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Why was the first supercontinent named Vaalbara?
The earliest and the most theoretical, the supercontinent Vaalbara is postulated to have existed about 3,5 billion years ago, in the early Archean Eon.
The name "Vaalbara" comes from the last four letters in the names of two cratons: the Kaapvaal craton in Southern Africa ⬆️ and the Pilbara craton in Western Australia ⬆️. Paleomagnetic data indicate that about 3.8 billion years ago they were very close to each other.
Containing some of the oldest rock on the surface of the planet, the Kaapvaal and Pilbara cratons also show evidence of four large meteorite impacts between 3.2 and 3.5 billion years ago.
There are three lesser-known cratons in East Antarctica that were probably included in the land mass of Vaalbara.
Geological evidence from the time of Vaalbara indicates that intracrustal melting and recycling must have been a major part of the early days of continent building. The planet must have been hot.
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Why are many children fussy eaters?
A new study demonstrates that at the age of six, children become extra fussy, particularly about the texture of their meal. The researchers asked 485 children between the ages of 5 and 12 to choose between six different foods with and without lumps, seeds and pieces of fruit in them ⬆️. In 76% of the instances, 6-year-olds opted for foods without lumps, the highest preference rate observed across the age groups.
According to researchers, food neophobia – a fear and rejection of eating new or unfamiliar foods – may be the main explanation for such children's eating behavior. Food neophobia is thought to be a protective function against dangerous foods, which seems to be particularly important for 6-7 aged children when they start to become more mobile and independent.
However, the study showed that the "anti-chunk phase" gradually goes the other way in 7–12-year-olds, even if parents often need to offer new foods up to 15 times.
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What is the oldest existing bridge?
The Arkadiko Bridge, also called the Kazarma Bridge, in modern Greece 🇬🇷 is believed to be the oldest existing bridge in the world.
⬆️ It is an arch bridge and one of the oldest of this type still used by the local population.
In Mycenaean (last phase of the Greek Bronze Age from 1600 – 1100 BCE) times, this bridge, built around 1300 – 1190 BCE, served as a highway in the area.
ℹ️ Besides the Arkadiko Bridge, among 🔟oldest bridges in the world,
🇹🇷4️⃣ are located in modern Turkey
Karamagara Bridge (built c.5th or 6th century CE)
Bridge near Limyra (built possibly c.3rd century CE)
Cendere Bridge (built c.200 CE)
Bridge Over River Meles/Caravan Bridge (built c.850 BCE)
🇮🇹2️⃣ in modern Italy
Ponte Sant’Angelo (built 134 CE)
Pons Fabricius (built 62 BCE)
🇮🇷1️⃣ in modern Iran – Band-e Kaisar (built c.260-270 CE)
🇪🇸1️⃣ in modern Spain – Alcántara Bridge (built 104-106 CE)
🏴1️⃣ in modern England – Tarr Steps (built possibly c.1000 BCE).
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How did the dinosaur with the strongest bite look like?
🦖 T.rex (Tyrannosaurus rex) that stomped the Earth from about 68 million to 66 million years ago is a repeat science fiction star for a reason: its bite was ferocious and could deliver up to six tons of pressure or about 50,000-60,000 newtons.
🦖 In museum halls, paleo art, and feature films, T. rex has traditionally been depicted with lipless jaws, banana-size fangs and a sinister grin, as seen in the top two illustrations ⬆️. But now, new evidence suggests these animals had lipped mouths, like modern-day lizards.
🦈🆚🦖 Among prehistoric animals, a possible contender of T. rex for the most powerful bite could be the huge shark Megalodon (Otodus megalodon) that terrorized the seas from 15 million to 3.6 million years ago with a bite force of up to 182,200 newtons.
ℹ️ Nevertheless, for its body size, the mighty T. rex’s bite was far less impressive than the bite of a much smaller modern dinosaur — a tiny Galapagos finch.
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Which living animals have the strongest bite?
Bite force is the force that the muscles and bones of the upper and lower jaw generate when an animal bites.
🐊🏆 The saltwater crocodile (Crocodylus porosus) has the strongest physically measured bite force at 16,414 newtons (newtons measure force magnitude) or about 1,674 kilograms/3,689 pounds of force.
The saltwater crocodile is the largest living reptile species and is found in saltwater and freshwater habitats spanning from Southeast Asia, and down to Australia’s northern coast.
Two aquatic predators could possibly beat the croc, but their bite forces have not been measured in a live setting.
The strongest bite force could be that of the orca (Orcinus orca), estimated at 84,516 newtons or about 8,618 kilograms/19,000 pounds or force, distantly followed by the bite force of a great white shark (Carcharodon carcharias)🦈, at about 18,000 newtons or 1,835 kilograms/4,045 pounds of force, according to computer models.
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What is the most isolated location on Earth?
Nowhere on Earth one can find a place further from dry land than Point Nemo.
It is also known as “the oceanic pole of inaccessibility”, and is located at the point of coordinates 48°52.6′S 123°23.6′W in the South Pacific Ocean, approximately 2,688 km (1,670 ml) away from the nearest land.
