Heat from bee ball can kill hornet

Answer: Body heat. Hundreds of the hive defenders form a huge compact bee ball around the invader and raise their body temperatures from a normal 35 C to 48 C, say David Halliday et al. in "Fundamentals of Physics." This higher temperature is lethal to the hornet but not harmful to the "hot-tempered" bees.

Question: A taxi company has as its policy to run its cabs with older, well-worn tires and to underinflate them to boot. Penny-pinching economics or a pinch of chicanery?

Answer: It's well known that older, worn tires have smaller radii (from maybe 30 centimeters down about 2 percent) and so turn around more times per kilometer or mile, causing the precalibrated odometers to overregister and to inflate charges to customers, says Goran Grimvall in "Brainteaser Physics." Underinflated tires will do the same. But the (short-term) winner in this category was the cab driver who reportedly put on smaller-than-customary wheels so as to fatten fares, especially to longer-distance riders. He was later fined for doing so.

Question: Can you recount Winston Churchill's classic line poking fun at critics of phrases like "something not to be sneezed at," "having a lot to answer for," "advice not worth arguing about," "letting everyone know where you're coming from," "laughing one's head off."

Answer: Are you in dread of ending a sentence with a preposition because somebody told you it's not grammatically correct? Well, fear no more, says Mark Davidson in "Right, Wrong, and Risky." One dictionary calls this "a cherished superstition," another "an entrenched myth." The silly rule got started in the 17th century and was subsequently circulated by tyrannical scholars and grammarians. Sir Winston Churchill is said to have become so annoyed by terminal prepositional overzeal that he scribbled a memo to one of his correcting secretaries: "This is the type of arrant pedantry up with which I will not put."

Send STRANGE questions to brothers Bill and Rich at strangetrue@compuserve.com, coauthors of "Can a Guy Get Pregnant? Scientific Answers to Everyday (and Not-So- Everyday) Questions," from Pi Press.