Inflight Science

A tough read, this one!

Some of the chapters kind of brings me back to the struggle of physics classes in high school and Engineering Mechanics subject on those undergraduate days. Pheww.

Btw, here's some fun facts:

1. The risk of plane crash is 1 in 125 million passsenger journey, which is 3x safer than travelling by train. By car, it's 1 in 10 million = 12x as dangerous. Fakta ni mungkin boleh reduce sikit rasa gundah-gulana bila nak fly (hopefully)

2. Usually there's no gate 13 or flight 13 due to some superstitious belief in some culture, that number 13 is associated with bad luck. So some airports do this, not to create panic among the passengers. Kat KLIA ada ke tak gate 13? Kalau kat Senai ni gate memang tak sampai 13 hehe. 

Owh, amazingly, there's no house number 13 on my street! And this fact was actually pointed out to me by the pizza boy months ago, even before I read the book.

3. Trak yang tolak flight ke belakang tu is called tug or pushback tractor

4. Dulu-dulu masa kecik, kalau nampak garisan macam a line of awan halus dekat langit, ingatkan kesan asap roket. (Haha, kaya gila manusia kat bumi ni hari-hari nak launch roket kan). So actually, the name of it is - contrails and they are trails of water droplet left behind by a plane.

5. Relativity

I remember a few years ago, my niece used to ask me "Kenapa bila hari raya, masa tu rasa cepat je?". I wish I had read this book then so I could quote "relativity' from Albert Einstein to her, haha.

"When a man sits with a pretty girl for an hour, it seems like a minute. but let him sit on a hot stove for a minute - and it's longer than any hour"


6. Water boils at 90०C, instead of 100०C in a pressurized cabin.