The Nobel Peace Penny

I don't think that I will ever win a Nobel Prize.

Really, I don't think I will ever get close. People who win these prizes tend to do something spectacular when they are young, and get recognized for it around 80 years later. I, on the other hand, play computer games. Badly.

My wife, though, is brilliant. Most of the time. Despite what I've been writing here.

And so we found ourselves looking up the different categories for the Nobel Prize, you know. Just because. The first place we looked was Wikipedia where we were greeted with this picture.

This is not a penny.

My wife, who as I have just mentioned as being more probable to win the prize than myself, asked me why there was a picture of a penny on the page. 

It was all I could do to keep myself from laughing at my future laureate.

The Nobel Prize, for those who care, is 66 millimeters (2.6 inches) across and weighs on average 175 grams. As of today that would make the metal from the medal worth around $7900 USD, which is a pretty penny indeed. However, that isn't all. The prize also includes a cash bonus which brings the prize to 1.2 million dollars, to spend as you wish!

I can't wait til my wife wins.

Cambodia

Taboo, the game, is sorta my wife's thing. I mean, she's about to get a masters in Linguistics, so playing with words, and knowing how to describe them, that's like her realm. There are other things that are not her realm. Like geography.

So there we were playing Taboo with some friends, and it was my wife's turn. She picked up a card, and we flipped the timer.

"Umm, it's a country. It's in South America."

I've studied Spanish for around 10 years, so I know a thing or two. I've travelled to South America, not just once, but multiple times. I had this. Or so I thought.

I quickly rattled off a list of the countries in South America and looked up, grinning like a fool at my wife.

"No, none of those..... A different one."

Following that statement was 30 seconds of frustration as she continued to insist that I must have forgotten a country. I didn't. The timer ran out, and with it our hopes for any points that round. Sitting back with a sigh, I asked her what country it was.

Cambodia, for those of you who were wondering, is not in fact in South America. It is in South Asia. On the other side of the world.

Pressure ≠ Gravity

For pretty much as long as man has lived we have dreamed of touching the sky. From the legend of Icarus to the flight to the moon, man has always striven to fly higher and better. My wife, though, hates flying. Even so she and I do our fair share of it as we flit from here to there and back again. That's why a question she asked me recently caused me to shake my head in defeat.

"So, if an airplane has a pressurized cabin, and we were to turn upside down, would the passengers even know?"

Now, if you know anything about how gravity works, and I'm assuming you do, then you will know that yes, gravity still functions even if the air is pressurized. Elizabeth had just assumed that when the cabin air is pressurized the pressure would be great enough to glue the passengers to their seats.

The reason planes pressurize there cabins actually has nothing to do with keeping passengers seated, though it has everything to do with keeping them comfortable. And, you know, alive. Humans need air to be at a certain density for us to be able to get enough oxygen from it to survive when we are breathing, and air over a certain elevation becomes too thin for us to breathe. If you've ever been at the top of a mountain you may have noticed a feeling of being out of breath, or perhaps you've experienced altitude sickness. This is due to the lowered level of oxygen being absorbed with each breath. In order to keep air at a comfortably breathable density, airplanes are designed to push extra air into the cabin where passengers sit. This increases the pressure, which gives rise to the name "pressurized".

If the air was pressurized to such a point that humans wouldn't fall when the plane is turned upside down, we'd have a whole other set of problems to deal with. Namely, the air would be slightly thicker than water.

Now if I just understood the other set of problems having to do with flying upside down......

Thanks to xkcd.com for the comic above.