Geographically, it is located at the intersection of the equator, the International Date Line, and the 90th meridian west.
The nearest islands to Point Nemo are unpopulated: the Pitcairn Islands’ Ducie Island to the north; Motu Nii, a small island that is part of the Easter Island chain, to the northeast, and Maher island, off the shore of Marie Byrd Land, an unclaimed territory in Antarctica, to the south.
To find the closest hint of civilization, one should travel by boat during more than two weeks to one of the world’s most isolated inhabited islands, Easter Island, which is located about 3,540 km (2,200 ml) to the west of Chile.
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How did the Earth’s ocean form?
🌐🌋 According to scientists, at the down of its existence, about 4.5 billion years ago, Earth had no ocean as it was too hot for water to accumulate in liquid form.
🌐💧 Earth eventually started to cool below the boiling point of water, allowing the early ocean to form around 3.8 billion years ago.
ℹ️ There’s some debate around how water arrived on Earth in the first place.
🌋 One theory is that volcanic activity expelled water vapor and other gases from the planet’s interior, where it already existed.
☄️ Another suggests that icy comets deposited water when they crashed into the early planet.
🤔 The reality could be a combination of these theories, plus one other that involves the major collision event that is believed to have created the moon.
🤞🍀 Regardless of the ultimate explanation, the Earth’s specific location in the solar system happens to be the perfect place for water to exist in all three phases — ice, liquid and water vapor.
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What were the early forms of bicycles?
ℹ️🚲🇺🇳 Since its establishment by the UN in 2018, World Bicycle Day is observed on June 3.
🚲 In 1418, an Italian engineer, Giovanni Fontana (or de la Fontana), constructed one of the first known iterations of a wheeled, human-powered vehicle consisting of four wheels and a loop of rope connected by gears.
🚲 In 1817, about 400 years after Fontana, a German inventor Karl von Drais debuted his Laufmaschine (running machine), a two-wheeled vehicle, known by many names, including Draisienne, dandy horse and hobby horse.
🚲 In the early 1860s a velocipede (fast foot) or a "bone shaker" made of a wooden contraption with two steel wheels, pedals and a fixed gear system, became a popular bicycle form.
🚲 In 1885, John Kemp Starley from England introduced the "Rover." With its nearly equal-sized wheels, center pivot steering and differential gears with a chain drive, it was extremely stable, and the first highly practical iteration of the bicycle.
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How to make an easy sundial?
The simplest sundial uses an upright stick called a gnomon. The shadow cast by the gnomon shows the time on a sundial face.
For an easy sundial, all one really needs is a straight stick, like a dowel or a pencil, some pebbles that mark the hours, and a watch or phone so that you can match the shadow cast by the stick to the time.
One should select a sunny location, write numbers on the pebbles and place the gnomon upright into the ground.
In the Northern Hemisphere, one should slightly tilt the gnomon toward the north, and in the Southern Hemisphere – slightly slant the gnomon toward the south. To know which direction north/south is, a compass can be used, or the gnomon can be kept straight until it’s noon - at noon, the angle that gives the best shadow is north (northern hemisphere) or south (southern hemisphere).
To calibrate the made sundial, sometimes a few days and a modern clock/watch are needed.
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What is the difference between bugs and insects?
A bug is a type of insect. All bugs are insects, but not all insects are bugs.
Here are properties shared by most bugs:
🪲 Sucking mouthparts.
🪲 Do not undergo metamorphosis.
🪲 Partially hardened or fully membranous forewings, which fold over one another (although a few bugs lack wings altogether).
🪲 Many produce sound to communicate.
Scientists know about over 4️⃣5️⃣.0️⃣0️⃣0️⃣ true bugs, e.g.:
Aphids
Assassin bugs (including kissing bugs)
Beg bugs
Boxelder bugs
Cicadas
Firebugs
Froghoppers
Leafhoppers
Mealybugs
Scale bugs
Shield bugs
Stink bugs
Treehoppers
Water bugs (including water boatmen, water scorpions, and backswimmers)
Whiteflies
Animals that are insects but not bugs:
🐜 Ants
🐞Beetles, including Lady bugs
🐝Bees
🦋Butterflies and moths
🪳Cockroaches
🪰Flies
🦗Locusts and other grasshoppers
Mantises
Animals that are arthropods but not bugs:
🕷Spiders
Mites
Ticks
Centipedes
Millipedes
🦞🦀Lobsters and crabs
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How many types of volcanoes are there?
🌋When magma erupts at the surface as lava, it can form different types of volcano depending on:
🔺the viscosity, or stickiness, of the magma
🔺the amount of gas in the magma
🔺the composition of the magma
🔺the way in which the magma reached the surface
🌋⬆️ Based on the nature of their eruption and the kind of lava they release, there are 4️⃣ types:
1️⃣ Shield volcanoes
2️⃣ Composite/stratovolcanoes
3️⃣ Cinder cone volcanoes
4️⃣ Lava dome volcanoes
Experts also say that there are 2️⃣ broad types of volcanoes – stratovolcanoes (composite cone volcanoes), and shield volcanoes – and lots of different volcanic features that can form from erupted magma – cinder cones or lava domes.
