I thought today I would add a few little known Science facts. With all of the space related science discussions of late I thought this would be a good time to join in. Enjoy!
In five years, a woman who wears lipstick will use enough to draw a line equal to her height.
Beards are the fastest growing hairs on the human body. If the average man never trimmed his beard, it would grow nearly 30 feet long in his lifetime.
A general rule of thumb for distinguishing fruits from vegetables: For fruits, seeds are on the inside; for vegetables, seeds are on the outside.
Tomatoes are native to the Americas and were initially cultivated by Aztec Indians as early as A.D. 700. They are also a common source of allergies.
The roller coaster was invented and patented in Ohio by a toboggan designer, John Miller in 1926. It featured small cars sliding down incline ramps.
The barcode was patented in 1952 by Joseph Woodland and Bernard Silver. In June of 1974, the first barcode scanner was installed at a Marshes supermarket in Troy, Ohio. The first product to carry a barcode was Wrigley’s gum.
IBM called its first laptop computer “The Convertible”. It was the size of a suitcase.
On April 12, 1934, the highest surface wind speed ever recorded occurred over Mount Washington, New Hampshire. It was clocked at 231 miles per hour.
The 400 mg of nicotine that an average pack-a-day smokers inhale in a week would instantly kill them if ingested in a single hour.
Six-year-olds laugh on average of 300 times a day.
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Here’s a favorite tongue twister that is considered the most difficult in the English language due to the complex brain and motor coordination it requires,
I’ve been fascinated for decades about anything related to space travel. I can thank my mother for that when shortly after Sputnik made its appearance she showed up in my bedroom with paint brushes and paints. She then proceeded to turn my bedroom into a huge space mural filled with planets, stars, meteorites, and spaceships.. She knew I loved anything related to space travel because I was already a sci-fi junkie at the ripe old age of five. Today’s post contains information that I’ve picked up along the way concerning the space race and weird little factoids that you may never have heard before. I hope you enjoy them.
Our galaxy is so wide that, at the speed of light, it would take you 100,000 years to cross it.
A meteorite the size of the school bus would destroy the entire eastern seaboard of the United States.
The volume of the Earth’s moon is the same as the volume of the Pacific Ocean.
A solar flare is basically a gigantic magnetic arch-like horseshoe magnet-that attracts itself inward, back to the surface of the sun.
The famous Halley’s Comet returns to earth every 76 years. It last appeared in 1986 and will reappear here again in 2062.
A solar flare, ejected from the sun’s surface, can reach speeds of 190 miles per second or 306 kilometers per second.
It takes 3 minutes for the sunlight that is reflected from the moon to reach our eyes.
Astronauts are not permitted to eat beans before they go into space because the methane gas released while passing wind can damage spacesuit materials.
A light-year is the distance light travels in one year or 870,000,000,000 miles or 9.4 5 trillion kilometers.
A Martian day lasts 24 hours, 37 min., and 23 seconds. And Earth Day last 23 hours, 56 min., and 4 seconds.
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Here’s a salute to one of the greatest minds of all time.
Galileo Galilei
Here’s fair warning to some of you out there with outrageous or ridiculous theories. Galileo got into trouble with the Inquisition for his many theories, and spent some serious time in prison. The fact that he was correct made no difference.
I’ve spent the last five and a half years being tended to by a score of doctors and nurses and it saved my life. It’s given me time to really examine their profession and the the abilities they have to save lives. Todays post will introduce odd facts and historical information where the roots of our current medical treatments began. Some of it is a little strange and also a little frightening but that’s how we’ve learned the skills being used today.
The first image of the doctors stitching up a wound can be found on the Edwin Smith Papyrus (1600 B.C.).
Ancient Egyptian medicine was considered so advanced that the rulers of neighboring kingdoms would often bribe, cajole, or even send someone to kidnap the Pharaoh’s best doctors.
The 3000-year-old “Ebers Papyrus” was written on a 65 foot long scroll and describes treatments for the eyes, skin, extremities, and organs. It also lists medicinal plants such as mustard, saffron, onions, garlic, thyme, sesame, caraway, and poppy seed, and offers more than 800 recipes for their use.
The Egyptians used opium as crude forms of anesthesia when operating on patients. They also created a milder painkiller by mixing water with vinegar and adding ground Memphite stone. The resulting “laughing gas” was inhaled.
The first known surgery for cataracts was performed in the Egyptian city of Alexandria in about A.D. 100.
A collection of 37 surgical instruments is engraved on the wall in the Egyptian Temple of Kom-Ombo (2d century B.C.). Some show amazing similarities to modern surgical instruments and includes scalpels, scissors, needles, forceps, lancets, hooks, and pincers.
