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64 | NewScientist | 23 June 2012 FEEDBACK READER Andy Evans’s local medical centre happens to be in the Welsh village often given the famously long name of Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychw- erndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch – and we’re delighted to be able to print this. Like many such centres in the UK, this one has a touch screen to help lighten reception staff’s workload. Patients are requested to “Touch the screen to arrive for your appointment.” The day Andy visited the centre, the screen was not working very well. He attempted to “arrive” by touching the screen as instructed. Nothing happened. He tried again, still with no success. The screen, he began to suspect, was operating on some kind of quantum principle: he was clearly there, but on the other hand he hadn’t arrived yet. “I had to endure several uncomfortable minutes in this situation until the device started to work again,” he says. “But perhaps it had entered Reader Rachel Cave tells us that her local free paper, the Galway Advertiser, has been advertising a property “located within a hare’s breath of the beach” some indeterminate state that prevented the collapse of my wave function.” READER Kate Hayward draws our attention to a unit of measurement as strange as the elephant standing on a Mini Cooper (2 June). At the Hunstanton Sea Life Sanctuary in Norfolk, UK, she read about the largest species of freshwater fish in Europe, the wels catfish. “They can reach 2.4 metres in length and weigh 225 kilograms,” the note said. “This is equivalent to the combined weight of 1000 hamsters.” Kate is dubious. She used to weigh her hamsters on the kitchen scales: they varied from 100 to 200 grams. She believes this makes them unsuitable as a unit of weight. PEOPLE who promiscuously mix up incompatible units of measurement seem to be making converts. Following on the comment by Fox Sports pundit Larry McReynolds that “the drivers will use every ounce of the width of this track” (12 May), two readers report on signs observed on UK motorways. Derek Cragg saw an overhead gantry on the M4 which announced: “Height Restriction – 7.5 tonnes”, while Robin Moorshead tells of a warning sign on the M40 saying, “Low bridge – Max 7.5 tonnes”. SEVERAL readers have written to express astonishment over a report on face cream in London newspaper The Guardian ’s weekend section back in April. Rachel Simmonds, skincare training manager for La Prairie, was interviewed about the firm’s Cellular Platinum Cream, as part of a feature on why things cost so much. This product costs £656 for 50 millilitres. “The high cost is because of the platinum colloidal water we use,” Simmonds explained. “It is magnetically charged particles of platinum, so it has an impact on the electrical balance of the skin. It helps to realign the water molecules so you have a better receptivity to nutrients. But it also stops vital hydration from being lost.” More strangeness followed, including this peroration: “Because of the magnetic charge each particle contains, it’s symmetrical within the product and the way those tiny particles – they’re submicrons, so they’re really, really tiny – that’s how it spreads evenly on the skin, and that’s why it is able to shift water molecules and change the electrical balance.” We expect The Guardian published these unusual notions with tongue firmly in cheek. On the other hand, the discovery of magnetic charge in the wild would startle cosmologists who’ve been working hard to explain why lone magnetic poles are not seen at large in the universe (9 May 2009, p 28). Might this cream of Croesus be in line for a big prize? ON A recent walk in the Blue Mountains in New South Wales, Australia, Rosemary Smith came across an informative noticeboard about the fossilised dragonflies to be found in the area. The photo she sends us confirms that it begins: “Fossil dragonflies are found in rocks between 360 to 286 years old, some even older.” Rosemary says she hadn’t realised that fossilisation worked so fast in Australia. Feedback envisages teams of Aboriginal palaeontologists hunting fossils of the first European colonists, who arrived 224 years ago. A LEAFLET from Pandit Vijayashantar Sharma came through Beryl Hanley’s front door. Offering help with many of life’s problems, including the ability to “remove bad luck and black magic”, the leaflet asserts that Pandit V. Sharma “Predicts the past, present and future”. “I can predict the past too,” says Beryl. “I wonder whether he wants an assistant?” FINALLY, thanks to John Carpenter for the photo he sends us of the interior of a shuttle bus at London’s Gatwick Airport. Next to one of the windows is a sign saying “Use hammer to break glass”. Above it, a glass case with a hammer in it bears the message: “For hammer break glass”. You can send stories to Feedback by email at [email protected]. Please include your home address. This week’s and past Feedbacks can be seen on our website. For more feedback, visit newscientist.com/feedback PAUL MCDEVITT

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Page 1: Feedback

64 | NewScientist | 23 June 2012

FEEDBACK

READER Andy Evans’s local medical centre happens to be in the Welsh village often given the famously long name of Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychw-erndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch – and we’re delighted to be able to print this. Like many such centres in the UK, this one has a touch screen to help lighten reception staff’s workload. Patients are requested to “Touch the screen to arrive for your appointment.”

