Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, September 7, 1995 TAG: 9509070096
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JOEL ACHENBACH
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
A: This time of year we try to have a question that welcomes students back to school and inspires them to study hard and build the kind of self-esteem that will endure until the day they take the SAT and learn they have no future whatsoever.
As you know, one of the main artifacts of an American education is the No. 2 pencil (the others are the spiral notebook, the slide rule, and the ``wedgie''). There are four other degrees of pencils: No. 1, No. 2.5, No. 3 and No. 4.
The numbers reflect the hardness of the lead - which, for the record, has no lead in it at all, being instead a mixture of graphite and clay. The No. 1 is the softest, the No. 4 the hardest.
The reason the No. 2 is the most exalted of pencils is that it makes nice dark marks on a test sheet without being so soft as to lose its point quickly, as happens with the No. 1.
``That's generally considered the medium or all-purpose grade. It's sandwiched between your softest and your firmest. It's slightly softer than your midpoint,'' says Harold Crick, quality manager of Sanford Corp.'s Eberhard Faber pencil factory in Lewisburg, Tenn., which makes more than 4 million pencils a day.
The enforcement of the No. 2 for standardized tests reflects the needs of electronic scanning machines. A scanning device has tiny photo cells, six of them per inch inside the ``read head'' of the machine, that bounce light off the page. If not much light bounces back, it means there is a mark there.
``The carbon (in the graphite) absorbs the light and makes it so that there's not much light bouncing off of the paper,'' says Randy Shimanski, director of data technology products at National Computer Systems, which makes scanning devices called ``optimal mark readers.''
If students used a No. 1, they'd make really dark marks that are somewhat difficult to erase completely. The scanner might see the erased answer and the corrected answer and have difficulty deciding which one to record as the official response. This ``multimark situation'' can cause ``edit failure,'' meaning that the test will have to be graded by a human.
The No. 2.5 or No. 3 pencils are so hard, they don't leave as much of a mark on the paper as the No. 2. As for the No. 4, we are guessing it is so hard that it is basically used to cut diamonds or something.
Our advice is, buy a bunch of No. 3 pencils, tamper with them so that the 3 looks like an ``8,'' and then flash them if anyone tries to mess with you.
Q: Why do people always arrive late for parties?
A: Arriving late is a way of saying: ``I am in such extreme social demand that I had to go to about four other parties before I could come to your silly event.''
It has a secondary function: It allows you to choose who you will talk to when you get to a party. If you arrive early, and there is only one other guest there, a horrible dork, you have no social options and must talk to him, running the risk that he will forever believe that you are his good friend and start sending you birthday presents and calling you up with bowling dates and so forth.
Moreover, it is not rude to be a little late to a party, particularly a dinner party. Hosts and hostesses need the extra few minutes to get ready.
``People are not always ready on time. You don't want to embarrass them when they're still running around in their dressing gown,'' says Margaret Visser, author of ``The Rituals of Dinner.''
Every culture has its own rules, Visser notes. Germans will be very punctual as a general rule, whereas the Greeks are more flexible, in part because their food is served lukewarm anyway, she says.
How late of an arrival is the right amount of late? Miss Manners has written, ``Eight minutes past the appointed hour is ideal. Twelve will also do.'' In 1958, Amy Vanderbilt wrote that half an hour late is OK in big cities but ``frequently in the West and Midwest when an invitation is for 7, guests begin to arrive at 6:30 as it is assumed that they are to be seated at dinner at 7 or shortly after.''
Of course if it is not a dinner party but rather a dance party - a ``party party'' as it were - then you can wander in just about anytime. A good rule of thumb might be, the more dignified the gathering, the more punctual you should be.
At the White House, for example, guests at a state dinner with an announced time of 7:30 are specifically instructed to arrive between 7:15 and 7:30 p.m. But there is an unspoken understanding that people can arrive as early as 7 or as late as 8, a full hour window.
Social death: Walking in just as the band is striking up ``Hail To the Chief.''
The Mailbag:
Ray R. of Lehigh Acres, Fla., reacting to our column on why the castaways weren't quickly rescued from Gilligan's Island, points out that the Professor's attempts to signal rescuers were invariably foiled by Gilligan.
``From materials available on the island, the Professor managed to make a large piece of glass into a mirror so that they could signal a search plane that was due to fly over the island. Gilligan, from a roof of one of the huts, spotted the search plane and in the excitement swung from the roof on a vine right into the mirror and smashed it to bits.''
Dear Ray: We remember that. We are amazed the brain cell that stored that episode is still alive.
- Washington Post Writers Group
by CNB