The original Hippocratic Oath was written by a school of philosophers known as the Pythagoreans and was actually a reaction against the writings of Hippocrates. The Pythagoreans were conservative and even backward looking in many ways forbidding many medical practices, including the surgery.
The Romans considered cabbage to be a magically protective food. The philosopher Cato wrote that Romans should not only eat cabbage at every meal, but also drink the urine of someone who’d eaten cabbage two days before.
In both ancient Greece and Rome, doctors didn’t need licenses or any formal training to practice. Anyone could call himself a doctor. If his methods worked, he attracted more patients, if not, he found himself another job.
Most Roman surgical instruments were made of bronze, or occasionally of silver. Iron was considered taboo by both Greeks and Romans and was never used for surgical instruments on religious grounds.
I’m feeling the need to post another quiz. In recent weeks I’ve posted quizzes from pop culture in the 1960’s and 1970’s and the age of the reader almost always determined their average score. Apparently looking back isn’t very popular these days with our younger generations. Todays attempt at reawakening the past will include questions of Science facts from the 1970’s. The answers will be posted below.
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THE CONCORDE
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EVERYONE LUVS SCIENCE
__________ was one of two Soviet cosmonauts who took part in the Apollo-Soyuz mission.
How fast could the Concorde jets fly?
What year did Amtrak begin service?
By 1972, __________ percentage of American homes had color TV’s?
What year was smallpox eradicated?
The first Apple Computer available on the market was the __________.
Amtrak immediately cut the number of passenger train routes from ___________ to __________.
In what country was the last reported naturally occurring case of smallpox?
Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and __________ are the founders of Apple.
The Apollo-Soyuz used mission allowed the Soviets/Russians to build the __________.
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THE MIR
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Answers
Alexi Neonov or Valeri Kubasov, Mach 2.02 or 1330 mph, 1971, 50%, 1977, Apple I, 366 to 184, Somalia, Ronald Wayne, the Mir space station.
I’m an avid reader and have been one for as long as I can remember. I was able to use that reading skill over the years to learn a lot of things about a lot of things. Subjects that were important when I was in school were English, History, and Science and were meant to give us a good start with important information needed to learn and build upon in the future. After reading the hundreds of complaints online from parents disgusted with and in total disagreement with the present education systems rules, I feel confident in saying that it seems my educational experience was better. Try this 1960’s Science Quiz and see how you do. The answers will be listed at the end of the post.
What was the brand name of the first publicly available birth control pill?
What was the number of the Apollo mission that landed on the moon?
The world’s most powerful earthquake happened in what country?
In _________ Kevlar was invented.
Dr. ________ performed the first human-to-human heart transplant.
Dr. Benjamin Spock was known for what field of science?
In _________ Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human in space.
The world’s first heart transplant involved putting the heart of what animal into a person?
In scientific terms, Kevlar is a __________.
Who said: “One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind?”
How did you do? Give this test to your kids, your friends, your neighbors, and anyone else you can think of and see how you compare.
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(Answers)
Enovid, 11, Chile, 1965, Christian Barnard, Child Psychology, 1961, Chimpanzee, Polymer, Neil Armstrong
Being a blogger allows me to cover many areas of our society and to be as truthful as I can possibly be. The government would like everyone to think that we’re all equal, but we aren’t. We still have different classes of individuals based primarily on the amount of money they have or don’t have. Is it fair? No! Will it ever change? Again NO! If it does change, I’ll never live to see it and I doubt seriously if my grandchildren will either. Maybe once the AI Singularity occurs things could change but who knows how? Human beings adapt to their circumstances in weird ways. Give a poor person 10,000,000 dollars and he/she will change dramatically. After a time, they will likely become a bit elitest and arrogant when dealing with people beneath them (monetarily). Today’s post will supply you with a few examples of extremely rich people talking about their lives and being totally unaware that the rest of us aren’t well-to-do.
“Until the age of 12 I sincerely believed that everybody had a house on Fifth Avenue, a villa in Newport and a steam-driven, ocean-going yacht.” Cornelius Vanderbilt Junior
“I have had no real gratification or enjoyment of any sort more than my neighbor on the next block who is worth only half a million.” William K Vanderbilt, who was worth 200 million when he died in 1885.
On a visit to the Holy Land in 1887, Edmund de Rothschild, upon seeing the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem for the first time, commonly inquired if it might be for sale.
