3 Common Misconceptions

In every day life we will come across many things that we think we know. Sometimes we know them accurately, but there are many times where we think we know something and it's actually wrong. These misconceptions are a part of our daily lives and I'd like to talk about them. Below you will find 3 common misconceptions that I came across recently.

Swear Words

First off, let's talk about something everyone loves. Swear words! There are so many of them to choose from, and they're all so deliciously flavored which makes it difficult to choose just one. However, I'll do just that, and stick with everybody's favorite swear: Fuck.

I'd like to begin by telling a story: When I was working for a large Oil company, my boss - a PhD engineer - loved to tell a story in meetings about where certain swear words came from. "Fuck" he would say, "is a hold-over from a time when the royalty of England were forbidden from visiting mistresses and brothels." The idea is that fornication was considered not just a sin, but against the law and carried a severe punishment. Legend says that, in order to circumvent this law, certain fortunate people would carry a written form giving them free reign to put their bits wherever they wanted. Such forms are thought to have said "Fornication Under Consent of King" and include a royal seal, giving these people a hall pass.

Despite what you may have heard, his is un-correct! In fact, the word comes from a place that makes total sense. The earliest written form of the word is believed to be in an old English poem from the fifteenth century. Incidentally, this is over 100 years before the Puritan movement got into power in England (the types of people who would pass a law against fornication). This poem is called Flen Flyys, and the author mentions how certain people won't go to heaven because they fuccant the wives of other people. You don't need to be a genius to figure out that context. Earlier than this, it is believed that the word came from a Scandinavian origin. There is a Norwegian word, fukka, and a Swedish word, focka, that both mean to copulate. This seems like a pretty logical origin of this word given our usage of it.

For further reading, you might find this amusing.

Napoleon's Height

I'm sure that some of you are familiar with the military leader Napoleon Bonaparte. He's a very famous French military leader who ended up ruining most of Europe's military in what began as the French Revolution and grew into the Napoleonic Wars. It's a pretty interesting part of world history since, for one, the Napoleonic Wars developed into a continent-spanning war that involved most (all?) of the major European powers. This war paved the way for some major political and national changes. For example, it saw the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire and is said to have begun the German sense of nationalism that became famous in later years. Plus, this period of history has spawned some pretty cool games.

I have one of me just like this... only on a lion.

One of the things you hear about Napoleon was that he had a complex associated with an inferior stature, or an inferiority complex. The Napoleon Complex is a colloquial term used to describe an alleged psychological phenomenon in people, usually men, of short stature. The idea is that these people are driven to excel in spite of any physical disadvantages, and compelled to prove themselves just as good or better than their taller counterparts. These people are usually said to be egocentric and very driven - often to the point of isolation. This misconception is a double-whammy because first, shorter people are actually less aggressive than their taller counterparts on average. Second, Napoleon was above average height for his time period.

You see, when you were a country of any significance back in those days, you had your own units of measure. It can cause a lot of confusion when you say that Napoleon was 5"2' which is, technically, a correct statement. Unfortunately, you're not including what units you're measuring in... he was 5'2" if you base your conversion off British inches. In fact, they would have used the French Pouce. The difference is that British inches are 2.51 cm and the French Pouce is 2.71 cm. This is a difference of about 7% - the difference between 5'2" and 5'7". While below average for today's standards, 5'7" was above average in they days of Napoleon. Converting units can be hard, and no one knows this like NASA.

Space Ships Burning on Reentry
As most of you are probably familiar, things light on fire as they reenter the Earth's atmosphere. Take a look at this video of one of the space shuttles coming in... that's not a nice sunset. That's fire.

 What most of us have been lead to believe is that this happens as a result of friction caused by traveling through the atmosphere at such a rapid pace. It makes a lot of sense to us because almost all of us know what an Indian burn feels like (thanks, brothers!).

Despite common knowlede, or perhaps common sense, this is not true! The fire that burns outside a spaceship during reentry is due to a process called adiabatic heating. The short version is that when you're going through an atmosphere at really fast speeds, the gases will apply high pressure to the front/bottom of the spacecraft. Think of it like going down the highway with your hand out the window of your car. You can feel the wind resistance against your hand - this is a force being applied by smashing air molecules against your hand. Now think of doing that same thing, but going 25 times the speed of sound... or 18,000 mph.

In an adiabatic process, is a change of a system in which no heat is transferred. If you had a closed piston system, like a bike pump with the end closed, and you pressed down on the pump, the existing gases trapped in the piston would be forced into a smaller volume. Since you're not taking out any gases, the pressure increases. This increase in pressure accompanies an increase in activity of the molecules trapped, which causes the heat of the system to rise. Heat is essentially a measure of how energetic molecules are. In a colder system, molecules move slower. In a hotter system, the molecules move faster.

To summarize, you're putting so much pressure on a space ship on reentry that the gasses will actually ignite against the hull of the ship. The result is a pretty awesome looking fireball.

I'd like to write about more misconceptions in the future. So stick around!

-Jack