🌋Based on their frequency of eruption, volcanoes can be of 3️⃣ types
1️⃣ Active Volcanoes
2️⃣ Dormant Volcanoes
3️⃣ Extinct Volcanoes
ℹ️Inside volcanoes, hot magma rises because it is less dense than the surrounding rock and because of trapped gases in it ⬆️.
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What is energy?
Energy is a universal term we use in our daily life.
In physics, energy is defined a quantitative property that can be transferred from an object to do any kind of physical activity.
In simple words,
Energy is the ability of something to do work.
Energy can exist in many forms ⬆️. The sun is considered the elemental form of energy on Earth.
All forms of energy are either kinetic or potential ⬆️.
According to the laws of conservation of energy, “ energy can neither be created nor destroyed but can only be converted from one form to another”.
Joule (J) is the SI unit of energy. One joule is the energy transferred to an object when a force of one newton acts on that object in the direction of force through a distance of one meter.
However, energy is also expressed in other units not part of the SI (ergs, calories), which require a conversion factor when expressed in SI units.
Joule is named after the physicist James Prescott Joule (1818-1889).
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What are some amazing facts about bees, honey and beekeeping?
🐝 Bees have existed for more than 100 million years.
🐝 Though bees have jointed legs, they do not possess anything like a kneecap, and therefore do not have knees.
🐝 Bees have 2 stomachs – one for eating, and one for storing nectar and processing it into honey.
🐝 Bees have five eyes.
🐝 Honey bees are fab flyers. They fly at a speed of around 25km per hour and beat their wings 200 times per second.
🐝 Each bee has 170 odorant receptors, which means they have one serious sense of smell! They use this to communicate within the hive and to recognise different types of flowers when looking for food.
🐝 There are just three types of honey bees: queens, workers and drones.
🐝 Worker bees are the smallest of the three types of honey bees, growing to just 10-15mm when mature. Drones are about 50% bigger, reaching 15-17mm as adults, and queens are the largest — almost twice the size of worker bees — 18-20mm at maturity.
🐝 The average worker bee lives for just five to six weeks.
🐝 The queen can live up to five years. She is busiest in the summer months, when she can lay up to 2,500 eggs a day.
🐝 If the queen bee dies, workers will create a new queen by selecting a young larva (the newly hatched baby insects) and feeding it a special food called “royal jelly“. This enables the larva to develop into a fertile queen.
🐝 Bees communicate by dancing. To share information about the best food sources, they perform their ‘waggle dance’. When the worker returns to the hive, it moves in a figure-of-eight and waggles its body to indicate the direction of the food source.
🐝 Bees also communicate within the hive by releasing chemicals called pheromones. As workers groom and feed hive members, they pass on these pheromones that indicate the health of the hive.
🐝 The queen bee releases her own distinct pheromone called Queen Mandibular Pheromone, or QMP.
🐝 Every bee colony has its own distinct scent, or pheromones, so that members can identify each other.
🐝 Honey bees are generally not aggressive — they’ll only attack when the believe their hive is threatened.
🐝 While bee venom is more deadly than cobra venom, it would take more than 3,800 bee stings to kill the average human male.
🐝 Bees navigate using the sun as we would a compass, and because they can see polarized light, are able to find their way even on cloudy days. There is some evidence that bees are also sensitive to the earth’s magnetism and may use it to navigate as well.
🐝🍯 One bee has to fly about 120,000 km – three times around the globe – and gather nectar from two million flowers to make about 450 grams of honey.
🐝🌺🌼🌸 A honey bee visits 50 to 100 flowers during a collection trip.
🐝🍯 During its lifetime, the average bee will make only 1/12th of a teaspoon of honey.
🍯 Honey is 25% sweeter than sugar.
🍯 Honey has antiseptic properties and was historically used as a dressing for wounds and a first aid treatment for burns and cuts.
🍯 The natural fruit sugars in honey – fructose and glucose – are quickly digested by the body. This is why sportsmen and athletes use honey to give them a natural energy boost.
🐝 The practice of beekeeping dates back at least 4,500 years.
🐝 Ancient peoples believed that bees were created from the carcasses of dead animals.
🐝 Ancient Egyptians believed bees to be the tears of the sun god, Ra.
🐝 Honey bees and honey are mentioned in different ancient texts, e.g. in Sanskrit texts.
🐝 Honey bees are the only insect that produces food consumed by humans.
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Why Greenland is rising?
Greenland has been gradually rising since the last ice age 12,000 years ago, its frozen coat of water trickling slowly into the sea. But recent data reveals this melting has been significantly speeding up.
Researchers found that in roughly the last decade Greenland's bedrock has risen up to 20 centimeters, which is a rate of about 2 meters per century.
According to scientists, this land uplift observed these years cannot be solely explained by the natural post-ice age development.
While glaciers around Greenland's periphery make up just 4 percent of the island's ice cover, they're responsible for almost 15 percent of its ice loss, which is causing an even greater rise in some areas than the loss of the main Greenland ice sheet ⬆️.
