนเวลาตั้งใจทำอะไร ชอบแลบลิ้นงับริมฝีปากไว้?
เป็นเรื่องบังเอิญหรือตั้งใจที่ขนาดนิ้วพอดีกับรูจมูก เพื่อจะได้แคะ���มูกได้สะดวกรึเปล่า?
ทำไมขี้มูกมักจะเป็นสีเขียว?
ทำไมชีสยืดได้?
ฯลฯ

——-

อ่านจบแล้วมีช่วงที่ทำให้ว้าว แล้วก็มีช่วงน่าเบื่อ ๆ อยู่เหมือนกัน
เป็นหนังสือที่อ่านได้เพลิน ๆ

[Nick Davies · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've had this in my bathroom for a few weeks, and it makes for a decent 'loo read', but in truth it was a bit lightweight, a bit patchy and a bit repetitive. I can understand finding many of the queries far from new because of both my having read plenty of New Scientist in my time, and also because of my professional scientific knowledge/experience. Less so, I partly understand that throwing in a few 'simple questions asked by kids' alongside the more complex ones makes for variety. I found however that most sections had two or three answers which overlapped significantly and this made for a repetitive reading experience. For 50p however, which is what I paid, not a big problem, though had I paid full price of eight or nine quid, it would've felt poor value for money.

[Faras_bookclub · Rating 3 out of 5]

A bit disappointed with this one, I was really excited for this one as I absolutely love little facts and science, but I got confused and a bit bored. Like a lot of the questions have multiple answers and sometimes there were a lot of different explanations which made me confused about what the real answer now was and then sometimes there were multiple answers that said the same like 3 times so I don’t know why the extra answers were there then.

[Hannah · Rating 3 out of 5]

While the facts themselves are interesting, reading multiple answers to the same questions gets a bit tiresome after a while. I know it goes against the whole format, but the book would probably read much better if multiple answers are merged together, crediting all the submitters at the end.

[Lance · Rating 3 out of 5]

"The question has certainly made me reluctant to take accepted wisdom for granted when it comes to observations which do not fit preconceived notions of what is correct."

There are some really fun, interesting questions in this book. I enjoy the Last Word section of New Scientist, as the questioners often take something so familiar that I can often take for granted and make me think more methodically about phenomena I encounter every day. Reading the collection in this book was fun as a trivia collection, and also as a puzzle book, as I tried to come up with an explanation for each question before reading the contributors' submissions. A light work out for my brain and well-suited to bright teenagers.
My favourite question posed was: Two people lose each other while wandering through the isles of a large supermarket. Should one person stop moving, or would they encounter each other sooner if both were moving through the isles? My intuition was that the friends would be reunited faster if both were actively looking, but I couldn't back this up. I started thinking about two independent random walks and the probability of their intersecting in a finite time versus the probability of a single random walk intersecting a given point. This led to an interesting conversation with my mathematician husband Baby Adam about the 'coupling' of random walks being used to generate probabilities for these moving closer together or further apart. It's amazing how much there is to think about in these simple everyday problems!
Other stand-out questions included: Why is it when I walk home from the pub after a few beers, I always stumble to the left? As a neuroscientist, I immediately focuses on the dominant eye, but others wrote about the dominant leg, or the more muscular leg, and it got me wondering what happens for people whose dominant eye and leg are on the opposite side of their body? (I am all left-sided.) Is there any connection between being cold and catching a cold? This is a favourite old-wives' tale of my mother's, so it was interesting to see people write in about the initial chill that comes before the cold fever as reverse causality, but nothing about being cold lowering peoples' immune systems? Why do sheep always run in a straight line in front of cars and not to the side? Basically, sheep want to avoid exposing their throat to fast, manoeuvrable predators such as wolves and big cats. But why don't the sheep learn that cars are nowhere near as lithe as wolves and in fact have huge turning circles? They have a folded cerebral cortex after all! If Polar bears were transferred to Antarctica would they survive? And would penguins survive in the Arctic? Thankfully for the beautiful Emperor penguin, no one has put polar bears in Antarctica, but I was amazed to learn that in 1936, penguins were introduced to Norway to replace the extinct great auk, but suffered the same predation by man. Why is an image in a mirror inverted left to right and not top to bottom? This was one of those questions that seemed simple, just because it is so familiar and effect. It was interesting to think about the human psychological bias to understand this effect in terms of rotation rather than reflection, but I will still need to think about this a little longer before I am sure I have it understood. What time is it at the North Pole? There was only really cool answer which gave a method for making a star or sun based 24-hour clock to track the passage of hours in 6-month darkness or light. We have tried the experiment taught by science teachers in which a candle immersed in water is covered by an upturned glass. This question, which was the source of the pull-quote at the beginning of my review, debunked the common explanation that the candle will only go out once all the oxygen in the air is used up by showing that the volume of air left in the jar is less when more candles are present. It was interesting to question the status-quo and find that the traditional explanation had omitted the simple phenomenon that the air will expand when being heated by the candles and that part of the reduction in volume is due to decreased temperature of the air under the jar.
And I liked finding out once and for all why Rock the Boat bottled ale is better than Budweiser!
Not all of the questions were interesting to me, there were a few about gun accidents that just made me sad, and several about wines which I am simply too working-class to claim to understand. But overall the questions were fun, the most entertaining being the ones that had an abstract component that could be contemplated from several different angles.

