Monkey Psychology

By Anupum Pant

What do you think would a monkey do if it was treated wasn’t treated equally as another monkey? Would it actually know it was being treated unequally?

Yes, they know it very well. Wild monkeys who have never been tested with something like that also have this ability to figure out unequal treatment. In fact, their preference for food is often, as quipped by the professor in the video, in correlation with the particular food items price in the supermarket. They usually have a greater preference for a higher priced food, than a food which comes cheap. But that is only a fun way to say it – not always.

A monkey normally doesn’t mind doing a task for a cucumber. But they tend to like grapes more than a cucumber – remember, grapes are costlier at a supermarket. So, if you keep two monkeys who can watch each other while being fed. One is give cucumber, while the other is given grapes, chaos happens. Watch what happens in the video below.

It’s heartening to know that animals have a fairly good idea when they are being mistreated.

The Mysterious Phenomenon of Sailing Stones Explained

By Anupum Pant

On a scenic dry lake feature, Racetrack Playa, in the California’s Death Valley national park has had something very mysterious going on which has made geologists scratch their head for several years.

On the dry lake bed are small and big rocks which have been moving mysteriously on the hard cracked surface, leaving long trails behind them. No one had known how, until now.

Turning Lead to Gold

By Anupum Pant

Hunt for a process to convert a brick of lead into gold was probably the most elusive quest during the olden times when alchemy was around. However, alchemists, who were mostly dismissed as pseudoscientific quacks, actually did some good ground work to make their dream of turning lead to gold into a reality.

And then came the 20th century, when transmutation of one element to another became fairly common. In fact nuclear reactors started working on the same principle. So, besides breaking of uranium atoms and combining of hydrogen atoms to form helium, did it actually become possible to transmute lead into gold using the same process?

Sure it did. Today it is totally possible to make lead (Atomic number 82) release 3 protons to turn into gold (Atomic number 79). Not just in theory, people have actually done it successfully in laboratories. For one, Glenn Seaborg is said to have done it in the year 1951.

To do this, you’d need a particle accelerator. And if you plan to use it as a get rich quick scheme, then you are in for a bad news. Transmuting lead to gold in a laboratory consumes massive amounts of energy, even if you have to do it in extremely minute volumes. So much that the price of doing it exceeds the price of gold by a very big amount. Also, only a very minute volume of gold comes out this way.

To make a single ounce of gold this, it would cost you one quadrillion dollars. You could just buy the same amount for $1300 instead.

Mastering The Best Useless Skill – Reading Text in Binary

By Anupum Pant

The next time you see a series of 0s and 1s, you will no longer need to take it to a computer and feed it in to read it. Of course you might never have to read a text in binary, and that is the reason this might be the most useless skill you could master right away. I’m doing it anyway.

Tom Scott from YouTube  recently posted a video on YouTube where he teaches you how to read text written in binary. It’s fairly easy. The only thing you need to practice, if you don’t already know it, is the number that is associated with each alphabet (Like it’s 1 for A and 2 for B and so on).

via [ScienceDump]

Mike The Headless Chicken

By Anupum Pant

Mike, a Wyandotte rooster, born in the month of April (year 1945), was an average male chicken living an average chicken life at some barnyard in Fruita, Colorado. On September 10th 1945 this changed. The rooster was no longer a normal male chicken of some random barnyard. It was making news.

The second world war had ended and families no longer were required to cut down their consumption of meat. So, a farmer’s wife, Clara Olsen decided to treat her family with a nice meal after the numerous sacrifices made in the second world war. She asked her husband, Lloyd A. Olsen to chase down mike and kill Mike for the night’s meal.

Lloyd did exactly that. He took aim and cut off Mike’s head. Normally, like all the chickens make erratic movements after getting cut, Mike with no head on his body started running, spewing blood around too.

Unlike all the chickens who spurt out blood and no longer have enough of it to remain alive, Mike’s bleeding stopped after a while and he stood up. Now Mike was a headless chicken moving around the barnyard. With no eyes, or even a head for that matter, mike started walking around and running into objects.

Mike the headless chicken feedingSoon, Mike adapted to this situation and started living a normal life. Except, he was a chicken without a head. Mike went on to live for 18 months, sustaining on food and liquids that were dropped using a dropper into the hole in his neck. Mike sure had the will to live.

