Which part of âpartial zeroâ donât we understand?
READER John Cleveland is puzzled. His new Subaru car proudly declares itself to be a âPartial Zero Emission Vehicleâ (PZEV). âNot being a great mathematician,â he writes, âIâve spent way too much time sussing out what quantity of greenhouse gases might be in a part of zero.â
He is not the only one who is confused. âWhat does Partial Zero Emission Vehicle mean?â asks one post on the . Another comments: âThatâs like being âa little bit pregnantâ.â
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Feedback wondered whether mathematics was the correct discipline within which to tackle this problem, and immediately suspected that we were in the presence of lawyers. And we were right. It turns out that a PZEV is defined precisely â in the lawyerly sense of that word â under , which have been adopted by several other US states. A PZEV is a vehicle that âmeets SULEV tailpipe emission standards, has a 15-year/150,000-mile warranty and has zero evaporative emissionsâ. SULEV, in turn, stands for a âSuper Ultra Low Emission Vehicle,â which must be â90 per cent cleaner than the average new model year vehicleâ. And âcleanerâ is defined⊠somewhere.
The practical upshot appears to be that manufacturers get for making cars that do not evaporate unburnt fuel, which would contribute to smog. This partially supports Johnâs conclusion that: âHowever the maths works out, we must have helped part of the whole environment.â
Feedback would have continued our research in an attempt to quantify that âpart ofâ and to work out what any of this has to do with greenhouse gases: but our invoice for overtime at of $1000 an hour has unaccountably been turned down.
Our barely surprising headline of the week comes from a press release from the Karolinska Institute in Sweden: âAdults with ADHD commit fewer crimes when on medicationâ
Millions of elephants may help us
ELEPHANTS continue to provide assistance to those who want to achieve a better understanding of exactly how big very big things are (Feedback, 6 July 2012). Lisa Giblin tells us about an article in the April edition of US magazine Mother Jones entitled âLife of Pâ and subtitled âWeâre running out of phosphorous â and thatâs bad news for anyone who eats food.â
âThe Environmental Protection Agency,â the magazine reports, âestimates that central Florida already houses nearly 1 billion metric tons of phosphogypsum [a radioactive waste product of the phosphate fertiliser industry], and 32 million metric tons are added each year â the equivalent of the âcombined weight of approximately 6.4 million elephantsâ, as an EPA document helpfully notes.â
âHelpful indeed!â comments Lisa. âWhen measured in elephants, I can truly picture the size of the problem.â
A category error in sleep disturbance
CALLOUS quote of the week comes from the UKâs Civil Aviation Authority, âProposed methodology for estimating the cost of sleep disturbance from aircraft noiseâ. The report states that âthe science is not robust enough to monetise the cognitive impairment in children at this timeâ.
Surely they are taking the name âscienceâ in vain here. Should that not be âthe philosophy is not robust enough to decide whether cognitive impairment in children has a monetary valueâ?
Real excitement in cake decoration
READER Sarah Longrigg was interested to come across hyper-dimensional cake decorators in the .
A page on Daisy Plunger Cutters in the Cake Decoration section of the online catalogue asserts that we can âcreate stunning sugarcraft flowers and daisies in minutes with these sugar paste cuttersâ.
âWhy buy?â the page asks, rhetorically, and gives its answers, such as the product being âsafe for children to useâ. It gives the cuttersâ measurements, which are given as â4 Ă 1.5 Ă 2 Ă 3 Ă 3.5cm.â So they are 5-dimensional, which is quite unusual, and may provide extra-dimensional crannies in which children can get irretrievably lost.
âEIGHTY-THREE per cent of Europeans believe food contains chemicals,â according to an article on that summarised the results of a Eurobarometer survey commissioned by the EU last autumn. âWhat do the other 17 per cent think food is made of?â asks Philip Crichton.
âWHO would have thought that?â was Galen Ivesâs reaction to the label on the lamb hotpot he bought from a Cross Country Trains buffet bar. It warned: âCaution: Once heated the contents will be hot.â
FINALLY, the delightful gift that Laurie Mansfield received from her son last Christmas had one slight drawback. When she tried to sign up for the gift â a voucher for the Wine Gangâs monthly tasting report at â she was informed that an âerror occurredâ and that âwe were unable to proceed with the sign-up confirmation for the following reason(s): this voucher expired on December 13 1901 at 21:45.52 British timeâ.
