《那些古怪又讓人憂心的問題》第73期:高擲比賽(1)

HIGH THROW

高擲比賽

Q. How high can a human throw something?

Q．人類可以把一個物體扔多高？

A. HUMANS ARE GOOD AT throwing things. Infact, we're great at it; no other animal can throw stuff like we can.

A．人類很擅長扔東西。實際上，我們是超級擅長，沒有其他動物能夠像我們這樣扔東西。

It's true that chimpanzees hurl feces (and,on rare occasions, stones), but they're not nearly as accurate or precise ashumans. Antlions throw sand, but they don't aim it. Archerfish hunt insects bythrowing water droplets, but they use specialized mouths instead of ed lizards shoot jets of blood from their eyes for distances of up to 5feet. I don't know why they do this because whenever I reach the phrase “shootjets of blood from their eyes” in an article I just stop there and stare at ituntil I need to lie down.

誠然，大猩猩會扔大便（偶爾會扔扔石頭），但它們扔得既沒有我們準，也沒有我們穩。蟻獅會扔沙子，但它們是隨便亂扔的，沒有確定的目標。噴水魚通過射出水珠來捕捉小昆蟲，但它們用的是特殊的嘴巴而非胳膊。沙漠角蜥能從眼睛那兒射出血液束，射程可達1.5米。我不太清楚它們爲什麼要這麼做，因爲每當我在文章裏讀到“從眼睛那兒射出血液束”這樣的語句時，就會一動不動地注視着直到我累趴下爲止。

So while there are other animals that useprojectiles, we're just about the only animal that can grab a random object andreliably nail a target. In fact, we're so good at it that some researchers havesuggested that rock-throwing played a central role in the evolution of themodern human brain.

所以儘管還有其他動物也會使用投擲物，但人類估計是唯一能夠隨手抓起一個東西並相對準確地朝着一個目標扔過去的動物了。實際上一些研究人員認爲，人類善於扔東西的習性在現代人類大腦進化的過程中起了重要作用。

Throwing is hard.1 In order to deliver abaseball to a batter, a pitcher has to release the ball at exactly the rightpoint in the throw. A timing error of half a millisecond in either direction isenough to cause the ball to miss the strike zone.

投擲不是一個簡單活兒。1爲了讓棒球能夠到達擊球手那兒，投手必須準確地在投擲過程中鬆手放開棒球，早了或者晚了0.5毫秒都足以使棒球偏出擊球區。

To put that in perspective, it takes aboutfive milliseconds for the fastest nerve impulse to travel the length of thearm. That means that when your arm is still rotating toward the correctposition, the signal to release the ball is already at your wrist. In terms oftiming, this is like a drummer dropping a drumstick from the tenth story andhitting a drum on the ground on the correct beat.

相比之下，最快的神經脈衝通過手臂長度的距離要花5毫秒。這意味着當手臂朝着正確的位置揮去時，鬆手的信號已經傳遞到手腕處了。從計時角度來說，這就相當於一個鼓手從10層樓扔下一根鼓槌，而鼓槌在正確的節拍落到了地上的鼓上。

We seem to be much better at throwing things forwardthan throwing them upward.2 Since we're going for maximum height, we could useprojectiles that curve upward when you throw them forward; the Aerobie OrbitersI had when I was a kid often got stuck in the highest treetops.3 But we couldalso sidestep the whole problem by using a device like this one:

我們看起來更善於往前扔東西，而不是往上扔東西。2既然我們討論的是最高能扔多高，我們可以考慮使用那些丟出去會自己向上飛的東西。我小時候經常把迴旋鏢玩具扔到最高的樹頂上下不來。3但我們還可以通過使用像這樣的一個裝置來回避這一問題：