If you are famous, you are “in the limelight”. There’s an interesting origin to this phrase which goes back to the theatres of 19th century.
During those times, the stage in a theatre was lit using all sorts of gas lamps. But the star of the show had to be in a sharp and focussed “limelight”. For that, well, lime was used. That is where the world limelight comes from.
Quicklime is Calcium oxide. Back in the day, in theatres, it was just another form of lighting. When it is heated at very high temperatures, at about 2400 degrees centigrade, it glows brightly. The mechanism isn’t very different from a usual bulb – which uses a filament of tungsten, heated using electricity (resistive heating). A different source of heat, hot enough to make lime glow, something like a blow torch was used. Lime was cheap, and unlike thorium oxide which could be used to do the same thing, it wasn’t radioactive. It didn’t wear easily and lasted for long times. Thus, limelight.
The simplest and most mundane things can turn out to be really interesting sometimes, if you look carefully. For instance, look at a glass of water, ordinary water. Turn it upside down and the water falls. Actually it shouldn’t!
Yes, gravity acts on it, but the amount of force atmospheric pressure acts on it is enough to support the column of water even when the glass is upside down. It falls because the water surface isn’t flat. And since the pressure acts differently on different parts of the surface, due to minor deviations on the surface, the surface gets deformed and there is an avalanche of force imbalance. Eventually the water gets pulled down by the gravity. This happens too quickly for you to see.
Now, if you use a piece of paper to keep the surface of water perfectly flat, the pressure acts up evenly on water and gravity isn’t able to pull down the water. Nikola demonstrates…
This one is a tough one to wrap your head around but it is amazing. Haven’t you ever thought why mirrors flip everything horizontally and not vertically. Like if you raise your right hand the mirrored image of you raises its left hand…and it doesn’t instead put down the hand. The vertical stuff remains the same, while the horizontal stuff gets inverted.
A mirror is the same in the vertical direction and the horizontal direction. Nor does it have a mind of its own. So, how does it figure out what’s horizontal and what’s vertical? Or does it?
Try this. Hold an arrow in front of the mirror. Point it right, the mirror does the same. Left, up or down, the mirror does the same. That’s it. Now point it towards the mirror, the mirror points towards you. So, it’s the z axis that gets inverted. If you think about it, it is pretty amazing!
Physics girl explains it much better in her video…
Cell towers do not create very intense microwave fields near your head. Phones result in much higher intensity radiation near your head because of their close proximity. So no, the benefit of better reception is not outweighed by proximity to the tower
Of course rocks bleed. Some trees do too. Pterocarpus angolensis is a native south African teak wood that is also known as the bloodwood tree. Its called that because it has a blood coloured sap. That means, if you chop or cut down the trunk of this tree, it bleeds. The dark red coloured sap drips out from the inside of it, just like an animal would. The most interesting part – this sticky and reddish-brown, blood-like sap actually seals the cut and heals it.
When cut, it bleeds like this…
The red coloured sap of this tree is traditionally also used to make dyes. And some believe that it has magical healing properties, just because it looks so much like the human blood.
It’s also used to treat problems involving ringworm, stabbing pains, eye problems, malaria, blackwater fever, stomach problems and to increase the supply of breast milk.
Leaving the blood aside for a while, the wood itself can be used to make good furniture.
The Bloodwood tree grows 12 to 18 meters tall, has dark-brown rough bark, a beautiful umbrella-shaped spreading crown and bears yellow flowers.
Dots and boxes is a great game to play, like tic-tac-toe I’d say. But, thanks to the smartphone and computer revolution, not many would agree that playing games on paper with someone real sitting physically next to you could actually be fun. Anyway, winning it all the time is more fun. And for awesci readers, and numberphile subscribers, it’s going to be possible to win every time at dots and boxes now on…
Well, if you don’t know how to play it, then this would be a great start at an actual social game. Also it’d be great because you’d win the day you start learning something. Just wish that your opponent isn’t an avid awesci visitor.
Elwyn Berlekamp explains how…
Someone said, “It’s easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.”
Or look at it this way. Deep down you know you are wrong about something, but don’t want to admit it right away because it will make you look bad. In time, this belief becomes deeper and before you know, you actually start believing in it.
You could do two things if you know you are wrong. You could either admit you are wrong right away. That’ll hurt your reputation a tiny bit. Or you could just keep believing in it to save that little dent in your reputation right now, till the point where you are so invested in it, in terms of time, that you don’t ever choose to admit that you were wrong in the first place. Which of course will destroy the years of effort you put into this. But you’ll never do the former because you won’t think through the consequences that will show years later, rather you’ll care more about your reputation right now, and will stick to your belief, even if you know you are not so right.
This is commonly referred to as the Backfire effect – The backfire effect occurs when, in the face of contradictory evidence, established beliefs do not change but actually get stronger. It has been proven and been test, over and over again through out the history of this planet.
TV shows, people and movies, for instance make use of this technique to gain popularity. They’ll introduce abusive or controversial content and gain more popularity when it’s being protested through primary outlets that have a massive audience. In a most simple case, a kid’s parent telling them not to do something leads the kid to get attached more towards doing it, even when he/she has been informed by their parents that it is not a good thing to do.
The kid at first doesn’t know it is wrong and do it because it doesn’t seem wrong. His/her parents inform them, and now they have a contradictory argument. Intuitively, the contradictory argument should make the kid stop doing it. But that does not happen. That’s how our brains work. And that’s one way you can trick someone into getting convinced about something by introducing contradictory arguments. This is almost as counter-intuitive as the Benjamin Franklin effect and can be used for similar psychological games.
If you’re feeling especially mischievous, you can use the backfire effect to trap someone into a bad position and pound them repeatedly to get what you want. Martin Luther king actually did this to Jim clark to raise awareness for American civil rights.
