Because "High Fructose Corn Syrup" rolls off the tongue slightly better than "a 50%:50% ±10% homogeneous mixture of fructose and glucose with >0.5% residual corn proteins and cellulose."

Using Google Maps and Streetview, you can see that school is tiny, it's about 200ft of frontage along a commercial-zone 2-lane road (+parking shoulders and sidewalks) sandwiched between two very narrow residential streets. The play area between the school and sidewalk is maybe 15 feet wide. So, even if this guy was on the opposite side of the commercial street, I doubt the principle would have been any farther than 100ft away at close observation, and probably much closer than that.

The news story photo definitely looks like it was taken in that generally vicinity, but I can't pin the location down, exactly.

I do this for a living as an facilities electrical engineer who works closely with electricians. The phase between lines on the primary side of a single-phase stepdown transformer is irrelevant to the secondary side. Indeed, sometimes the distribution lines are Y configuration rather than delta, so the inputs to the single-phase transformer is sometimes line-neutral instead of line-line. In most systems worldwide the single-phase transformer has two poles on the secondary side, one of which is grounded locally and is connected to the neutral conductor, the other pole is connected to the "hot" conductor or "line voltage". There is typically about 240V between hot on neutral. A main electrical panel for residential will have 2 bus bars in this case.

In the U.S., the transformer is typically has a three-pole secondary with a center-tap connected to the center of the secondary coil. The center tap is connected to local ground as well as the neutral conductor, and the other two poles at opposite ends are each hot conductors. Since there is only one coil on the transformer secondary this results in two hots that while measured against neutral are 120V, but each 180 degrees out of phase with the other for a result of 240V between lines. A main electrical panel will have 3 bus bars in this case. You can confirm this with a voltmeter. (If they were 120-degrees out of phase, you would measure a SQRT(3) ratio of V_lineline/V_lineneutral.

Occasionally in a commercial or industrial facility, you may find a 2-pole electrical panel that is a sub-circuit to a three-phase Y-configured panel (120/208V Typical configuration). These tend to be remodel conversions from when the building mains were swapped from single-phase to three-phase. In this one case, you will get the 120-degree difference between lines. When this is the case you have to be extra careful when connecting loads to the subpanel, because the difference in line-line voltage is less than what you would expect at first glance, and some equipment may fail to operate, or operate in a degraded state, because of that.

You can do a motor-generator set with a shared shaft. They are kind of bulky, but both the motor and generator will have efficiencies in the mid- to high- 90 percentiles, for a 90-95% net.

The USA is running on 220-250V AC for residential (exact voltage varies per locale). It's single-phase with a center-tap neutral, sometimes called "split phase"; Typically, a neighborhood will be on one phase of three-phase distribution system. Split phase allows one get two half-phases of about 120V (typical U.S. receptacle, a.k.a. "power outlet"), but you still have 240V available for large appliances: electric stoves/ranges, furnaces, installed heaters (baseboard or in-wall), clothes dryers, and/or sometimes a welding receptacle in the garage.

Split phase is occasionally incorrectly referred to as "two phase", which actually only exists with one old electrical distribution system near Niagra.

Official measurements don't get taken at or near surfaces of concrete, asphalt, tarmac, or compacted sand (that's why I mentioned the caveat about placement and calibration of the thermometers). My buddies and I were stuck working (albeit very slowly, for very short periods) in those conditions. I was just glad I didn't have to wear combat gear at the time.

During major U.S. heat waves we typically get a similar number of deaths, and that's with about 1/3 the population. There are quite a few places in the world that get worse heat without heat waves. The worst two I've visited were Kuwait and Qatar, both read 140F/60C on thermometers in the shade (placement/calibration technically didn't meet weather station standards, so no "world record", but that is still the temperature people were subjected to). Qatar was worse though, the humidity was borderline condensing (some surfaces were damp with not a cloud in the sky); I'm glad I didn't have to stay there any longer than one day!

By "pop" music are we talking about the current, popular [adjective] music genre/scene, or are we talking about the mass-market, lip-syncing dancer(s) with canned music written by someone else where the rest of the performing band (if present at all) is faceless? If it's the second, I've always detested that crap, even as an elementary school kid!

Yes, they indeed do; see "de Broglie wavelength" from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M.... The AC that said, "Everything vibrates," as trollish as that sounds, is correct.

Let's see, the Columbia river discharges around 171x10^9 gallons per day to the Pacific Ocean, I think we could spare California 10x10^6 gallons per day without too much of an issue.