ℹ️ Such process is called elastic rebound – the previously compressed earth, now liberated from surrounding weight, relaxes into its more naturally expanded shape like a squashed pillow released to take up more volume
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Why is May 7 important for the development of radio?
🔘At the end of the 19th century, several scientists went head-to-head in the race to invent the radio.
🔘Italian physicist Guglielmo Marconi (1874-1937) is largely known as the ”father” of radio, but other researchers were ahead of him here. Serbian American scientist Nikola Tesla (1856-1943) has many proponents as the inventor of radio, while in England the credit is given to Oliver Lodge (1851-1940), who, according to some sources, in 1894 invented his model of radio waves receiver.
📻🇷🇺But if you ask anyone in Russia who invented radio, the answer will be: Alexander Popov ⬆️
On May 7, 1895 (this would be after Lodge but before Tesla and Marconi), Popov demonstrated a radio receiver ⬆️ to the Russian Physical and Chemical Society.
Today, in St. Petersburg, there is the A.S. Popov Central Museum of Communications.
Since 1945, every 7 May Russia celebrates Radio Day.
ℹ️World Radio Day is marked annually on February 13.
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What supercontinents have existed throughout Earth’s history?
📌 The continents we live on today are moving, and over hundreds of millions of years they get pulled apart and smashed together again. Occasionally, this tectonic plate-fueled process brings most of the world's landmasses together to form a massive supercontinent.
📌 There's no strict definition for a supercontinent, but researchers say it should include around 75% of the available landmass.
Supercontinents are also defined as single connected continents made up of all or most of the land on the surface of Earth.
📌 Recently, thanks to research into the mineral distribution and carbon dating, scientists can piece together what past supercontinents might have looked like, how they formed and how they broke apart.
📌 Scientists believe that new supercontinents are forming and splitting up about every 400 to 500 million years.
📌 Although all models of early Earth’s plate tectonics are very theoretical, researchers can generally agree that there have been a total of seven or eight supercontinents ⬇️ and are relatively sure of at least three (Columbia, Rodinia and Pangaea).
🟤 The first and earliest supercontinent to have existed is Vaalbara that is suspected to have formed 3.6 billion years ago.
🟤 The supercontinent Ur formed approximately 3 billion years ago.
🟤 The supercontinent Kenorlan came together between about 2.72 and 2.45 billion years ago.
🟤 The supercontinent Columbia, also called Nuna or Hudsonland, formed about 1.7 billion years ago and broke up approximately 1.5 billion years ago.
🟤 The supercontinent Rodinia existed from around 1 billion years ago to 700 million years ago.
🟤 The supercontinent Gondwana formed around 530 million years ago and was the largest landmass on Earth for more than 200 million years.
🟤 The supercontinent Pannotia may have briefly existed around 560 million years ago.
🟤 The most recent supercontinent, Pangaea, formed around 320 million years ago and broke up around 175 million years ago.
📌 The first supercontinents may have formed from the same cratons – stable blocks of Earth’s crust that form the center of a continent. These cratons can now be found in different parts of modern continents.
📌 Since subduction and seafloor melt replace plate tectonic material, nearly all of the land that makes up the Earth’s crust is less than 200 million years old, so it still difficult to find evidence of the supercontinents before Pangaea.
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Which country has the longest bridge?
🥇🇨🇳 China has the longest bridge in the world – the Danyang-Kunshan Grand Bridge ⬆️.
it has a length 164km (104 miles) and is part of the Beijing–Shanghai High-Speed Railway.
It was built at a cost of around $8.5bn ( $52m for each km of the bridge) and can withstand not only seismic activity, but also extreme weather, and even a hit from a 300,000-ton naval vessel.
Today, China can be called a country of longest bridges, as, among 🔟 longest bridges in the world, 6️⃣ are located in continental China.
Besides the Danyang-Kunshan Grand Bridge, China has
Cangde Grand Bridge (1️⃣1️⃣6️⃣ km, #️⃣3️⃣ in the world)
Tianjin Grand Bridge (1️⃣1️⃣3️⃣ km, #️⃣4️⃣in the world)
Weinan Weihe Grand Bridge (7️⃣9️⃣ km, #️⃣5️⃣in the world)
Beijing Grand Bridge (4️⃣8️⃣ km, #️⃣7️⃣in the world)
Wuhan Metro Bridge (3️⃣7️⃣ km, #️⃣9️⃣in the world)
ℹ️ At last count in 2021, China has a whopping 961,100 road bridges, and that's not including other types of transport.
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Who made the first bridges?
ℹ️ The bridge is a structure that provides passage over obstacles (valleys, rough terrain, water) by spanning them with natural or human-made materials.
🔺 The ancient Assyrians and Egyptians could have been the first to introduce bridge building. Stone arches can be found over the entrance of the Great Pyramid of Giza (3200 to 4200 BC) but they were not true arches as they were made of single sloping stones meeting over an opening.
🔺 The first real evidence of bridge-building technology can be traced back to Babylonian society in about 4000BC. The river Euphrates was spanned in the center of the city of Babylon by a single brick arch, one furlong (220m) long and 10m wide ⬆️.
