Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, August 16, 1995 TAG: 9508160067
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DWAYNE YANCEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
"Ain't gonna happen," Bob Wood said with the scientific certainty that comes with working part-time in the state climatology office.
And just how can he be so sure? Is it that freshly minted University of Virginia master's degree in environmental sciences?
Naw. Just intuition. "I'd think if you could do it, you'd have teen-agers all over town wanting to do it," he said. "Put the skateboard away; let's go egg-frying."
Guess that's the real difference between Mr. Jefferson's University and that agricultural and mechanical institute down the pike in Blacksburg.
Call up to Charlottesville, and you get some young whippersnapper talking about social trends among Generation Xers.
Call down to Virginia Tech, and you get an agriculture and poultry science expert who can give a degree-by-degree description of how and when an egg changes state.
"Egg proteins coagulate at 130 degrees," said associate professor Julian Brake. "The pavement is going to be at least that hot. It's going to take a while, but it'll pop and sizzle like in a frying pan."
So there you have it. Here we are in the midst of the worst heat wave in seven years, and the best minds at our most prestigious state universities can't agree on one of our most enduring cliches:
It's hot enough to fry an egg on the sidewalk.
Now, around here, we take our cliches pretty seriously.
The public, after all, has a right to know: Is it really that hot?
Our free-lance environmental scientist up at UVa said no way. "I'd try it on blacktop," Wood said, because a dark surface absorbs more heat than a light one. But even then, he was skeptical. "Even on a blacktop surface, I don't think it gets that hot. I think you'd just have a wet, gloppy mess."
Our Tech ag expert was more optimistic. Cautiously optimistic, but optimistic nonetheless. "It's pretty doggone hot," Brake said. "It's going to take a while. Either that, or it's going to sit there and rot."
Oh, and one other thing: Don't eat it, he warned. The egg may fry at 130 degrees, but it takes 160 degrees to kill the bacteria. A stove does the trick at 250-300 degrees.
"You'd be a lot better off to take it to Arizona," Brake said. "We're so humid, the water acts as a sun screen" that soaks up a lot of the heat. "In California, where the skies get really blue - you can fry an egg out there."
But the cliche isn't site-specific. And the state's hot-pavement expert - Mohamed Elfino, in charge of pavement design for the Virginia Department of Transportation in Richmond - seemed to think sidewalk-frying could be done here, local ordinances on food preparation permitting.
He reported that highway workers in Salem, who routinely monitor road temperatures to make sure the surfaces don't go squishy, measured Interstate 81 at 135 degrees Tuesday afternoon - five degrees higher than the coagulation point.
So, in the spirit of scientific inquiry, we put the cliche to the test: Four Grade-A large "Sun-ups" eggs, a nice stretch of pavement along Salem Avenue, and the hottest hour of the afternoon.
The result?
A few passers-by shouting "over easy" and "sunny side up" - but no "pop and sizzle" on the sidewalk. Not even a hint of a bubble. The UVa guy was right. Just a "wet, gloppy mess."
Guess you can keep your skateboards, after all.
And no, we won't be researching whether it is, in fact, hotter than hell.
by CNB