Daily Dirt for Saturday, Nov. 23, 2024

Just wait until you get to today's note concerning Pete Rose ... Welcome to today's three thoughts that make up Vol. 1,122 of The Daily Dirt.

Today’s note includes a surprising fact about coin flips, an installment of Did You Know and a look at some 1940s inventions that are still relevant.

1. How many times have you and a buddy “flipped a coin,” simply to settle some sort of mild dispute stemming from where to go grab a burger or who will drive to the football game?

Flipping a coin is the most 50-50 opportunity to determine an outcome, right?

Well, in the words of famed sage Lee Corso, “Not so fast, my friend.”

While the mechanics of coin flipping are simple enough — guess a side and flip — the physics of how a coin flips are anything but that.

By exploring the motion involved, scientists have discovered that coin flips are not as random (and thus impartial) as most of us think.

A 2023 study from the University of Amsterdam flipped 350,757 coins across 46 different currencies and discovered that a coin flipped to its starting position 50.8 percent of the time — close to 50/50, but not quite. In other words, if a coin started heads up, there was a slightly greater chance it would land heads up, too.

That study wound up proving a previous theorem, developed in 2004 in another study, that argued that coin tosses landed as they started 51 percent of the time. That small of a difference would likely not dissuade anyone from practicing a coin flip to settle a dispute — but a more serious concern comes from a 2009 report that revealed coin tosses can be easily manipulated with just a few minutes of practice.

The bottom line? If you’re relying on the “randomness” of a coin toss to determine an important decision, make sure you can trust the person doing the flipping.

And if you can’t decide on which person to perform the act? Well … just flip a coin, of course.

2. Did you know (Part 195)

Did you know that the first computer virus was created in 1981 by a 15-year-old high school student from Wisconsin? The virus, called Elk Cloner, was designed to spread through Apple II computers via floppy disks and was intended as a harmless prank. However, the virus ended up causing significant damage to some users' computers, leading to its creator's eventual arrest.

3. Some 1940s inventions that are still relevant:

The 1940s was a decade of great technological innovation, with many inventions that are still relevant today. Here are a few examples:

• The ballpoint pen was invented in 1943 by Hungarian-Argentine inventor László Bíró. Before the ballpoint pen, people used fountain pens, which were often messy and unreliable. The ballpoint pen quickly became popular for its convenience and ease of use, and it is still one of the most common writing instruments today.

• The microwave oven was invented in 1946 by American engineer Percy Spencer. Spencer was working on a radar project when he noticed that a candy bar in his pocket melted. He realized that the microwaves from the radar were heating the candy bar, and he began to experiment with using microwaves to cook food. The first commercial microwave oven was sold in 1954, and microwaves are now a common appliance in kitchens around the world.

• The computer was invented in the 1940s by a team of scientists at the University of Pennsylvania. The first computer, called the ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer), was massive, taking up an entire room and weighing 30 tons. However, the ENIAC was capable of performing calculations that would have taken a human team months to complete by hand. Computers have since evolved dramatically, becoming smaller, faster, and more powerful, and they are now used in a wide variety of applications.