The other day I stopped at a chain coffee shop that always offers ten cents off your purchase if you correctly answer the multiple-choice trivia question they have written on a chalkboard below the coffees of the day.
The question on this particularly day was, "What metal is liquid at room temperature?"
Choice d.) was mercury, which I correctly answered. Was this fact something I had learned in school? Hell no; I was an English major. I didn't learn anything having to do with the real world since my junior year in high school or so.
I learned it from Mark Waid, Grant Morrison, and company's weekly series 52, which featured The Metal Men, whose boisterous member Mercury announced the fact that he was the only metal liquid at room temperature so often that it was basically his catchphrase, a nerdier version of "Hulk smash!" or "It's clobberin' time!"
So thanks DC! You saved me a dime! (And not for the first time!) That's like getting 1/30th off of one of your comics!
And to think that my mother said you can't learn anything by reading comics.
ReplyDeleteWhat about Cesium? It's gonna be in the mid 80's around here tomorrow, that should do it.
ReplyDeleteAnd no doubt Waid and Morrison learned it from Bob Kanigher, since from reading their comics it's pretty apparent that neither of those noted Silver Age fans ever bothered to learn the basic science that most Silver Age writers (many of them fans of "hard" science-fiction) knew. There was an issue of Fantastic Four, for example, where Waid had Reed Richards use the term "terminal velocity" as if it meant the speed at which you die.
ReplyDeleteYou do this 25 more times and you will have saved enough to buy a copy of "Tiny Titans"!
ReplyDelete(Sorry, dumbass savings are bugging me these days. We had to have our septic tank pumped and chose a place because they gave us a $5.00 off coupon....off the total bill of around $260.)
Isn't aht like getting 1/40 off these days?
ReplyDeleteSo is this the second time you've known the answer to their trivia question period, or just the second time you've learned the answer from comics?
ReplyDeleteThe latter. I have a learned a few things over the years from sources other than comics. Not very many though...
ReplyDeleteNothing I didnt learn from comics is worth knowing. Even the accounting work Im supposed to be doing right I learned from Iceman.
ReplyDelete