GOOD old London Science Museum. Just about every catalogue it ever sends out gets something wildly wrong.
Here鈥檚 this autumn鈥檚 offering, spotted on page 3 by reader Adrian Farnsworth: 鈥淛et engines zoom us around the world and fly us to the moon, but how do they work?鈥�
How indeed, when they depend for their operation on an intake of air?
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THERE are times when Microsoft is perhaps not as helpful as it might be. A colleague of reader Russell Wade emailed him a file created in MS Project 2000. However, he only has Project 98 on his PC, which told him: 鈥淭his file was created by a later version of Microsoft Project. To open the file you need a converter that you can download from the web.鈥�
It then directed him to Microsoft鈥檚 Assistance Center website, which gave him the following message: 鈥淵ou have reached this page because you opened a Microsoft Project 2000 or a Microsoft Project 2002 file using Microsoft Project 98 and are expecting to download a file converter. Unfortunately, the converter does not exist, and there are no plans to develop one.鈥�
Thanks a bunch, Microsoft.
IT IS amazing what learning about science can do for you. Reader Chris Shimmen is a regular viewer of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation鈥檚 science programme Catalyst. He finds the programme useful and enjoyable, but even so he was taken aback by the description of it in a recent TV guide of Melbourne鈥檚 The Age newspaper: 鈥�8:00 Catalyst. Science journalism programme. Users claim it makes them richer, sexier and more youthful 鈥� better in bed and in the boardroom.鈥�
Sadly, when he watched that week鈥檚 programme Shimmen discovered it was about testosterone therapy, a fact that the TV guide had neglected to mention in its preview.
WE entirely understand that press officers often need an angle to get a story noticed, but sometimes the result can seem a little far-fetched. One release we received recently was headlined 鈥淩esearchers find that Superman鈥檚 teeth can superconduct鈥�. What on earth could justify such a headline, we wondered.
The release began promisingly enough: 鈥淩esearchers at the University of Warwick have found that phosphorus, an element commonly found in teeth, can act as a 鈥榮uperconductor鈥�.鈥� Then disappointment struck: 鈥淏ut you would have to have the strength of Superman to clench your teeth hard enough for it to work, as it happens at a pressure of around 2.5 megabars 鈥� some 30,000 times harder than an ordinary human can clench their teeth.鈥�
Oh well. At least they tried.
DIGITAL cameras are now being given away like bags of sweets. They come in credit cards, on key rings and in phones. In Singapore recently, a colleague noticed a new trend 鈥� slot machines that make instant prints of the images in a camera鈥檚 memory.
Perhaps the Palomar Observatory in California should take note. Earlier this year, when the same colleague made a pilgrimage to Mount Palomar to see the famous 200-inch Hale telescope, he noticed that the visitors鈥� centre was showing a video made by the BBC that featured broadcaster Patrick Moore. It was clear and informative on the history of the telescope, and Moore went on to explain how astronomers no longer look at the stars through an eyepiece or take pictures on photographic film. Instead, he said, they focus the image on a light-sensitive microchip called a charge-coupled device so the picture can be stored electronically.
Then came the revelation that Palomar鈥檚 CCDs are the size of a postage stamp and have half a million pixels. They cost half a million dollars each, because only one in every 100 made works well enough to use.
That was doubtless true in 1980, when the video was made. But now chip factories routinely mass-produce CCDs with several million pixels per chip and their yield is close to 100 per cent. Most of Palomar鈥檚 visitors will have been using cameras that far outperform the chips they are told the observatory is using.
While on an English seaside holiday in Whitby, North Yorkshire, reader Alice Myerson was browsing through the usual cheap mementos in a souvenir shop. She was interested in the 鈥渉oroscope鈥� cigarette lighters bearing the names of the zodiac signs: Aries, Taurus, Gemini, and so on. Nothing wrong with that, she thought, except that she had a feeling that the one labelled 鈥淐ancer鈥� might not look quite so good once you got it outside the shop and started using it in public.
FINALLY, from the department of getting the best of both worlds, reader P. C. Newman sends us the packaging of some Wasa rye crispbread and an empty carton of Cussons Carex handwash. Both are prominently labelled 鈥淥riginal鈥� and, equally prominently, 鈥淣ew鈥�.
From the department of tasteless euphemisms. Reader Aidan Merritt used to work for an organisation that tabulates medical statistics. Its reports invariably replaced the unfriendly word 鈥渄eaths鈥� by 鈥渦nscheduled bed vacancies鈥