What You Didn't Know About Air Travel

September 8, 2011

Interview with Brian Clegg, author of the book Inflight Science: A Guide to the World From Your Airplane Window

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Mike Carruthers:
Although we often take it for granted air travel is pretty amazing. You’re sitting in a chair at 35,000 feet moving about 500 miles an hour.

Brian Clegg:
And it’s not been that long if you think it was 1903 that the Wright brothers first took to the sky, so we’re talking just over 100 years – I think we ought to regard it as something amazing.
 

Brian Clegg, author of the book Inflight Science, says that when you travel time actually slows down.

This is special relativity and basically whenever you move time slows down a little bit for you. And if for instance you cross the Atlantic every week for forty years you’d be about a thousandth of a second younger.

When you’re on an airplane it’s tough to get a good cup of tea, that’s because water boils at about 194 degrees Fahrenheit.

The fact is you won’t get really boiling water which a lot of people think is necessary for tea so that’s one aspect. The other thing about the food, background noise apparently makes you distracted and you actually lose some of your ability to taste when there’s a loud background noise. We get used to it but planes are actually quite loud when you’re on them.

You’re exposed to higher radiation levels on an airplane than on the ground.  And how does that compare to the radiation levels of those body scan machines at security?

To give a rough feel being in one of those scanners is about a 5oth of the amount of radiation that you get for an hour in the air – so it’s about the equivalent of 1 minutes flying time.

To hear the complete unedited interview, click here