10. Tea leaves from tea bags were intended to be removed from the bags. Tea bags were first developed in America. In 1908 tea samples were sent in boxes. But Thomas Sullivan, a tea merchant, started to send them to his customers in small silken bags. Some of these customers assumed that the bags were supposed to be used in the same way as the metal infusers, by putting the entire bag into the pot instead of emptying out the contents. For his surprise some customers wrote Sullivan saying him that the mesh on the silk was too fine but instead of explaining the purpose was different he developed gauze bags, and then paper ones with a string and a decorated tag today already in place. 9. The implantable pacemaker was supposed to record the heart rhythm. It...
The International Space Station is a habitable artificial satellite launched in 1988, that orbits the Earth 400km above our heads. It doesn’t look that much, but remember space starts at Karman line only 100km away upright… that’s where the atmosphere becomes too thin to support aeronautical flight. The Gravitational strength in the ISS compared to the surface of the Earth is 89% Why does it seem the ISS has no gravity? The ISS serves as a microgravity and space environment research laboratory in which crewmembers conduct experiments. The effective gravity inside the ISS is very close to zero, because both astronauts and the station itself are simultaneously falling down. The ISS never hits the ground because its horizontal speed (27000Km/h, it completes 15.50 orbits per day). When the Station has fallen 1 meter, because of this horizontal speed and the...
You probably have heard that we only use 10% of our brain. It’s a very common popular belief that we have heard for a long time and makes us wonder, what if we used all of it? The movie In fact, there is a movie called ‘Lucy’ about this idea. It’s a French thriller starring Scarlet Johansson and Morgan Freeman, about an American woman who lives in Taipei and gets kidnapped by some drug dealers. She is forced to work as a mule and by accident some drug is released into her system. As a result, she starts using not only 10% but 20% and 30% to 100% and begins acquiring powerful abilities like telepathy, choosing not to feel pain, telekinesis, speed of learning and even mental time travel. The film is called Lucy after the name of the skeleton of an...
Have you pushed the snooze button today? The snooze button looks like the best idea ever until 9 minutes later when the alarm sounds again and you wake up feeling even more tired. What do you do then? Hit it again? Are those extra minutes really helping at all? Or is it a cycle that ends in you being late and still tired? If you don’t set your alarm clock you just wake up naturally. The body has many chemical mechanisms to make us fall asleep and wake up several hours later. The body prepares itself to wake up one hour before you naturally wake up. Your temperature rises, sleep becomes lighter and hormones like dopamine and cortisol are released and will give you energy to start your day. But if you are woken up by an alarm your...
The Ice Bucket Challenge is an activity involving dumping a bucket of ice water on someone’s head to promote awareness of the disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and encourage donations to research. This how Aurora Ferrer, Martín Expósito and me performed using a digger Posted by Shedka....
Limerence The feeling of having a crush on someone has a name. Those emotions, the nerves, the excitement… It’s called limerence. And has some consequences: The body’s limbic system takes over. The limbic system governs our emotional and instinct responses to different situations, and when we find someone we like, and engage in flirting, it’s activated. As a result our body releases adrenaline, which causes increased heart rate and blood pressure, sending more blood to the muscles. Why do we need more blood on the muscles? We don’t, but this is the same system involved in our fight-or-flight response to physical danger. Fight-or-flight is a physiological reaction we mammals have when we perceive a threat to survival. – When we are attracted to someone, blood will flow to our face, causing our cheeks to get red. That’s called blushing....
ANTARTIC Comic book fans have one dream in common: To develop superpowers. You don’t have to look into fantasy literature to find amazing super abilities. Many animals in the real world have powers that would make even Superman jealous. Jellyfish are immortal. By ‘immortal’ I mean Jellyfish don’t die of old age because they are able to go back to its juvenile form as many times as they want. Sea cucumbers can liquefy their bodies to squeeze through small gaps, but they feel like rocks! So how cool is this? Imagine you are locked out of your house. Wouldn’t you love to be able to turn into liquid and to slip under the door? You don’t need to be watching National Geographic to find animal superpowers. Your pets are amazing… every day your dog is the first to know...
Sci-fi and action Hollywood movies sometimes introduce incorrect physics concepts. Even though they succeed artistically not everyone who watches movies understands that the content is primarily for entertainment only. Today we are going to review some plots to examine whether correct science is used. Let’s go back to 1985 to check my favorite film as a child. Back to the Future Part II Back to the Future is an American science fiction comedy film. It was produced by Steven Spielberg. The star Michael J. Fox plays Marty McFly, a teenager who is accidentally sent back in time to 1955. The sequel was filmed in 1989. The plot begins where the original film left off. Marty McFly and his friend Dr. Emmett Brown (“Doc”) travel to 2015 to prevent McFly’s future son from ending up in jail. The film accurately predicted...
Science is everywhere. Science starts early when the alarm clock wakes you up in the morning. Science even lets us talk to you through the radio right now. There is a place where science is tastier. The kitchen! We are used to doing a lot of stuff in the kitchen without realizing how much physics is involved. Give me one example of a kitchen appliance full of science. The microwave oven for example; science heats your milk up when you put it in the microwave, but many people don’t know how the microwave oven works. A microwave oven heats food by bombarding it with electromagnetic radiation causing polarized molecules in the food to rotate and build up thermal energy. These polarized molecules are usually water. This means you cannot heat anything up if it doesn’t consist of water. Have...
Have you heard about the Ignobel Prizes? They are an American parody of the Nobel Prizes and are given each year in early October for ten unusual, funny or trivial achievements in scientific research. Archeology: Brian Crandall and Peter Stahl, for parboiling a dead shrew, and then swallowing the shrew without chewing, and then carefully examining everything excreted during subsequent days. All so they could see which bones would dissolve inside the human digestive system, and which bones would not. Biology/Astronomy: Marie Dacke, Emily Baird, Marcus Byrne, Clarke Scholtz, and Eric Warrant, for discovering that when dung beetles get lost, they can navigate their way home by looking at the Milky way. Medicine: Masateru Uchiyama, Xiangyuan Jin, Qi Zhang, Toshihito Hirai, Atsushi Amano, Hisashi Bashuda and Masanori Niimi, for assessing the effect of listening to opera, on mice which have had heart transplant...
