How Do They Do That?

Caroline Sutton

• Publisher: William Morrow
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN: 9780688011116
• eBook ISBN: 9780062018526
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Teaching Science & Technology
• Index: History

Index

The pagination of this electronic edition does not match the edition from which it was created. To locate a specific passage, please use the search feature of your e-book reader.

“Absolute zero,” determination of, 227–229

Advanced optical character reader (AOCR), 19

Aerial photographs, locating archaeological sites with, 42

Aerosol cans, 127

Air cushion vehicles (ACVs). See Hovercraft

Air mail, 18–19

Airplanes

determination by pilot of speed of, 282–283

and hurricane tracking, 25–26

landing in fog, 178–179

See also Boeing 747

Airports

metal detectors at, 96

postal facilities at, 18–19

Airspeed indicator (ASI), 282–283

American Telephone and Telegraph, phone-bugging detection service of, 168

Amniocentesis, and sex identification, 21–23

Animals

censuses of populations, 89–93

determination of endangered or extinct species, 92–93

AOCRs, 19

Archaeology

dating of artifacts, 261–263

locating of sites, 42–43

Aromatics, synthetic, 116–118

Art. See Art forgeries; Frescoes; Paintings

Art forgeries, detection of, 49–52

Artificial flavors, 116–118

Artificial insemination, 66–68

Artificial pacemaker. See Pacemaker

Astronauts, toilet facilities on spacecraft for, 229–230

Astronomy

calculation of speed of light, 70–71

prediction of solar eclipses, 84–87

See also Galaxies; Stars; Universe

Atomic fusion, 87

Australopithecus afarensis, 204–205

Automobile muffler, 224

Autopsy, determination of cause and time of death from, 207–210

Bacteria, petrophilic, 183

Balance or rhythm climbing, 59

Balloons, steering of, 94–95

Balls. See Fastball

Banks, and transfer of money between checking accounts, 152–154

Bar code, and mail, 19

Barometric pressure, navigation of homing pigeons and, 20

BBs, 66

Bees

location of food by, 56–58

reasons for building honeycombs, 53–56

Best-seller lists, determination of, 103–104

Bias belted tire, 60–61

“Big Bang” theory, 121, 123–124, 212

Billboard painting, 188–190

Birds, counting of, 90

Boeing 747, air supply and pressurization, 176–178

Bombs, dogs sniffing out, 81–82

Bones, X ray of, 115

Books, best-seller lists of, 103–104

Bottle, whole fruit in, 27

Brachiosaurid. See “Ultrasaurus”

Brandy. See Pear brandy

Bridges. See Suspension bridges

Brooklyn Bridge, construction of, 156–158

Building, determination of cause of collapse from rubble, 146–148

See also Tall buildings

Bullets, tracing, 108–109

Cable cars, in San Francisco, 205–206

Camels, reasons for low water requirement of, 137–138

Canal, ships traveling upstream through, 233–234

Cancer, and radiation therapy, 154–155

Canning of corn, 135–136

“Capture, recapture” method, 89–93

Catgut, sources and uses of, 160

Caviar, collection and processing of, 273–275

Census of wild animals, 89–93

Cesium clock, 107

Checking accounts, transfer of money between, 152–154

Chemicals, for oil spill removal, 182–183

Cherries, fake, 224–225

Chickens, slaughter and processing of, 165

Choreography, notation for, 251–257

Choreology, 251, 255

Chromosomes, and sex determination, 22–23

Cigarettes, removal of tar from, 38–39

City, measurement of elevation of, 138–142

Coffee. See Instant coffee

Coins detection of slugs by vending machine, 118–119

selection of designs for, 34–35

“Cold light,” 206–207

College entrance exams. See Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT)

