Sometimes it looks like moms gather secretly to decide what is the next thing they will say to their kids.
If you are Spanish your mom certainty says to you:
Drink your juice or it will lose its vitamins.
Every mom will explain you that fresh orange juice should be drunk immediately after oranges are squeezed because else it will ‘lose its vitamins’
Like vitamins were little creatures that run away when you are spreading the jam on your toast!
Orange juice is indeed a source of vitamin C (Also known as ascorbic acid) that oxidizes when it gets in contact with the oxygen in the air. The question is… is this oxidation as fast as our mothers say? Should I drink the juice directly from the squeezer?
It is not. If you and your juice are at room temperature, ascorbic acid will be there even 12 hours after squeezing.
You could argue that oxidation is faster in hot days, but if you look up the numbers a miserable 5% of the vitamin is ‘lost’ in 30 minutes at 65ºC. And no mother can hold so long staring at your juice on the kitchen table!
No mother can stand 65ºC either. 65ºC is a lot of heat, never in the history of thermometers such a temperature has been detected anywhere on our planet. The world record is actually 56,7ºC and it was set on July 10, 1913 in Death Valley, California
So… unless you are having breakfast with your mom in Mercury (where the mean temperature is 166ºC) you can take your time to have your juice.
On the other hand if you are in Mercury the juice will boil. If you add some sugar you will get orange caramel sauce.
There are more Mother’s sayings spreading over the world:
Do you think money grows on trees?
My first thought is… well mom, banknotes are made out of paper, and paper is made out of wood. Or aren’t they?
But think about it, regular paper is just too weak. If notes were made out of paper they would spoil when they are forgotten in a pocket and accidentally washed in the washing machine.
The truth is, although notes are also known as paper money, euro notes are made out of cotton.
The cotton is sometimes mixed with linen, abaca or other textile fibers. If it’s good to make a t-shirt is good to make money! (Ask the clothes industry)
The mean lifetime of an banknote depends on its value. A 5€ is usually in circulation for a year, however a 500€ needs 5 years to spoil.
Cotton is not the only solution. Some countries, such as Mexico and Australia make their banknotes with plastic and they last longer than cotton ones. Banknotes there have a clear window, are harder to falsify and they don’t melt until 173ºC… so you could use them to buy some orange caramel sauce in Mercury.
Don’t walk barefoot on the cold floor or you will get sick
Walking barefoot is not enough reason to catch a cold. We mostly walk barefoot during the summer and it’s also the season when less people feel sick more often.
A common cold is an infectious disease transmitted by a virus that affects mostly the parts of the body we use to breathe.
This virus multiplies easily when it’s cold and that’s why we get sick more in winter than in summer. In winter we also spend more time locked with people that could infect us.
To get infected you have to breath the virus by the nose or the mouth, so avoiding sick people and washing your hands frequently will help you not to get a cold. But mothers insist you shouldn’t walk barefoot on the cold kitchen floor tiles either. Are they right?
When you walk barefeet on a cold suface our soles get cold the veins of your feet get cold as well and when the cold blood flows through your body your temperature drops.
The fall of your body’s temperature narrows the veins of your nostrils and your mucous membrane will not be as effective blocking the germs into your body.
So moms are right on this one… once you get in contact with a virus it’s easier that it multiplies if you get your feet cold.
