Pearl River Sometimes I find myself just wondering about this and that, take for example lightning, thunder, and smelling salts.
In the middle of the night, lightning was brightening the room followed by loud, deep roars of thunder. From childhood, I’ve counted 1001 between every roar to tell me how far away the lightning might strike. I wondered if there’s science behind that, or just folk wisdom passed down to me and from me further down the chain?
In fact, it turns out there is. Saying 1001 almost equals one second. If you count five seconds from lightning to thunder, the strike is probably one-mile away, and so on. Clearly, if you can hardly get 1001 out of your mouth, you better duck and cover. Somehow in the fog of my memory, I knew to count, but was less clear about the formula of five to one. Scientists call this the “flash-bang” method to tell us how far away a lightning strike might be. The whole deal has to do with how much faster light travels than sound, which finally puts all of us back in high school science classes. Lightning runs at about 54,000 degrees Fahrenheit, heating up the sky sufficiently to create an explosion, which we call thunder. Since light moves roughly five times faster than sound, counting five seconds from when you see the light to when you hear the sound and dividing by five gives you the mileage. Some old habits are worth continuing it seems.
What happened to smelling salts? I’ve been listening to some of the classics on audiobooks while driving from here to there including Dickens and his lot. Smelling salts were go to for many of the heroines facing the vapors and worse. Asking mi companera, who knows stuff like this, if she saw smelling salts for sale in her inspections, she said no. What’s up?
The news was less good on this score. Smelling salts are a combination of ammonium carbonate and perfume, releasing ammonia gas nasally to trigger a deep breathing reflex that increases oxygen and alertness. The FDA seems to heartedly discourage this, and that’s the old “good” FDA, not the current FDA. It also turns out that you can in fact still buy things equivalent to the old smelling salts, but they are less popular than we remember from our grandmothers and old movies, but a big deal for National Football League players. So popular in fact that the always healthy-player-adverse NFL only banned them last year in 2025, after the FDA ban in 2024. Typical for the NFL, the ban only covers the team supplying them, but players can use their own stash of this stuff. The FDA tests say there’s no real evidence about its effectiveness, but continued and prolonged use can damage your lungs and more. Actually, now that we’re looking at the facts it seems almost common sense that sucking down ammonia gas couldn’t be that good for you.
No harm in scratching my head from time to time and wondering what’s beneath the service, so I couldn’t stop myself from sharing and thinking I’m not the only one still poking the bear and wondering what’s going on.