[Thikrayat Al-aradi · Rating 1 out of 5]

Book itself was okay, the questions are interesting and some are stuff I did wonder about myself, but the fact that each question is answered by someone else, most of which are not actual specialists in the field is kinda not cool at all, it makes it not differnt from just googling stuff. This also causes inconsistency in the answers, because each is answered in a different way, and sometimes there will be two contradicting answers to the same question which is very confusing.

The audiobook on the other hand was horrible, each question/ answer is read by someone new with differnt accent different way of speech differnt notes, it makes it very inconsistent once again and very distracting, because each time I'll have to get used to the way that person says things. And the sound effects with every question are just too much.

I wouldn't recommend reading this book, if you want to read this sort of book with extremely good answers explained in an interesting easy to understand way, I recommend reading what if? By Randall Munroe.

[Bettie · Rating 3 out of 5]

home audio



Daily Express - 'a fascinating mix of the baffling, ridiculous and trivial...answers the scientific questions you never got round to asking.' Independent on Sunday - 'at last, the mysteries of the world are explained...the book everyone is talking about' Daily Mirror - 'They are the things we've all wondered about, from why we cry when we slice onions, to what makes our hair turn grey...' BBC Radio 5 Live - 'Extraordinary book...responsible for putting popular science back on its feet'

[Jessica · Rating 2 out of 5]

A few of the questions asked in this book where interesting and there were even a couple of humorous responses, but the vast majority didn't really capture my attention. In many cases the questions had several answers provided, which would have been fine if they all added something new to the discussion, but most of the time they just regurgitated the same sort of responses. I also wasn't a fan of the complicated scientific jargon... I love to learn new things, but a lot of this either a.) went over my head, or b.) made my eyes start to glaze over.

[Ken · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is a series of questions that have been answered by readers of the New Scientist magazine. Most of the questions were interesting but others I did not care about at all. The questions are grouped under themes that makes up the chapters of this book. I feel that some of the answers can be further filtered so you do not end up with questions with 3 or 4 different answers. This is one of those books that you pick up and read a question from time to time.

[Mehmet Yildirim · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found myself struggling to finish this book. Some answers to questions are unreasonably long which makes the reader bored.

[Shriya · Rating 3 out of 5]

Questions sent in by readers of New Scientist are answered.
Personally only few questions where in there for me.
Some rather humorous.

[Shane Phillips · Rating 2 out of 5]

Zzzzzzzz...

[Suzie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting, I would have preferred more editor notes that maybe summarised answers more, otherwise, worth a read!

[Graceann · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book, from the New Scientist Last Word Editors, does just what it says on the cover. There are 114 questions that were asked and answered in the magazine's pages. Many of them made me say "hey, now that's a good question, and I never thought of why that would be."

Unfortunately, though I can see why this would occur, given that the book is already only 230 or so pages long to begin with, there is a fair amount of repetition. One question might get the same answer written three or more different ways, which gets monotonous after a while. There are also the answers that strive (and fail) to be amusing, such as the wag who answered the question of why we veer to the left when we're drunk by stating that we've spent all our money and thus our right-hand pocket is emptier by the end of the night. Yawn.

This is the kind of book that my Dad might have called a "bathroom reader;" it's perfect to dip in and out of for a few minutes at a time. I don't suggest that you attempt reading it as I did, as a dedicated, beginning-to-end read, because that just induced the question of "how many pages are left to read in this thing?"