What should be evident from the studies on the backfire effect is you can never win an argument online. When you start to pull out facts and figures, hyperlinks and quotes, you are actually making the opponent feel as though they are even more sure of their position than before you started the debate. As they match your fervor, the same thing happens in your skull. The backfire effect pushes both of you deeper into your original beliefs. – You are not so smart (book)
This video has a few interesting examples to understand better how it works.
The ultimate universal speed limit is the speed of light. No information travels faster than that, or that is what we’ve always known. So, the point is, it is pretty darn fast. But that ultimate speed in the massiveness of our cosmos can seem pretty darn tiny. It’s hard to visualize how big things are in our universe.
Ignoring a few laws of physics, on what the photon actually sees considering relativity, Alphonse Swinehart created an animation which takes you on a journey across the solar system as if you were sitting on a photon. See how at around 8 minutes 20 seconds you reach the earth, taking exactly the amount of time the sunlight takes to reach us. While watching it please note that it was intentional that the alignment of planets and asteroids in the video were not kept realistic. That’s artistic freedom…
The video ends at Jupiter because the artist wanted to keep the length of it less than 1 hour. Anyway, the video does deliver its purpose and does it with great artistry.
Did you know? In certain places on the sea floor there are lakes – underwater lakes! (there are underwater rivers too). One such lake, recently found, half a mile under the sea, exists in the gulf of mexico. It’s about 20 metres long and has its own shore full of mussels and other organisms. Here’s what it looks like…
You wouldn’t believe me if I told you, there’s a team that constructed a land vehicle with a huge propeller and it, without any engines running, can travel about 2.8 times faster than the wind! Physicists and aeronautical engineers would have their heads scratching their heads when they hear this. It sounds physically impossible, but it’s true.
Rick Cavallaro and his team brought into reality an engineering marvel, an idea that most physicists would say, is impossible. A wind powered car that beats the wind. They call it Downwind faster than the wind, or DWFTTW.
With the help of Google and Joby Energy, Cavallaro built this four wheeled vehicle with a 17 foot propeller. It was first made of foam and copied the aerodynamics of an F1 race car. The propeller is what makes it go faster than the wind, but it confuses people.
It somewhat works like this – The wind turns the propeller, and they turn the wheels. The wheels then power the propeller and it again sends back power to the wheels and so on. Before you know, the car is doing a speed faster than the thing that powers it! Sounds like unlimited energy, but it’s the wind that does all the work. And it really works
It’s sad that elephant tusks are interesting items and attract ivory poachers. But their other teeth, are more interesting in a way because they actually determine the natural lifetime of an elephant.
Elephant’s main diet consists of grass, and it’s high in silica – a very abrasive material. At any point of time, an elephant uses only one tooth in each of their half jaw – a total of four teeth in the mouth. They use their teeth in sequence, one by one. As abrasive material wears their tooth out badly in the front, it is pushed and replaced by the tooth growing behind it. This replacement happens only 6 times. And every new teeth is stronger than the previous one.
The last molar usually erupts at the age of 25 and lasts longer than the other. The elephant has to manage it well because this one serves it for the rest of its life. So, they rip the grass out and shake it off to drop most of the silica off their roots. When this wears, the elephant can no longer chew its food properly. Thus malnutrition sets in and the elephant dies by the time it is 60-70 years old.
In controlled environments like zoos, elephants are usually fed with softer food after all their teeth are gone which enables them to live slightly longer this way.
Kangaroos have a similar thing going on in their mouths too.
A company that would make elephant dentures could probably be a very profitable company due to the great demand of its product – it would extend the life of elephants. However, it’d be tough to find elephants with jobs who could pay for a luxury like this.
The following post might be very repulsive to some people as it comes very close to animal abuse. Different countries have different laws on the kind of rights animals have. To me however, doing this to a cockroach in the name of biological experimentation, doesn’t sound like abuse. I rather find it very interesting. If you are easily affected by experiments that are done on insects, this is the right time for you to retreat. You’ve been warned.
Imagine this. What if you could plant a tiny circuit on a real cockroach and use it to make the cockroach turn left or right on your command? Guess what, you can indeed convert a cockroach into a cyborg that obeys your commands! And it’s not even very difficult. All you have to do is a little bit of soldering to join wires and a teeny bit of surgery on a cockroach – There, you have your own cyborg.
This seems so incredibly interesting to me. I never knew something like this would be possible to accomplish so easily! Here’s how you do it…
Jane wasn’t a “scientist”, but she has been around chimps for five decades. It all started when she was twenty four years old. Since then she has gotten close to chimpanzees, learned their behaviour and culture in great detail, developed a deep relationship with them, and has helped to bridge the gap between humans and animals. At first, the scientific community did not receive her studies well, but soon they had to.
Through subsequent years, Jane opened the world’s eyes to the complexity and richness of chimpanzee communities, writing of close family bonds, dominance struggles among males, human-like communications such as pats on the back and hugs, and much more.
Here are two touching videos which capture the essence of her life’s work.
It’s so easy for us to protect ourselves in the winter. You could just switch on the heater and there you are. But it isn’t easy for plants because they can’t move, or do anything else about the cold. However, over the thousands of years for which plants evolved, they figured some amazing ways to protect themselves. Chillies certainly know one way to protect themselves. Cranberries know how to move around. But carrots know how to protect themselves in the winter.
Carrots have lots of water in them. So, during winters ice crystals can form inside and destroy them at cellular level. To avoid this from happening carrots know that they need to increase their sugar content during the winter. More sugar content means lower probability of getting frozen in the snow. That’s the reason they are sweeter in winter!
University of California’s Fig.1 series, Molecular Biologist Liz Roth-Johnson explains…
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