Air Conditioning

Air conditioning is another of those American inventions that was a great idea originally, but - like driving and ice in drinks - has been taken to the logical extreme and is thus no longer so great.

If you live in a country in which it can be unbearably hot or unbearably humid and occasionally both, managing the ambient temperature is a shrewd move. It can, for instance, be wonderfully refreshing to go into a cool house when it's baking outside, and when we visited New York last year during a heatwave (the timing was purely coincidental and unintentional), just passing by an open shop doorway gave us renewed energy to pursue our exploration of this fabulous city.

Unfortunately, as mentioned in my preamble, you can get too much of a good thing - quite apart from the extra electricity this consumes (don't get me started on that one). Duly accustomed to such conditioning of their air, retailers, companies, restaurateurs and even private individuals routinely turn the temperature in their shops, offices, eating establishments and homes so low that it is positively unpleasant.

On a recent holiday (sorry: vacation), whenever we entered a hotel room, our first move after dropping our luggage would invariably be to sprint across to the air conditioning unit and switch it off, praying we wouldn't turn into an ice statue along the way.

For similar reasons, Mrs Newbie always has to take a jumper or jacket to work, where the temperature is typically 17°C, though often lower. The same is true in cinemas, concert halls, bars, hospitals, indeed any space that is enclosed.

Perhaps this explains why so many Americans have developed a thermally insulating layer of blubber. There's no other way to survive a trip to the mall without donning full Antarctic all-weather gear.

Culinary Expertise

My neighbour gave me this interview from Family Circle magazine because she knew what I thought about iced water. I also find it interesting because of what it says about this person's culinary skills.

I'm no chef, but my kids love my ...

Ice water. They say I put in just enough ice, and they only want it when I make it. They do like my lasagna, but ice water is what I get the most compliments on.

I can just imagine those compliments: "Hey Polly, this iced water is awesome! It's so cold! What's the secret? Boy, I wish I could make iced water like this. You have a real talent there."

Ice

I had heard about America's apparent obsession with cooling even before I came to the States, although I wasn't aware quite how omnipresent it is.

For instance, people drive their air-conditioned cars from their air-conditioned homes to their air-conditioned offices. On the way back, they may stop to do some shopping at an air-conditioned mall, and in the evening they might drive to an air-conditioned cinema or pick up some food at an air-conditioned take-away.

Now don't get me wrong: I have nothing against a bit of climate control when it's baking outside and/or near maximum humidity. But the strange thing about air-conditioning is that whatever the weather, whatever the season, air conditioning units are always set to about 5°C cooler than is agreeable. As such, my wife had to take a jumper (sorry: sweater) to work all last summer.

Ice is another manifestation of this phenomenon. Everything that is not cooked is served chilled. At our local sports centre, the water fountain dispenses ice cubes. Our fridge has a water inlet hose in the back so that it can make an endless stream of ice cubes all by itself. And when Hurricane Ike swept through Texas and Louisiana last summer, the emergency services handed out food, water and - you guessed it - ice.

In restaurants, drinks are always "on the rocks", and we've had to learn to make a point of ordering drinks without ice. In fact, the first thing they bring you when you sit down is a large glass of iced tap water (usually at a ratio of 1:1, ice to water). And if you are foolish enough to reject your complimentary iced water, waiters give you a very pitying look as if you were doing something extremely unwise.

Sometimes, however, people go over the top even by American standards. A few weeks ago we went out for a meal and, to avoid the hassle of explaining that we didn't like freezing drinks in mid-winter, meekly accepted our iced tap water and refrained from pointing out that our juices had arrived ice-chilled after all. But then shortly after ordering our food, the waitress came and put a large bowl in the middle of our table. "Your ice," she said.

Gravity

Gravity works differently here in the States. Either that, or we live in an anti-gravity field (which would however explain my superhuman ability to deflect fat).

I always thought that gravitational forces make heavy things move from a higher point to a lower point.  I now know that's a quaint Old World misconception.

Our house is halfway up a slope, so applying Newtonian apple-on-head physics, you would expect rainwater to run down the hill and collect - and at sub-zero temperatures freeze - at the bottom. Wrong! Somehow, a thick sheet of (black) ice has built up on the slope outside our house, while the top and bottom of the hill have remained completely and frustratingly free of both ice and snow.

Stranger still, this gravitational anomaly only seems to apply to water (perhaps it isn't heavy water) and grass (which also seems to defy the gravitational pull and stays firmly rooted to the spot). Applying the ice example, you would expect passing cars to slide about in circles in front of our house, yet bizarrely enough they skid down to the foot of the hill instead.

Can anyone who got more than 14% in their last physics exam please explain this phenomenon to me?