Computers and determination of causes of building collapse, 148

and low temperatures, 229

and prediction of solar eclipses, 86

and selection of taxpayers for audit, 79–80

Conductor, signs used by, 128–130

Conservation of paintings compared with restoration, 191–192

removal of frescoes, 277–279

Contac time-release capsule. See Time-release capsules

Continental drift, measurement of, 230–233

Corn production of ethanol from, 210–211

stripping from cob for canning, 135–136

Corpse, embalming of, 246–247

Crop disease, multispectral analysis of, 45

Currency, selection of picture on, 33–34. See also Money

Dance notation systems. See Choreography

Death, determination of cause and time of, 207–210. See also Embalming

Dentistry, r...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Contents
• ? How do they sort mail so that a letter you drop into a box in New York arrives at an apartment in Los Angeles a few days later?
• ? How do homing pigeons find their way home?
• ? How do they determine a baby’s sex before birth?
• ? How do magicians saw a woman in half?
• ? How do they measure the speed at which a hurricane is traveling?
• ? How do they predict the path of a hurricane?
• ? How do they get a whole pear into a bottle of pear brandy?
• ? How does a steel ship float?
• ? How does on artificial pacemaker help a weak or damaged heart?
• ? How do they write the Encyclopaedia Britannica?
• ? How do they decide who is pictured on United States paper currency?
• ? How do they decide what goes on American coins?
• ? How do they get the lead into a pencil?
• ? How do they remove far from cigarettes?
• ? How do they measure the speed of a fastball?
• ? How do they wash the windows of the World Trade Center?
• ? How does a high-speed elevator take you 60 floors in 30 seconds?
• ? How does an archaeologist or anthropologist know where to dig?
• ? How do they predict future crop yields by satellite?
• ? How do they pick Nobel Prize winners?
• ? How do they decide whether a fine pointing is a forgery?
• ? How do they turn coffee into instant coffee?
• ? How do bees know how to build honeycombs?
• ? How does a honeybee find food?
• ? How do mountain climbers scale sheer rock walls?
• ? How do car tires grip a wet rood?
• ? How do they sort eggs into jumbo, large, and medium sizes?
• ? How does a submarine dive and resurface?
• ? How does a Xerox machine make copies instantly?
• ? How do they effect artificial insemination?
• ? How do they select donors at a sperm bank?
• ? How do they know what the speed of light is?
• ? How do they know how hot the sun is?
• ? How do they generate electricity?
• ? How does a Contac time-release capsule know when to release?
• ? How do they tell whose shirt is whose at a laundry?
• ? How do they build a subway under a city?
• ? How does the IRS decide which taxpayers to audit?
• ? How do they teach dogs to sniff out drugs at borders, bombs at airports?
• ? How does truth serum work?
• ? How do they get the stripes onto Stripe toothpaste?
• ? How do they predict solar eclipses?
• ? How do they time stoplights to keep traffic moving?
• ? How do they turn on street lights automatically?
• ? How do they count populations of animals?
• ? How do they determine whether a species is endongered or extinct?
• ? How do they steer balloons?
• ? How does a metal detector at the airport know whether you have metal on your person?
• ? How do they “lift” faces?
• ? How do they grow gropes without seeds?
• ? How do they perfectly reproduce large statues in miniature?
• ? How does The New York Times determine its best-seller list?
• ? How do they know what time it is?
• ? How do they trace bullets to specific guns?
• ? How do they execute a trade on the New York Stock Exchange?
• ? How does a hovercraft speed across the water?
• ? How do neon signs glow?
• ? How does on X ray photograph your bones but not the surrounding flesh?
• ? How do they come up with artificial flavors that taste just like the real thing?
• ? How does a vending machine know that the coin you inserted is the correct value and not a slug?
• ? How do they roll up a roll of Scotch tope?
• ? How do they measure the size of the universe?
• ? How do they know the universe is expanding?
• ? How do they write college entrance exams?
• ? How do slot machine operators keep the odds in their favor?
• ? How do they get the foam into a can of shaving cream?