🔺 In China, masonry arches were also known to have existed, documented at around 2000BC. Arches can be seen in the Great Wall of China (completed 214BC) for carrying it over rivers.
🔺 The Romans incorporated the true semicircular arch into their designs in about 500-600BC.
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Which living creatures exert the most powerful bite force for its body size?
To determine an animal’s bite strength, some studies measure force, others measure pressure, and some take into account body mass in proportion to force. To compare bite forces in taxa of greatly differing body masses a bite force quotient (BFQ) is calculated as a regression of the quotient of an animal's bite force divided by its body mass.
The carnivorous mammal with the strongest bite for its body size is the Tasmanian devil (Sarcophilus harrisii) ⬆️. Being only about the size of a big housecat, this marsupial with jaws that can open to an 80-degree angle, can produce a bite force of 553 newtons or about 56 kg of force and a BFQ of 181 (by comparison, the tiger’s BFQ is 127).
Some animals with a huge bite aren't even predators. The Galapagos large ground finch (Geospiza magnirostris) ⬆️ weighs only about 33 grams, but its beak can crack tough nuts and seeds with a force of 70 newtons.
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What do sci-fiction-pioneer Jules Verne, horror-writer H.P. Lovecraft, and the Russian space program have in common or what are some interesting facts about Point Nemo?
📍 Who Found Point Nemo?
While the oceanic point of inaccessibility has always existed, it was only just discovered in 1992, some three decades ago, thanks to modern computing and GPS technology. A Croatian-Canadian survey engineer Hrvoje Lukatela wrote a geospatial program called Hipparchus, and found Point Nemo.
📍 Point Nemo Isn’t Named After A Fish
The etymology of Point Nemo is easily confused with Disney’s well-known protagonist — fish Nemo — in the children’s show Finding Nemo. But Point Nemo was named after the famous fictional character Captain Nemo in Jules Verne’s ‘20,000 Leagues Under The Sea.’ It translates roughly to “no man” in Latin, a name that fits a place so alone in the world.
📍 Point Nemo Is A Confluence of Lifelessness
The Nemo point is an area of the deep ocean with no islands, reefs, or other land structures. Instead, the ocean floor comprises abyssal plains, trenches, and mountain ranges plagued by perpetual darkness and silence. The extreme pressure of the deep sea and cold temperatures make it uninhabitable for most life forms. Currently, only bacteria and tiny crabs have been discovered to live in the volcanic vents on the seafloor near Point Nemo.
📍 Astronauts/Cosmonauts Are The Closest People
Surprisingly, the closest people to Point Nemo are astronauts and cosmonauts on board the International Space Station (ISS) in space. At their closest, they are about 415 km (258 ml) away from the location that marks the spot.
📍 Point Nemo Is A Spacecraft Cemetery
In the 1970s, space organizations found that an extremely remote location, such as Point Nemo, is a safe “scuttling” destination for satellites and spacecraft that are deorbited for decommissioning on expiry.
It is far enough away from air and sea traffic that the spacecraft will not be disturbed, and it is located in an area of the ocean with minimal currents, so the spacecraft and its technology will not drift away.
The first spacecraft to be sent to Point Nemo was the Soviet Union’s Salyut 1 in 1971.
Since then, more than 250 spacecraft have been sent to the graveyard, including the Mir space station, the Skylab space station, and the Beagle 2 Mars lander.
When a spacecraft is sent to Point Nemo, it is deorbited before being allowed to sink to the ocean floor. This procedure is called “geological disposal,” and it ensures that the spacecraft will not pose a threat to future space missions.
The ISS will likewise be decommissioned at Point Nemo in 2028-2030.
Ultimately, Point Nemo is a unique and fascinating place, serving an important role in space exploration.
📍 Point Nemo Is The Home Of Cthulhu
Point Nemo’s location is coincidentally the home of Cthulhu, the fictional cosmic entity created by author H.P. Lovecraft in his famous fictional work — The sunken city.
Cthulhu is a massive monster that is part octopus and part dragon and wields enormous power and influence.
Point Nemo is the perfect place for Cthulhu to hide from the world.
Lovecraft puts the city in the South Pacific Ocean at 47°9′S 126°43′W, very close to Point Nemo.
The fictional submerged city was first referenced in the short story The Call of Cthulhu (1928), written 66 years before the computation and eventual mapping of Point Nemo.
📍 Point Nemo Was Once Thought To Contain Life
In 1997, scientists recorded a very loud sound originating from point Nemo, an otherwise Lifeless/deathly place. The mysterious sound traveled across the Pacific, echoing all the way.
Since then, it’s been known as the Bloop.
Scientists ran with the hypothesis that a large aquatic animal, such as a whale or a giant squid, could have caused the sound.
With Point Nemo’s proximity to H.P Lovecraft’s sunken city, conspiracy theories flew with wild abandon.
But in 2005 researchers concluded that the Bloop was simply a phenomenon caused by large icebergs calving off an ice shelf in the depth of the dark.
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Why does water expand when it freezes?
💧 On heating, liquids expand since the molecules move with greater energy overcoming the intermolecular attraction. On the contrary, liquids usually contract on cooling. But that is not the case with water.
