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Joe Blanton, director of our Research Correspondence staff, oversees the
answering of 50,000 queries and comments addressed to the National Geographic Society annually. Each week he posts answers
to three of the most interesting inquiries received online at Glad You Asked. Unfortunately, individual e-mail
replies are impossible.
Magazines, clocks, and seawater ...
What can I do with my collection of old NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC magazines?
As much as we love them, those yellow-bordered marvels have a way of
taking over the bookshelf and the attic, dont they? And theyre pretty darned near indestructible. Someone once suggested that old NATIONAL GEOGRAPHICS might
be stacked six high, coated with a waterproof substance, and used as building
blocks. If you feel you must part with them and youre not looking to build
something, you might check with nearby libraries, nursing and retirement homes,
prisons, hospitals, or schools to see if they would welcome your donation. Such
a gift is usually well received. A set of NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC magazines,
coupled with our cumulative National Geographic Index, makes an
excellent resource.
Is Big Ben the name of the tower or of the clock itself?
Well, it starts with the bell. Prior to the 1859 dedication of the great
clock in the Palace of Westminster, the honorable members of Parliament were
debating the issue of what to name the bell that would toll the hours. And a
behemoth of a bell it wasnine feet (2.7 m) in diameter and 13 1/2 tons (12
metric tons). Sir Benjamin Hall, the amply-girthed first commissioner of works,
rose to speak but was cut short by a shout from the back of the room: Lets
call it Big Ben! The name stuck.
That moniker might also have had its
genesis in another Big Ben current in London in those days. Ben Caunt, a prize
fighter of gargantuan proportions, was known by that name, and Londoners had
taken to applying it to anything that was largest in its class. That may have
been what prompted the Parliament shouter. At any rate, Big Ben has come to
signify not just the bell but the clock itself, as well as its 316-foot
(96-meter) tower.
Why is seawater salty?
The earths rocks naturally contain salts. Over the eons, rains have
eroded and broken down rocks, and rivers have carried the dissolved material,
including salts, to the sea. The process continues today. Some of the salts
came from the rocks in the ocean floor. Others originate beneath the seafloor
and are brought up with other minerals that constantly spurt from underwater
volcanoes. And finally, the process of evaporation extracts water, in the form
of vapor, from the oceans surface, leaving the salts behind. All this
saltiness makes up about 3.5 percent of the content of seawater. Much of it is
sodium chloride, the same stuff you sprinkle on your food.
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