Will love always fade?

Question: First comes the big "thrill," but with repetition, tolerance sets in. Stopping doesn't return you to where you were but rather triggers withdrawal symptoms — malaise, depression, the blahs. The emotional fire in your heart has cooled to a glowing ember. What has fled, and what with luck will take its place?

Answer: Passionate love has left you — join the millions! "When you're in love it's the most glorious two-and-a-half days of your life," jested comedian Richard Lewis. Actually, two years is more like it, says David G. Myers in "Social Psychology," as by then spouses express affection only half as often as when they were newlyweds. About four years after marriage, the divorce rate peaks worldwide, said anthropologist Helen Fisher. It's at this stage that the fires of addiction fade, just like to caffeine, alcohol, other drugs. "If a close relationship is to endure," says Myers, "it will settle to a steadier but still warm afterglow that has been termed 'companionate love.' " This is a deep, affectionate attachment and just as real. But, of course, it doesn't always develop.

Question: What's the psychology behind a baseball batter saying he got a nice "fat pitch" to hit? Surely the ball doesn't change size.

Answer: It can seem to. As with most things governed by the mind, visual perception can play tricks, says Sally Patterson in "Photonics Spectra" magazine. Work by Jessica Witt and Dennis Proffitt at the University of Virginia, reported in "Psychological Science," confirms that athletes perceive the ball to be bigger or smaller depending on how they're playing. The researchers showed a circles chart to softball players after a game and asked them which circle best matched the ball's size. Revealingly, those who had hit well that day chose the larger circle. But whether seeing the ball as bigger helped the batter connect or whether hitting well affects visual memory afterward was unclear. Still unanswered then is whether batting helmets with built-in magnifying lenses might help improve batting performance.

"In any event," says Patterson, "poor Casey at the Bat must have thought he had been swinging at a marble."

Question: Regarding that rainbow of rains around the world, what can color them red, yellow, brown, black, white, even gold?