Business book review: Inflight science

Inflight Science: A guide to the world from your airline window, by Brian Clegg Not strictly a business book this week, but one well worth hunting down. There may well be readers – of this review – if not the book – with a high level of general science, but I suspect the rest of us have very little, which  means we are particularly susceptible to what now is known as Bad Science http://www.badscience.net/ (Ben Goldacre wrote a great book about it). Bad Science can convince you to follow medical treatments that won’t do you any good or may possibly harm you, or in the field of travel, it means you swallow arguments you wouldn’t otherwise have believed. As you’d expect, everything from X-ray security machines to global warming is explained, although I’m not sure I needed Newton’s Laws of Motion to explain how an aircraft sets off (and why they try and take off and land into the wind). It was, however, interesting to read about why Virgin Atlantic’s much publicised idea for tugs to take aircraft right the way out to the runway to save fuel was finally abandoned (the aircraft manufacturers warned that increasing the amount of towing would put too much strain on the undercarriage, meaning the struts that old the wheels would have to be replaced more frequently. In addition, the nonsense about carrots helping you see in the dark? I always thought it was to do with what they are made of. In fact, it comes about because of “...surprisingly successful propaganda put out by the Air Ministry during the War, which claimed that fighter pilots were on a diet that was rich in carrots to improve their night-time eyesight so that they could spot incoming German bombers. In reality it was radar that was helping direct the fighters towards their targets, but it was hoped the Germans would believe the stories. There was so such coverage in the British press that it became common folklore that carrots help you see in the dark.” The advantage of the book is that you can find out lots of things you’ve always wondered about in idle moments on aircraft (and waiting for them), but have never been bothered to Google. In fact, it was only after reading the book that I started to Google o check if some of it was correct. I knew there was no Gate 13 at London Heathrow, but I hadn’t realised the following: “Sometimes when gate 13 is missed out, there’s a tendency to consider gate 14 unlucky because “it’s really gate 13”. To prevent this from happening, gate 12 is at one end of the Terminal Four building while gate 14 is at the other end. As you never see the two gates side by side. It’s not obvious that gate 13 isn’t there, so no one worries about using gate 14.” There’s lots more of this, from the settlements you will see on the ground (oxbow lakes, ancient monuments and experiments to try and estimate how high you are – which of course you can then check on the moving map – to chats about why clouds don’t fall to the ground, despite being full of water vapour and so heavier than air. I’d heard that tea boils at only 90 degrees centigrade on board, but I’d have welcomed knowing whether that was enough to kill off any germs in the water. If you travel with a child, you’ll find answers to all the normal questions – why does the sun keep shining, what colour is the sea, vacuum problems in toilets and if you cross enough time zones, will you get younger.... and so on..... I started this book thinking I wouldn’t like it and ended by wanting to recommend it. Tom Otley