Mike was a celebrity now. Life magazine published a piece on him. People from all over the country came around, just to have a look at a live headless animal walking around like nothing had happened.

Mike, Mike, where is your head.
Even without it, you are not dead!

Was the song little girls then started singing while playing around at school

Confused, the farmer took Mike to the University of Utah to get him checked by researchers. It was found that the brain stem at the top of his neck didn’t get cut. He still had the part which controlled his motor functions, and that was, more or less, enough for a chicken to lead a headless life. Basically, just enough to move around and continue normal body functions – like to digest food and respond to stimuli.

Even today, Mike has a festival named after him –  Mike The Headless Chicken Festival – which is Fruita’s highlight during the year.

via [RoadsideAmerica]

 

 

The Birthday Paradox

By Anupum Pant

Imagine you meet a random person in the street and ask him/her when is their birthday, there’s a huge chance that the person’s birthday will not be the same as your birthday. In fact, the probability of both your birthdays being on the same day is around 0.27%. Fat chance. At the back of our heads, this is something that is very clear to all of us.

Again, if you repeat this by asking about 22 people the same question, the chance of you finding someone having the same birthday as yours is still around 5%. Too less. This is too is a very intuitive piece of information.

But consider this. If I put all of the 22 guys and you in a room, there’s a big chance that 2 people in that room will have the same birthday – a 50% chance. Moreover, if there are 70 people in the room, this chance increases to about 99.99%. This is called the birthday problem or the birthday paradox.

So, what changed when 20 people went into the room? It was just the fact that in the room, we are picking 2 people from a group of 23 people. That is equivalent to this – everyone is asking everyone their birth dates. Everyone doing it simultaneously makes the probability much higher. The probability of two people sharing a birth date among a group of 23 people is far higher than you alone going around and asking all the 22 people, and finding someone having the same birthday as your’s.

Suppose there are 200 people in the room. The probability of 2 people sharing their birthday is massive (and yet not definite). There is in fact a 99.9999999999999999999999999998% chance!

1024px-Birthday_Paradox.svg

Finally, if you had 367 people in a room, at least a pair among these 367 people in the room would definitely have the same birth date. The 99.99% chance shoots up to a definite (100%) probability if there are 367 people in the same room. Think about it for a minute.

Nanokids and Nanoprofessionals

By Anupum Pant

In the year 2003, a group of researchers headed by James Tour at Rice university designed and synthesized a series of organic molecules that they thought would get kids interested in chemistry.

These organic molecules resembled human figures and were named Nanoputians – A portmanteau of nanometer (a unit of length used to measure extremely tiny distances) and Lilliputian (the tiny human-like fictional characters from Gulliver’s travels).

The synthesized nanokid molecule basically consisted of two benzene rings and a couple of carbon atoms for its body. For the limbs  acetylene units ending in an alkyl group were used. The upper body and the lower part were both created separately, and were joined using Palladium and Copper compounds. Here’s how…

nanokid body parts

The head of a basic Nanoputian was a 1,3-dioxolane ring. However, after using an advanced microwave irradiation technique, the team created a couple of other variants (called Nanoprofessionals) to replace the Nanokid’s head. Here is what the series of head variants that were created. As if that wasn’t enough, there is a nano ballet dancer too.

nanokids and nanoprofessionals

Now, in the scientific community, James and his team are better known for synthesizing a much more cooler thing – A nanocar. The nanocar they synthesized was a single molecule car which could be pushed around using a scanning tunnelling microscope. And another one which is fuelled by light!

There are a couple of other cool molecular machines they’ve made too.

via [FutilityCloset]

Wilson Primes

By Anupum Pant

Thanks to the guys at Numberphile for introducing me to Wilson primes. Although the piece of information that describes Wilson primes itself has more or less no practical use, I still think it’s a good thing to know.

The first thing you need to know is that all prime numbers follow this rule – If you take a prime number P and put it in the following equation you get a number that is perfectly divisible by the prime number P.

The equation: (P − 1)! + 1 = Q

Note: ! is a sign used for factorial. That means P! is equal to the product of all natural numbers smaller or equal to P. So, for example, 3! = 3 X 2 X 1

This rule is valid for all prime numbers and no composite numbers follow it. So, for instance, if you take a composite number for P, the number you get after you put it in the above equation is never divisible by the number itself. This is called the Wilson’s theorem.