💧 The water molecules consist of 2 atoms of hydrogen and one of oxygen, the oxygen atom side being slightly negative, while the hydrogen atoms side – slightly positive, forming hydrogen bonds. Upon freezing, the molecules set themselves in a very open arrangement that contains more space than the water in the liquid state. Hence, water expands upon freezing and becomes less dense. On the other hand, it contracts on thawing, much unlike most other liquids.
💧 Water expands approximately by about 10%.
ℹ️ Water is not the only substance that expands when it freezes, other substances are plutonium, germanium, bismuth, gallium, silicon, etc.
✍️ This phenomenon, the anomalous expansion of water, also explains why ice is floating in water.
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Why is June 8 an important day for the world?
🌊 World Oceans Day (WOD) is observed on June 8 and celebrates the vitality and importance of the ocean for our planet.
🌊 The ocean is a huge body of saltwater that covers about 71 percent of Earth’s surface.
🌊 The ocean contains about 1.35 billion cubic km of water – about 97 percent of all the water on Earth.
🌊 The ocean produces at least 50% of the planet’s oxygen, it is home to most of earth’s biodiversity, and has considerable impact on weather, temperature, and the food supply of all Earth’s organisms.
🌐🌊 The planet has one global ocean, though people traditionally divide it into five distinct regions: the Pacific, Atlantic, Indian, Arctic and Southern oceans.
🌊 Despite its size and impact, more than 80 percent of the ocean has never been mapped and explored by humans. A far greater percentage of the surfaces of the planet Mars has been mapped and studied.
ℹ️🇺🇳🌊“Awaken New Depths” is the theme for WOD 2024.
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What are some types of sundials and common misconceptions about them?
There are many versions of sundials:
☀️🕛 Horizontal Sundial
features flat dial with a gnomon mostly perpendicular to the surface. It is the most common type and is placed horizontally.
☀️🕛 Vertical Sundial
is mounted on a vertical surface like a wall. The gnomon sits at an angle to the vertical plane.
☀️🕛 Equatorial Sundial:
The dial plate aligns parallel to the Earth’s equator, and the gnomon is perpendicular to this plate.
☀️🕛 Analemmatic Sundial
is a more complex type where the gnomon is movable and placed based on the date. The hour markers form an elliptical pattern.
☀️🕛 Polar Sundial:
The dial aligns parallel to the Earth’s axis and the gnomon points directly towards the celestial pole.
Here are also 🔟 common misconceptions about sundials.
❌ Misconception: Sundials work anywhere without adjustment.
✅ Reality: Sundials require calibration for the latitude and longitude of the new location for accurate timekeeping.
❌ Misconception: Sundials show the same time as modern clocks.
✅ Reality: Sundials show solar time, which differs from standard clock time due to the equation of time and the difference between solar noon and standard noon.
❌ MIsconception: The gnomon should always be vertical.
✅ Reality: Ideally, angle the gnomon towards the celestial pole (north in the Northern Hemisphere, south in the Southern Hemisphere) at an angle equal to the local latitude.
❌ Misconception: All sundials are the same.
✅ Reality: There are many types of sundials (horizontal, vertical, equatorial, etc.), each designed for specific conditions and purposes.
❌ Misconception: Sundials are always accurate.
✅ Reality: The equation of time, seasonal variations, and even local topography affect sundials.
❌ Misconception: Sundials only work on sunny days.
✅ Reality: Some advanced types, like heliochronometers, provide rough estimates on overcast days by tracking the sun’s position through cloud cover.
❌ Misconception: Sundials were only used in ancient times.
✅ Reality: Sundials are still appreciated today for their simplicity, educational value, and as decorative garden features.
❌ Misconception: The sundial’s shadow moves uniformly throughout the day.
✅ Reality: The shadow moves at different rates due to the Earth’s tilt and orbit.
❌ Misconception: Sundials only show time.
✅ Reality: Some sundials indicate seasons, solstices, equinoxes, and even geographical latitude.
❌ Misconception: Reading a sundial is like reading a clock.
✅ Reality: Sundials take many forms, but generally their numbers are not arranged like those on an analog clock.
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What is the oldest discovered sundial?
☀️🕛 A sundial is a device that indicates the time of day using the position of the Sun.
According to archeologists, the world’s oldest discovered sundial dates to the 13th century B.C. It was found in the Valley of the Kings, the burial place of rulers from Egypt's New Kingdom period.
The sundial is made of a flattened piece of limestone, called an ostracon, with a black semicircle divided into 12 sections drawn on top.
To bring this 3200 year old artifact to life, researchers developed a project "Ra" that showcases the sundial's functionality. ⬆️
Numerals from 6 AM to 6 PM denote the hours. View (simulation, ostracon front, ostracon back), shadow and dial (original, equinox, winter solstice, summer solstice, today, today Luxor true solar) as well as the numerals (Egyptian, Greek, Roman, eastern Arabic, Arabic) can be toggled by means of hieroglyph buttons. The astronomical modes have been calculated for a latitude of 25.5° (Luxor).
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What are the characteristics of the different types of volcanoes?
