Archive for September, 2007
Friday, September 28th, 2007
Why Does Peppermint Feel Cool?
Who hasn’t popped a mint or a piece of gum containing peppermint in it and felt that
rush of coolness? I had done this thing mindlessly in the past, but while eating a piece
of minty chocolate I wondered, what exactly is the peppermint doing in my mouth? We
all know that water evaporating off skin can cool the body, but when you
put something with peppermint oil in it, there’s not necessarily any water
in it to evaporate, and it happens in your mouth also, so what’s going on?
What I found about this one was [...]
No Comments » - Posted in food, health by Bonnie
Wednesday, September 26th, 2007
Pulling Up A Sore Matter
Most of us have done hard work or exercise and the next day felt sore, more sore even than during the activity. This is known as Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness - DOMS. What is going on in our muscles to make us feel pain?
Scientist don’t agree on what exactly is going on, but most [...]
4 Comments » - Posted in exercise, health by Bonnie
Monday, September 24th, 2007
The Earth We Live On
Did you know the average surface temperature of the earth is around 60 degrees fahreheit? (15 celsius)
The circumference of the earth is about 24,900 miles around. That’s about 131,472,000 feet and would take you 88.66 days (2,128 hours) to run if you kept up the pace (11.7 mph) of the 2007 Boston Marathon winner!
And of course, you’d need to be able to walk on water too, as you’d have to cover some of the water that covers about 70% of [...]
No Comments » - Posted in math, outdoors, running, statistics, world by Bonnie
Saturday, September 22nd, 2007
It’s a Girl? Stick It With A Needle
Check out this article about a 29 year old woman in China who
recently found she had 23 needles in her body, allegedly stuck
into her by her now dead grandparents, who were disappointed
by the arrival of another girl in the family.
Doctors suspect they wanted to kill her because her family preferred a son. Some of the needles were pushed into the fontanelle, the soft spot on the [...]
2 Comments » - Posted in health, statistics, world by Bonnie
Thursday, September 20th, 2007
Hyphens!
For me hyphens have always been a kind of curious wonder. Putting in
hyphens is fun, but worrying afterwards about whether or not it was
correctly used is not fun.
One common use of hyphens is to separate words that won’t fit at the
end of a line. They should be placed in places that break up the word in
roughly equal parts, and between syllables, such as ”encour-aging”,
and not ”enc-ouraging.” This post, however, is going to be about one
particular use of hyphens that I never can remember.
Hypens are sometimes used to make two words read like one word.
This site likens them to trailer hitches, making the two one. Hyphens
are used to connect words that make up an adjective describing nouns,
such as:
coffee-brown colored suit
well-known celebrity
nineteenth-century play
strawberry-smoothie flavoring
red-apple [...]
No Comments » - Posted in Uncategorized, english by Bonnie
Tuesday, September 18th, 2007
Pop Stats
There are approximately 301,139,947 people in the United States of America. The national population in 1900 was around 76,094,000.
The largest American city is New York City, with about 8,168,338 people. I tried to find the stats on the smallest town, but the results seem inconclusive with many claims to the smallest town. The people at [...]
2 Comments » - Posted in health, statistics by Bonnie
Friday, September 14th, 2007
Give Blood; An Hour At A Blood Donation Center
A few weeks ago someone from Red Cross called and asked if I wanted to donate blood again. I had been waiting for the super-local one that I can walk to, but I figured why not go to the one a few miles away! Thinking about my readers, I asked my sister if [...]
3 Comments » - Posted in health, statistics by Bonnie
Wednesday, September 12th, 2007
Colored Beans and Aztec Money
Did you know it takes 6-10 days to make a jellybean? First the centers are made - of mostly sugar and corn syrup - and then they are left out 24-48 hours to dry. The second process involves being put in an “engrossing pan.” It resembles a clothes dryer! During that process the outside coating [...]
24 Comments » - Posted in food by Bonnie
Tuesday, September 11th, 2007
If I Were A Rich Man…
…I would have to enter my income in Global Rich List and find out just how rich I was. How poor are you? Would you rate yourself as in the low, middle, or high bracket of income? Put your income in here (nothing required but income, no email address, no name) and find out where [...]
No Comments » - Posted in statistics, world by Bonnie
Monday, September 10th, 2007
Notebooks
I’ve got a variety of different notebooks around. Some have my math problems from 5th grade, others have journals, and still others music I’ve written, and notes from lectures.
My grandfather, who is a scholar and taught at colleges for many years, has always told me I ought to keep a notebook. In it, [...]