Wilson primes (P) are a few special numbers which can divide Q in the equation above two times. So, for example, since 5 is a Wilson prime, you get 25 if you put it in the equation above. And 25 can be divided perfectly by 5 once, and the result (quotient 5) can be divided again by 5 to get a whole number.

Now, for Wilson primes here’s the deal – 5, 13 and 563 are Wilson Primes. And a very interesting thing to note here is that, in spite of all the computing technology we have in the world, these are the only three Wilson primes we know yet.

Mathematicians are pretty certain that there are several other Wilson primes waiting to get discovered, probably infinitely many. But one thing is for sure, below the number 20,000,000,000,000 5. 13 and 563 are the only three which exist.

Pseudoscorpions

By Anupum Pant

I had never heard of these creatures before. A couple of days back when I learnt about them, I was totally fascinated. Psuedoscorpions are teeny tiny bugs that look a lot like scorpions. They are also popularly known as false scorpions or book scorpions.

False because they aren’t really scorpions, and they don’t even have stingers like scorpions do. They do have those scorpion like claws. Book scorpions because they are often found in old dusty books.

Psuedoscorpions are very tiny. They are about one tenth of an inch long. Here’s is a comparison of it with a thumbnail.

1235098_10151610749187047_1014620119_n

They are found all over the world, and yet they aren’t seen around a lot because they are pretty secretive creatures. Other times when people do see them, they usually mistake them for a small spiders or ticks. If you happen to see one, don’t be scared because of their scorpion sounding name. They are harmless. Nor do they destroy any of your stuff.

More about it in the video below.

The Northern Clingfish Can Really Suck

By Anupum Pant

The Northern Clingfish, an ugly fish the size of your hand, is a relatively tiny creature which can lift really heavy weights. No wait, it doesn’t really lift weights.

This fish has fused pectoral and pelvic fins which form a complete disc like structure under it which enables it to stick to some of the most rough and most wet surfaces. Thanks vacuüm.

The suction cup under it doesn’t need any live muscles to work. Even a dead Northern Clingfish can suck as good as a live one. Look at how the suction cups under a 0.5 lb Northern Clingfish can hold a 6 lb rock for a couple of seconds…

The Largest Object in the Solar System

By Anupum Pant

On November 6th 1892, after being spotted by a British astronomer Edwin Holmes, comet Holmes was not seen again for several decades. Thus it came to be known as the lost comet. Out of the blue, more than 70 years later, the comet was again seen in the year 1964.

Now it is known that comet Holmes was captured by Jupiter several thousand years ago, and it never went back to the Kuiper belt. It is a Jupiter family comet. Every 6.88 years, the comet orbits the sun.

Even this year, on 27th of March, it was one of the most bright comets of the year. But it was something that happened back in the year 2007 which made it one of the most popular comets in the sky.

For a brief period, comet Holmes, which is also a part of our solar system, became the largest object in the solar system. Yes, even larger than the sun!

On November 9th 2007, the diameter of comet’s coma – a cloudy region surrounding the comet made up of very tiny shiny ice and dust particles – measured about 1.4 million km. The sun’s diameter rounded to the nearest hundred is estimated to be 1.392 million km. Agreed the coma wasn’t as massive as the sun, but the size of it did measure slightly more than the sun at that time.

It indeed is a great achievement to become the largest object in the solar system (for some time) for an object that is just a tiny mass of ice and dust that is only about 3.6 km wide.

That day, the cloud around it erupted due to a mysterious outburst which still puzzles scientists. Such outbursts have been seen in the past too and are thought to have been originated as a result of its collision with a meteor (or probably due to an internal steam eruption).

via [space]

Chladni Figures

By Anupum Pant

If you take a surface, membrane with a layer of loose particles or certain liquids on it, you’ll see that these particles get arranged in beautiful patterns if the membrane is made to vibrate with varying frequencies.

This phenomenon has been known for a long time now, probably since the time when early human tribes used to put grains of sand on drums made of taut animal skin. Since then Leonardo Da Vinci and Galileo Galilei have been known to have observed this phenomenon by hitting or scraping a surface covered with visible particles and .

Later, with information gleaned from Galileo’s and Leonardo’s notes, in the year 1680, Robert Hooke, English scientist from the Oxford University, devised a simple equipment which demonstrated this effect much clearly. He made a glass plate covered with flour to vibrate with the help of a violin bow. And observed beautiful patterns.

