It is a topic of conversation in almost every pub up and down the country.  When ever a song, film or tv show is remade, everybody agrees that the original is better.  

It seems there is a statistical correlation to prove this theory, but what other factors are involved?

why is the original always better?

for a school experiment, i tried to find out if this would work, 82.4Hz actually strengthened the wood by an average of 7.5N, (compression strength) but 164.8Hz, 329.6Hz, 359.2Hz, actually decreased the strength by 52.5N, 57.5N, and 52.5N again. should this have worked?

I was profoundly struck by some images of Saturn that Sir Patrick Moore was presenting on TV and I had a revelation..The Rings of Saturn have fascinated me from Cradle to Dole Queue and on studying them tonight, strike me as a valid and viable form of data-stream, akin in many respects to the grooves on a vinyl LP or the digital binary spiral track of a DVD or CD.THIS IS WHERE YOU CAN HELP.! I would love to hear any thoughts on the possibility of setting about attempting to create a musical analogue, accurately interpreted from Hi res images taken of Saturn’s rings; We have all at one time or another had scratched or messed up Vinyl discs or cds.. etc. Right.? And we all know it still always at the very least sounds like SOMETHING, no matter how distorted or random the damage or distortion.My bet is:- That if someone is prepared to stamp a scaled down image of Saturn’s rings and join each rotation to it’s sub neighbour on a piece of black vinyl and I pop it into my Granddad’s gramophone we are going to hear either the secret of the genesis of life in our universe or The Colonel’s secret recipe - in Saturn-Ian. Or, at the very worse something better than, anything from the pop 90s Charts.I know this sounds a little ‘April fool!’, buts that’s just how I roll.Who’s with me?

PS. it doesn’t need to be the vinyl idea it will in all probability have to be digital..Sincere Musical and Scientific Hugs Big G.

Is there any evidence that piped music in shops, pubs and similar establishments increases sales? I avoid such places even if that is inconvenient or involves extra cost.

D. G. Shotton Havant, Hampshire, UK

i have seen that when a sine wave is applied to a shear-thickening non-newtonian fluid, a standing wave is created that looks quite cool. Are there any songs that could produce the same effect, and if not, why not?

When playing a conventional "right-handed" stringed instrument such as a guitar or violin, the player uses their right hand to pluck the strings or hold the bow, and uses the left hand to stop the strings on the fret or fingerboard. Of these two types of action, the left hand appears to be doing much more complicated and extended fine-motor movements than the right hand.

So why is this the preferred configuration of the instrument for right-handers? Left-handed instruments are available as mirror-image versions - Paul McCartney has guitars like this - which suggests some left-handers also prefer the same relative allocation of hand activities.

Tony Baker Victoria, British Columbia, Canada