Peak Performance

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Provincia_di_Catania_colori.svg

This is fascinating if it’s true: Ten municipalities meet at the summit of Mount Etna, producing a “decipoint” and one of the most complex arrangements of political boundaries outside Antarctica.

I say “if it’s true” because, for such a striking fact, it’s surprisingly hard to confirm. Many sources point to a blog post at Condé Nast Traveler by Jeopardy champion Ken Jennings, but that cites no source.

On the other hand, no one else seems to doubt it, and this map by Patrick McGranaghan won the American Geographical Society’s monthly map contest in November 2017. Maybe I’m too skeptical?

09/21/2023 UPDATE: Wow, it seems to be true. The official website of the Parco dell’Etna includes a map (PDF) showing the distribution of comuni metropolitani around the peak. And the website of the Italian National Institute of Statistics offers data files on statistical districts that can be opened using the desktop version of Google Earth. Many thanks to readers Rob Miller and Ross Ogilvie for looking into this.

| Oddities · Trivia

Reputation

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Phalaropus_fulicarius_98755138_(cropped).jpg
Image: Wikimedia Commons

The bird known as the red phalarope in North America is the grey phalarope in England — it bears red plumage during its breeding season, but the British see only its drab winter dress.

A poem by Lord Kennet, from my notes:

I live in hope some day to see
The crimson-necked phalarope;
(Or do I, rather, live in hope
To see the red-necked phalarope?)

| Trivia

Misc

  • Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and James Monroe all died on July 4.
  • Australia is wider than the moon.
  • NoNRePReSeNTaTiONaLiSm can be assembled from chemical symbols.
  • 1 × 56 – 1 – 7 = 15617
  • “‘Needless to say’ is, needless to say, needless to say.” — Enoch Haga
| History · Language · Quotations · Science & Math · Trivia

The Bottom Line

https://pixabay.com/photos/pencil-writing-education-sharp-3241121/

In his 2008 book 100 Essential Things You Didn’t Know You Didn’t Know, cosmologist John D. Barrow considers how long a straight line a typical HB pencil could draw before the lead was exhausted.

A soft 2B pencil draws a line about 20 nanometers thick, and the diameter of a carbon atom is 0.14 nanometers, so a pencil line is only about 143 atoms thick. The pencil lead has a radius of about a millimeter, so its area is about π square millimeters. If the pencil is 15 centimeters long, then it contains 150π cubic millimeters of graphite.

Putting this together, if we draw a line 20 nanometers thick and 2 millimeters wide, then the pencil contains enough graphite to continue for the surprising distance L = 150π / 4 × 10-7 millimeters = 1,178 kilometers. “But I haven’t tested this prediction!”

(Thanks, Larry.)

05/21/2022 RELATED: How much of a pencil’s lead is wasted in the sharpening?

(Thanks, Chris.)

| Science & Math · Trivia

Long Haul

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Whangarei_airport_upgrade.jpg

New Zealand’s Whangarei Aerodrome and Morocco’s Tangier Ibn Battouta Airport are on precisely opposite sides of the earth: In an antipodal map projection, which maps each part of the world to its opposite location, the two airports’ runways even cross.

Unfortunately, at 1,097 meters, Whangarei’s longest runway is too short to accommodate a commercial jet with the necessary range, so there’s no way to actually fly from one to the other. For the dedicated air traveler, the next best pairing is Taipei and Asuncion, which are 19,912 kilometers apart.

02/28/2022 UPDATE: Wait, I’m wrong — a reader tells me that on an antipodal projection the closest points on the two runways are about 23.8 kilometers, or 14.8 miles, apart. Still, remarkably close!

| Trivia

The Queens Giant

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Queens_Giant_in_2013.jpg
Image: Wikimedia Commons

The oldest living thing in the New York metropolitan area is this 40-meter tulip poplar in Alley Pond Park in Queens.

With an estimated age of 350 to 450 years, it may already have been growing when Henry Hudson sailed into New York Bay in 1609.

| Oddities · Trivia

“The Slash”

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:49_parallel_waterton.jpg
Image: Wikimedia Commons

In areas of mountainous terrain and wildnerness, the border between the United States and Canada is kept clear of brush and vegetation to a width of 6 meters, forming a visible line between the nations that’s visible in satellite images.

The deforested segments total more than 2,000 kilometers.

| Trivia

Misc

  • “Worry often gives a small thing a big shadow.” — Swedish proverb
  • Uranus was discovered before Antarctica.
  • PROTECTORATE is a palindrome in Morse code.
  • PUBLIC RELATIONS is an anagram of CRAP BUILT ON LIES.
  • If you copy this sentence, be sure to omit “”.

(The fourth is due to Mick Tully, the fifth to David Armstrong.)

| Language · Oddities · Quotations · Trivia

Ambiance

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Albert-einstein-house.JPG
Image: Wikimedia Commons

This cottage, at 112 Mercer Street in Princeton, New Jersey, has been home to three Nobel winners: Albert Einstein lived there from 1935 to 1955; physicist Frank Wilczek between 1989 and 2001; and economist Eric Maskin until 2012.

It resides on the National Register of Historic Places and has been designated a U.S. National Historic Landmark, but it bears no outward marker of its significance.

| Science & Math · Trivia