Much later, Ernst Chladni explained these figures using mathematics, spread it all across Europe and made a lasting impression on The French Academy of Sciences. These patterns thus came to be known as Chladni figures.

Brusspup, a YouTube channel known for it’s amazing videos demonstrates these Chladni figures on video.

Today, this study, which makes sound and vibration visible to the naked eye, is called Cymatics.

The Hexagon Storm

By Anupum Pant

Saturn is probably the most beautiful planet we have in our solar system. But did you know, Saturn is also home to a very peculiar phenomenon which has never been seen anywhere else before – a hexagonal hurricane.

A hurricane in the shape of a hexagon (six-sided), not circle. If that doesn’t blow your mind, try this – the storm is an incredibly huge – 30,000 km across! And it is about 100 km deep, with winds of ammonia and hydrogen moving at  more than 320 km per hour. It is large enough to swallow four planets of the size of Earth. This is what the Earth would look like if it were kept beside the storm.

saturns hexagonal storm and earth comparision

It’s only natural for hurricanes to be circular. And yet, researchers at Ana Aguiar of Lisbon University have been able to show that the hexagonal storm raging in the north pole of Saturn is also very natural too. In the year 2010, they proved  to by reproducing a similar effect in the laboratory by using rotating liquids.

According to them, a very narrow jet stream that goes about the hurricane’s edge creates a couple of other tiny hurricanes. These little storms are the ones that push the larger hurricane’s borders and give it a hexagonal shape.

In the 80s, the storm was first spotted by the twin voyager spacecraft.

A Piece of Paper as Thick as the Universe

By Anupum Pant

Linear growth is only what we can visualize well. Estimating things that grow exponentially, is something not many of us can do properly.

Here’s what happens when you fold a piece of paper. A paper of thickness 1/10 of a millimetre doubles its thickness. On the second fold it is 4 times the initial thickness and so on. It doesn’t really seem like it would grow a lot after, say, 10 folds, right?

After 10 folds, the paper which was about the thickness of your hair, turns into something that is as thick as your hand.

Without any calculation, how thick do you think would it become if you could fold it 103 times?  (I know, no one has ever folded a paper more than 12 times)

Think about this for a second: How many times do you think would you have to fold a paper to make it 1 kilometre thick? The answer is 23. Yes, it takes just 13 more folds to go from the thickness of a hand to a whole kilometre.

Turns out, if you manage to somehow fold a paper 30 times, it would become 100 km tall. The paper would now reach the space.

For the sake of imagining how exponential growth works, a paper folded 103 times would be about 93 Billion light years thick – which is also the estimated size of the observable universe.

Watch the video below to see one other great example of how exponential growth can mess with you.

Evolution of Eggs

By Anupum Pant

Eggs come in a variety of shapes, sizes and colours. Birds, a major group of creatures that descended from reptiles have, for several years, continued to evolve the design of their eggs for millions of years now (not consciously, through natural selection).

Eggs could have been cube shaped. In that case they would have been very difficult to lay. Also, they would have been weakest at the centre points of a face of the cube. Hence, eggs didn’t end up being squarish.

While most eggs have evolved to, well, an egg-shape, some eggs like those of some owls are nearly spherical in shape. But oval and pointy eggs do have an advantage of sort.

Spherical eggs tend to roll easily, and if laid somewhere near a cliff, they’d roll away, never to be seen ever again. Oval eggs normally tend to roll in circles. Usually, they roll in big circles. Still dangerous for birds who perch on cliffs most of the time.

Of all the eggs, the egg of a common guillemot bird is probably the most incredible – in the sense that it has a design that doesn’t let it roll down cliffs very easily.

Common guillemots are sea birds and they normally like to perch on cliffs. To add to the danger of their precarious perching places, they usually perch on such cliffs with a huge group. Also, they don’t even make nests.

Had their eggs been shaped like those of owls, they would have easily gotten knocked by someone from that huge group of perching birds, perching on precarious cliffs. So, their eggs have evolved to survive these conditions.

This is how their eggs look like. They are very awkwardly shaped. But when it rolls, thanks to natural selection, it rolls in very small circles! They don’t fall off cliffs easily. Wonderful!

common guillemot egg

First seen at [io9]