and explanations

We present the answers to last week’s conundrums.

Last week we presented several questionable-looking statements in the spirit of April Fool, only one of which was actually false.  Here, the day after, we give our answers.

1.  When you exit the Panama Canal on the Pacific side, you are east of where you entered on the Caribbean side.  True.  Central America takes a bit of a twist around Panama, and though the Pacific is west of the Caribbean in general, using the Canal to get there you run slightly east.
2.  The Seven Years’ War lasted 7 years; the Nine Years’ War, 9; and the Thirty Years’ War, 30.  True.  The relevant dates are 1756-63, 1688-97 and 1618-48.  One could quibble that fighting was actually going on between France and England before 1756, in North America, but that phase is generally given the name “French and Indian War.”  (There have been other wars that weren’t so punctual.)
3.  If you place a functioning refrigerator in an insulated, unheated room and prop its door open, the room will get warmer.  True.  A refrigerator works by pumping heat from the interior to the expansion pipes in the back, and by the Second Law of Thermodynamics it has to give off more heat than it removes.
4.  If you’re in a standard type of rocket ship in orbit around some planet, point your nose in the direction of motion and fire your thrusters, you will slow down.  True.  Giving your ship a kick will send you into a higher orbit, and your orbital speed will be slower overall than it was in the lower one.  Orbital mechanics can be counterintuitive.
5.  If you get your (distant) planet cold enough, you can have methane icebergs floating in methane seas.  False.  You can get methane cold enough to form seas (Liquified Natural Gas tankers carry mostly methane), and you can even get solid methane if you try hard enough.  But solid methane is denser than the liquid form, and will sink; you get no floating icebergs.  Methane is not strange in this respect.  In fact water is highly unusual in that the solid form will float in liquid.  This has all sorts of effects and ramifications.

We hope you enjoyed the challenge, and didn’t spend too much time chasing down unproductive ideas.