• ? How do the musicians in on orchestra know what the conductor wants them to do?
• ? How do they rote movies?
• ? How does a Polaroid picture develop in broad daylight?
• ? How do they get corn off the cob and into the can?
• ? How do they make mirrors?
• ? How do camels go without water?
• ? How do they measure the elevation of a city or mountain?
• ? How does a microwave oven cook food from the inside out?
• ? How does a thermostat know your house has cooled off?
• ? How do glosses correct nearsightedness or farsightedness?
• ? How do they determine from the rubble the cause of a building’s collapse?
• ? How do they get natural gas to your house?
• ? How do they splice genes?
• ? How do they transmit pictures by telephone?
• ? How do they actually transfer money from your checking account to someone else’s?
• ? How do they moke dry ice?
• ? How does radiation therapy help cure cancer?
• ? How do they suspend a suspension bridge?
• ? How do they get catgut for tennis rackets?
• ? How do they match fingerprints?
• ? How does Frank Perdue kill chickens?
• ? How does Ivory soap float?
• ? How do they transplant hair?
• ? How do they know whether your phone is bugged?
• ? How do astronomers know where one galaxy ends and another begins?
• ? How do they produce hashish?
• ? How do they create spectacular fireworks?
• ? How does Planters shell all those peanuts without breaking them?
• ? How do they give you fresh air in a 747, flying at an altitude of 40,000 feet?
• ? How does on airplane land in fog?
• ? How do they mop up oil spills?
• ? How do they measure the ratings that reveal on Tuesday morning what Americans watched on TV Sunday evening?
• ? How do they make rain?
• ? How do they take photographs of the insides of the human body?
• ? How does a jewel thief know whether a string of pearls is worth stealing?
• ? How do they make pictures big enough to put on billboards?
• ? How do they restore a valuable painting?
• ? How do they keep the ice in a skating rink from melting?
• ? How do they put the lines under an ice hockey rink?
• ? How do they make toll buildings perfectly vertical?
• ? How do they tune a piano?
• ? How do they charm snakes?
• ? How do they know when man was born?
• ? How do cable cars clang up and down steep San Francisco hills?
• ? How do fireflies flash?
• ? How do they determine the cause and time of death from an autopsy?
• ? How do they make gasohol?
• ? How do they know how many stars are in the universe?
• ? How do they know how far away the stars are?
• ? How does a polygraph detect lies?
• ? How do sword swallowers swallow swords?
• ? How do they tell how smart you are from an IQ test?
• ? How does a gun silencer silence the shot?
• ? How do they make fake cherries?
• ? How does a dentist perform a root canal?
• ? How do they know how cold “absolute zero” is?
• ? How do astronauts relieve themselves in space?
• ? How do they measure continental drift?
• ? How does a ship move uphill through a canal?
• ? How do Polaroid sunglasses block out the glare but not the rest of the world?
• ? How do they measure the gross national product?
• ? How does a pipe organ generate sound?
• ? How do they pick the Pope?
• ? How can they tell what a dinosaur looked like from a single bone?
• ? How does a thermos keep coffee hot, or lemonade cold, for hours on end?
• ? How do they embalm a corpse?
• ? How do “electric eye” elevator doors pop open for you if you walk through them as they start to close?
• ? How does a dollar-bill changer know whether your dollar is real?
• ? How do they notate choreography?
• ? How do they put 3-D movies on television?
• ? How do they dig tunnels underwater?
• ? How do they get air into a 2-mile-long tunnel?
• ? How do they know whether an object dates from 1000 B.C. or 3000 B.C.?
• ? How does a diamond cutter cut a diamond?
• ? How do they select contestants for the Miss America Pageant?
• ? How do they decide whether a steak is Prime or Choice?
• ? How does detergent cut grease?
• ? How do they collect caviar?
• ? How does a heat-seeking missile find its target?
• ? How do art conservationists remove a fresco from a wall?
• ? How do they stop on oil-well blowout?
• ? How do they point the straight lines on streets?
• ? How do instruments in the cockpit tell a pilot how fast he is flying?
• ? How do salmon, after years of migration over vast distances, return to the rivers in which they were spawned?
• Index
• Acknowledgments
• Copyright
• About the Publisher