[Mladoria · Rating 2 out of 5]

Florilège de questions réponses des lecteurs du Magazine The New Scientist. Plutôt qu'un ouvrage de vulgarisation, il s'agit d'une compilation d'articles web avec commentaires plus ou moins argumentés, plus ou moins légitimes selon la compétence des lecteurs répondants. Plusieurs questions suscitent des débats parmi les réponses et au final, on ne sait pas vraiment démêler le vrai du faux, à moins que la vérité ne soit contenue dans cette somme d'avis.
Tantôt drôles, absurdes ou scientifiquement viables, les réponses comme les questions sont intéressantes pour la plupart. Mais si vous cherchez vraiment des réponses à ces questions existentielles telles que : Pourquoi pleure-t-on quand on coupe des oignons ? ou bien encore Pourquoi les oiseaux ne tombent-ils pas quand ils dorment ? vous trouverez ici quelques réponses. Distrayant mais à lire par petites touches pour éviter l'ennui.

[Naomi · Rating 3 out of 5]

A few interesting concepts, and definitely a trip down memory lane in terms of a lot of they physics. However, the fact of being a bunch of people’s responses means that often you’re reading the same answer multiple times just with one or two words or sentences different. Personally I’d have much preferred if the editor amalgamated the responses into one comprehensive response and then credited all the contributors at the end. Would be great for a teen interested in science though; lots of interesting questions but many of the responses do require at least a standard grade/gcse/o level/nat 5/etc understanding of especially physics, and to a lesser extent maths. So probably someone sitting higher/as level/etc. or above would get the most out of it, or someone younger but with an incredibly keenly inquisitive mind who can easily look up and understand several of the concepts.

[Callum Soukup-Croy · Rating 1 out of 5]

I don't get the point of this book at all. If it was accurate answers to often pondered questions that would be interesting and worth reading but the answers are useless. Because they are submitted by readers of the New Scientist, there are often multiple answers saying the same thing. Bizarrely the person who collated the book includes all of them so you end up reading the same explanation several times. Or worse, someone else contradicts the first person and both answers are shown with no clarification as to which is correct. Failing either of those two, the answer is some supposedly witty response which is usually not funny and not interesting. This is just a terrible book and was clearly only published to be a money spinner for the New Scientist.

[Aiden Forbes · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was pretty mediocre. Half of it was pretty facinating, answering a bunch of questions that I think we’ve all asked. Stuff like “why does a tea kettle whistle” or “how does a gun silencer work,” which is pretty interesting. The other half of the book was hearing the same answer, just reworded in a different way. Some times they didn’t even answer the question. It felt like they just tried to say I “don’t know” in the most complicated way possible. Other then this, the answers that were given were pretty good and easy to understand. I feel like the author could have sorted out the answers to the questions a little bit more, but other then that, this book was pretty good.

[Diana · Rating 1 out of 5]

Ogromne rozczarowanie. Oczekiwałam lekkiej aczkolwiek pouczającej lektury. Okładka, opis oraz chwytliwe hasło "bestseller" obiecywało bowiem odpowiedzi na dość niecodzienne pytania podane w formie przystępnej dla każdego czytelnika a także okraszone sporą dawką dobrego humoru. Nic bardziej mylnego. Już dawno tak bardzo nie zmuszałam się do ukończenia jakiejś książki. Przebrnięcie przez nią było prawdziwą mordęgą. Nie lubię niestety pozostawiać książek nieskończonych. Dla osoby nie posiadającej fizycznego czy też chemicznego wykształcenia wykraczającego poza liceum jest to w większości przypadków naukowy bełkot, z rozrywką niemający wiele wspólnego.

[Adam · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bardzo pouczająca książka. Napisana lekkim stylem, odpowiadająca na wiele nurtujących pytań (również, na te, które zbyt mocno nie nurtują), niemniej każde z nich jest ciekawe i z całą pewnością wzbogaci wiedzę czytelnika. Idealna książka na krótkie podróże, np. w pociągu, czy metrze, kiedy nie trzeba zgłębiać "poskręcanej" fabuły i można przerwać czytanie praktycznie w każdym momencie. Humor książki sprawia, że jest ona jeszcze przyjemniejsza, a dowiedzenie się jak ciekawe pytania potrafią zadać dzieci, pouczające.

[Trung Nguyen Dang · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very short book which is a compilation of Q&A in the 'Last Word' column of New Scientist, a weekly publication. The questions are submitted by the readers and the answers are also contributed by other people/readers. Thus, the quality of answers vary. Sometimes there are multiple answers to the same question. Thus, it is much better to read book written by one author for consistency/quality of writing and answers, in my view. For example, I much prefer "Storm in a Teacup: The Physics of Everyday Life" by Helen Czerski.