During the 1890s, when William Randolph Hearst’s New York Journal was engaged in a nasty circulation war with Joseph Pulitzer’s World, an accountant warned Hearst that he was losing $1 million a year. Hearst thought for a moment and replied, “At that rate I can only last another 30 years.”
After her sentencing . . . to a four-year prison term, Leona Helmsley spent 4 days in a private room at New York Hospital, a hospital to which she had pledged $33 million. The doctors there were very concerned about our health. Her personal doctor declared there would be a “fatal determination” if Leona had to go to jail. No one I have met knows what a “fatal determination” actually means wrote Dennis Dugan of Newsday.
And finally, a quote from my favorite sarcastic wiseass: Mark Twain. Who continues to show his concern for us poorer folks and a little sarcasm for the wealthier.
“I wish to become rich so I can instruct the people and glorify honest poverty a little, like those kindhearted, fat, benevolent people do.”
I am a huge fan of science fiction. I’ve spent most of my life reading everything I could concerning science fiction and the space program. I thought I’d post a few tidbits of information about our solar system and space program that you may not be aware of.
Miss Baker was the name of a 1-pound squirrel monkey sent into space aboard a United States missile in 1959. She traveled more than 10,000 mph to an altitude of 300 miles and had little trouble with liftoff, reentry, or weightlessness, which were extremely important test results for the upcoming manned missions. Apparently being the first monkey in space made her a little feisty. Upon recovery, she bit the person who removed her from the capsule.
Here’s how to figure out how much you weigh on another planet. Multiply your weight by the “gravitational pull” factors. If you weigh 97 pounds on earth and want to compare that to your weight on Mars, multiply 97 x .38. You would weigh about 37 pounds on Mars.
Our sun is considered a yellow dwarf star and it’s estimated to have a lifespan of at least 5 billion more years. At the end of its life, our sun will turn into what’s called a white dwarf star and will collapse under its own weight. Be glad you won’t be around for that.
We all know there are eight (formerly nine) planets revolving around our sun: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune (Bye, Bye Pluto). There is a memory trick used by most space lovers to help remember the planets. Use this sentence: My Very Eager Mother Just Served Us Nine Pizzas. I wish I would’ve known that sentence when I was in school, it would’ve made things a little easier.
This morning I was awake and drinking my first cup of coffee at 4:30am and trying to decide whether to watch an hour of NASA TV or to wade through an hour of quantum mechanics on NOVA. I have a real interest in all things space and science and NASA is doing such incredible work in so many areas it’s difficult to keep up. Anything is better than being inundated with the worst part of the Christmas season . . . effing emails.
Even quantum mechanics and the use of cold temperatures to produce a new generation of super conductors is better than dealing with those emails. Believe me when I say I barely understand some of the concepts but anything that will block out this constant drumbeat and commercialization of Christmas is a welcome change.
I look out the window and see rain. The snow has come and gone and things are drab. It doesn’t feel the least bit like Christmas for some reason and I’m finding myself disappointed. Christmas music is not something I’d want to spend a lot of time listening to but a little of it is fine. This year I see a marked reduction in the seasonal music and the general feeling of Christmas. I wish I could be paid a dollar for every email I’ve received in the last eight weeks related specifically to BUY BUY BUY. That in itself is seriously depressing.
The two biggest offenders are Best Buy and Tiger Direct. Tiger Direct is an on-line retailer for electronics and was where the old Circuit City company came to die. I’m receiving upwards of five to ten emails a day from them and I’m very close to unsubscribing from them forever. It’s become something akin to cyber stalking or just plain harassment. There are other offenders as well and I’m averaging a minimum of 25-30 emails a day. They’ve effectively sucked the life of Christmas for me this year. I would like to thank Amazon, one of the biggest retailers in history, who care enough about their customers to leave them the hell alone.
I’m hoping that on Christmas Day I’ll see that light of Christmas spirit in the eyes of our grandson who is the perfect age to really enjoy it. I think next year my approach to the season will be very different. My birthday falls in August which is when I foresee the Christmas barrage beginning. That will be the time that I unsubscribe to every on-line retailer on my email contact list which hopefully will remove 90% of these irritating and annoying emails. I’m also considering setting up a new email account that I’ll supply to any retailer I make on-line purchases from. That account will then collect all of these annoying emails but will have no direct contact to me in anyway. I can just go about my life with the knowledge that at some future date the company supplying me with that mailbox will erase them all.
With five shopping days left I’m anticipating a deluge of last minute emails trying to coerce me into spending more and more money. To all of them I wish a very Merry Christmas and a big KMA. That’s "Kiss My Ass" for those of you not familiar with this blog.
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