The day Andy visited the centre, the screen was not working very well. He attempted to “arrive” by touching the screen as instructed. Nothing happened. He tried again, still with no success. The screen, he began to suspect, was operating on some kind of quantum principle: he was clearly there, but on the other hand he hadn’t arrived yet. “I had to endure several uncomfortable minutes in this situation until the device started to work again,” he says. “But perhaps it had entered

Reader Rachel Cave tells us that her local free paper, the Galway Advertiser, has been advertising a property “located within a hare’s breath of the beach”

some indeterminate state that prevented the collapse of my wave function.”

READER Kate Hayward draws our attention to a unit of measurement as strange as the elephant standing on a Mini Cooper (2 June). At the Hunstanton Sea Life Sanctuary in Norfolk, UK, she read about the largest species of freshwater fish in Europe, the wels catfish. “They can reach 2.4 metres in length and weigh 225 kilograms,” the note said. “This is equivalent to the combined weight of 1000 hamsters.”

Kate is dubious. She used to weigh her hamsters on the kitchen scales: they varied from 100 to 200 grams. She believes this makes them unsuitable as a unit of weight.

PEOPLE who promiscuously mix up incompatible units of measurement seem to be making converts. Following on the

comment by Fox Sports pundit Larry McReynolds that “the drivers will use every ounce of the width of this track” (12 May), two readers report on signs observed on UK motorways. Derek Cragg saw an overhead gantry on the M4 which announced: “Height Restriction – 7.5 tonnes”, while Robin Moorshead tells of a warning sign on the M40 saying, “Low bridge – Max 7.5 tonnes”.

SEVERAL readers have written to express astonishment over a report on face cream in London newspaper The Guardian ’s weekend section back in April. Rachel Simmonds, skincare training manager for La Prairie, was interviewed about the firm’s Cellular Platinum Cream, as part of a feature on why things cost so much. This product costs £656 for 50 millilitres.

“The high cost is because of the platinum colloidal water we use,” Simmonds explained. “It is magnetically charged particles of platinum, so it has an impact on the electrical balance of the skin. It helps to realign the water molecules so you have a better receptivity to nutrients. But it also stops vital hydration from being lost.” More strangeness followed, including this peroration: “Because of the magnetic charge each particle contains, it’s symmetrical within the product and the way those tiny particles – they’re submicrons, so they’re really, really tiny – that’s how it spreads evenly on the skin, and that’s why it is able to shift water molecules and change the electrical balance.”

We expect The Guardian published these unusual notions with tongue firmly in cheek. On the other hand, the discovery of magnetic charge in the wild would startle cosmologists who’ve been working hard to explain why lone magnetic poles are not seen at large in the universe (9 May 2009, p 28). Might this cream of Croesus be in line for a big prize?

ON A recent walk in the Blue Mountains in New South Wales, Australia, Rosemary Smith came

across an informative noticeboard about the fossilised dragonflies to be found in the area. The photo she sends us confirms that it begins: “Fossil dragonflies are found in rocks between 360 to 286 years old, some even older.”

Rosemary says she hadn’t realised that fossilisation worked so fast in Australia. Feedback envisages teams of Aboriginal palaeontologists hunting fossils of the first European colonists, who arrived 224 years ago.

A LEAFLET from Pandit Vijayashantar Sharma came through Beryl Hanley’s front door. Offering help with many of life’s problems, including the ability to “remove bad luck and black magic”, the leaflet asserts that Pandit V. Sharma “Predicts the past, present and future”.

“I can predict the past too,” says Beryl. “I wonder whether he wants an assistant?”

FINALLY, thanks to John Carpenter for the photo he sends us of the interior of a shuttle bus at London’s Gatwick Airport. Next to one of the windows is a sign saying “Use hammer to break glass”. Above it, a glass case with a hammer in it bears the message: “For hammer break glass”.

You can send stories to Feedback by email at [email protected]. Please include your home address. This week’s and past Feedbacks can be seen on our website.

For more feedback, visit newscientist.com/feedback

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120623_Op_Feedback.indd 64 15/6/12 15:44:28