These are the characteristics of 4️⃣ types of volcanoes based on the nature of their eruption and the kind of lava they release ⬇️
🌋 Shield Volcano
Shield volcanoes are huge, gently sloped volcanoes that almost exclusively erupts basaltic lava and include some of the largest volcanoes in the world. The eruptions are not explosive; the lava oozes out from the central vent or a group of vents and spreads far, building a dome shape profile like a warrior’s shield. They can be as high as 9000 meters from the base.
Lava Type: Less viscous, quite fluid basaltic lava.
Examples: The volcanoes in the the island of Hawai’i, including Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea, the world’s largest active volcanoes, rising over 9 km above the sea floor.
🌋 Stratovolcano
Also referred to as composite cone volcanoes, it is more cone-shaped than a shield volcano and includes some of the world’s grandest mountains. It is a tall conical mountain composed of an alternating layer of lava-flow, which justifies the name composite volcano. It can have a cluster of vents, with lava breaking through walls or issuing from fissures on the sides of the mountain. The eruptions are extremely explosive and dangerous. Pressure builds in the magma chamber as gases under immense heat and pressure are dissolved within the magma. When the magma reaches the vents, the pressure is released, and the gases explode violently. These can be up to 100 to 3500 meters high.
Lava Type: Highly viscous rhyolitic lava that hardens before it can spread far (high content of silica and low iron and magnesium contents)
Examples: Mount Fuji in Japan, Cotopaxi in Ecuador, Mount Vesuvius in Italy, Mount Pinatubo and Mayon in the Philippines, Volcan de Colima in Mexico, Eyjafjallajokull in Iceland, Popocatepetl in Mexico, Arenal Volcano in Costa Rica.
🌋 Cinder Cone Volcano
Cinder Cone has a characteristic cone shape. It forms when volcanic cinder, blobs of congealed lava of basaltic composition, come out from a single vent. It has explosive eruptions caused by gas rapidly expanding and escaping from the molten lava that comes out like a fountain. The lava cools quickly and falls as cinders that build up around the vent forming a cone shape, leaving a crater at the summit. These volcanoes can be as high as 100 to 400 meters.
Lava Type: Less viscous, quite fluid basaltic lava (enriched in iron and magnesium and depleted in silica)
Examples: Cerro Negro in Nicaragua (Central America) and Parícutin in Mexico, the youngest volcano on Earth, which first developed in 1943.
🌋 Lava Dome
These are relatively small, circular mounds formed as the lava is too viscous to flow, which makes it piles over and around the vents. As the lava oozes out, its outer surface cools and hardens, then shatters, spilling loose fragments down its side. Lava domes are found within the crater or on the sides of large composite volcanoes. Their height depends on the size of the composite volcanoes they appear around.
Lava Type: Highly viscous, less fluid rhyolitic lava
Examples: Mount Merapi lava dome in Indonesia, the Soufrière Hills volcano, on the Caribbean island of Montserrat.
These are the characteristics of 3️⃣ types of volcanoes based on their frequency of eruption.
🌋 Active Volcanoes
Those that have erupted in the last 10,000 years and are expected to erupt again at any time.
Examples: Mount Etna in Italy and Mauna Loa in Hawaii.
🌋 Dormant Volcanoes
Those that have not erupted in the last 10,000 years, but are likely to erupt after remaining inactive for a long period.
Examples: Mt. Kilimanjaro in Africa and Mt. Fuji in Japan.
🌋 Extinct Volcanoes
Those that were active in the past, but have not erupted in the last 10,000 years and are not likely to erupt in the present or the future.
Examples: Mt. Kenya in Africa and Mt. Aconcagua in South America.
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How different types of energy are defined?
I. Kinetic Energy.
Kinetic energy is the energy associated with the object’s motion. Objects in motion are capable of causing a change or are capable of doing work.
Different Types of Kinetic Energy:
✔️ Radiant energy
is the type of energy that travels by waves or particles. This energy is created through electromagnetic waves and is most commonly experienced by humans in the form of heat.
When you turn on an incandescent light bulb, it gives off two forms of energy. There is visible light and heat that is generated. Both these generated energies are a form of radiant energy.
☀️Sunlight is an example of radiant energy.
✔️ Thermal Energy
is similar to radiant energy and is experienced in the form of heat or warmth. While radiant energy refers to waves or particles, thermal energy describes the activity level among the atoms and molecules in an object. This is the only difference between radiant energy and thermal energy. Some examples of thermal energy include the geothermal energy or the warmth emanating from the engine.
✔️ Sound Energy.
Humans experience the vibrations that reach the human ear as sound. The disturbance moves in the form of waves through a medium like air and reaches our eardrum. On reaching the eardrum, these vibrations are converted into electrical signals and sent to the brain, which we interpret as the sensation of sound.
✔️ Electrical Energy.
The flow of negatively charged electrons around a circuit results in electricity which we more commonly refer to as electrical energy.
✔️ Mechanical Energy
is the energy associated with the mechanical movement of objects. This type of energy can also be referred to as motion energy.
II. Potential Energy
Potential energy is the energy stored in an object or system of objects. Potential energy can transform into a more obvious form of kinetic energy.
Different Types of Potential Energy:
✔️Gravitational Potential Energy
is the energy stored in an object due to its vertical position or height. A book on a high bookshelf has a higher gravitational potential energy than a book on the bottom bookshelf.
✔️ Elastic Potential Energy
is stored as a result of applying a force to deform an elastic object. The energy is stored until the force is removed and the object springs back to its original shape, doing work in the process. The deformation could involve compressing, stretching or twisting the object. Examples of this type of potential energy are a spring that is coiled, the string of an archer’s bow is pulled back, rubber band that has been stretched.
✔️ Chemical Potential Energy
is the energy stored in the chemical bonds of the substance. The energy can be absorbed and released due to a change in the particle number of the given species.
Examples:
• Before the sun shines on the green leaves (potential photosynthesis).
• Gasoline before it is ignited.
• Fireworks before they are launched.
✔️ Electric Potential Energy
is the energy that is needed to move a charge against an electric field. Examples of this type of potential energy are an incandescent light bulb that is turned off, a radio tower that is not working, a black-light turned off, a television before it is turned on.
🔄 Energy can be transferred from one form to another. The movement of energy from one location to another is known as energy transfer.
Energy can be transferred:
▪️ Mechanically – by the action of force.
▪️Electrically.
▪️By Radiation – by Light waves or Sound waves.
▪️By Heating –by conduction, convection, or radiation.
The process which results in the energy changing from one form to another is known as energy transformation.
❗️ While energy can be transformed or transferred, the total amount of energy does not change ¬– this is called energy conservation.
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How to reduce human intake of nanoplastics and microplastics?
Tap water nano/microplastics (NMPs) escaping from centralized water treatment systems are of increasing global concern, because they pose potential health risk to humans via water consumption.
Recently, researchers from China have presented evidence that boiling water can remove at least 80% of polystyrene, polyethylene, and polypropylene NMPs.
This simple boiling-water strategy has the potential for harmlessly alleviating human intake of NMPs through water consumption.
ℹ️ Scientists categorize degraded plastic waste products by size.
📌 Microplastics are tiny particles less than than five millimetres in diameter, or about the size of a sesame seed.
📌 Nanoplastics are flecks too small to be noticed by the human eye with diameters of less than a billionth of a meter or a nanometer. By comparison, a sphere with a diameter of one nanometre is as small relative to a softball as a softball is to the Earth.
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Why is 20 May World Bee Day and why is it important?
🐝🇺🇳 In 2017 the UN declared 20 May as World Bee Day ⬆️, which is now celebrated each year.
🐝 20 May was chosen because it coincides with the birthday of Anton Janša (1734-1773) ⬆️, who is considered to be one of the fathers of modern beekeeping techniques and one of the pioneers of apiculture on a global scale. Anton Janša was born in Breznica, the Gorenjska (Upper Carniola) region of modern-day Slovenia, in a family of beekeepers. Although he showed remarkable artistic talent in painting, he also decided to became a professional beekeeper.
🐝 The purpose of the international day is to acknowledge the role of bees and other pollinators for the ecosystem. People are reminded of the significance of bees in providing for the needs of humanity.
🐝ℹ️ According to the UN, three out of four crops across the globe producing fruits, or seeds for use as human food depend, at least in part, on bees and other pollinators.
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How does the Mars’s 'labyrinth of night' look like?
The hauntingly-named Noctis Labyrinthus (which means in Latin 'labyrinth of night') is a fascinating region near the equator of Mars.
Noctis Labyrinthus is home to a network of intersecting canyons, some as deep as 6 kilometers (3.7 miles), giving the region a maze-like appearance when viewed from above. The canyons were likely created by past volcanism in the nearby region of Tharsis, which would have caused the planet’s surface to arch upwards and then collapse. Dust covers most of the region, leading to its rather uniform appearance.
Noctis Labyrinthus is nestled between the colossal martian ‘Grand Canyon’ (Valles Marineris) and the tallest volcanoes in the Solar System (region of Tharsis) and stretches out for around 1190 km.
⬆️ Fly over Mars’s Noctis Labyrinthus in this video animation, based on data from the Mars Express observations of the system and created using an image mosaic built over eight orbits.
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How bioluminescence can help humanity?
🧑🏻🔬👨🏻🔬🔬 Scientists are studying the chemicals and circumstances involved in bioluminescence to understand how people can use the process to make human’s life safer.
🧬 Green fluorescent protein (GFP), found in some bioluminescent jellies, is a valuable "reporter gene" – a chemical (a gene) that biologists attach to other genes they are studying. GFP reporter genes are easily identified and measured, usually by their fluorescence. This allows scientists to trace and monitor the activity of the studied gene—its expression in a cell, or its interaction with other chemicals.
🐁 Look at these mice bred by researchers with GFP ⬆️.
🌳🔆 Bioluminescent trees could help light city streets and highways. This would reduce the need for electricity.
🌾🔆 Bioluminescent crops and other plants could luminesce when they needed water or other nutrients, or when they were ready to be harvested. This would reduce costs for farmers.
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