We know that ultraviolet light from the Sun can be harmful to our skin, but it can also damage plastics. UV light is made up of high energy photons, and when they slam into molecules they can break the bonds that hold them together. This process is known as UV degradation. Plastics are made from …
Cats usually have five toes on their front paws and four on the back paws. However, some are born with up to eight toes on one or more of their feet. This genetic mutation, called polydactyly, is common in cats. Although these extra toes can allow felines to get a better grip with their front …
You might think that only the rich and famous have a net worth, but everybody has one. Put simply your net worth is the value of your assets, minus any debts that you might have – it’s a measure of your financial wealth. Assets are the value of all your money and any property, shares, …
Identical twins don’t have identical fingerprints because of how fingerprints form. The whorls and ridges form during compressions of the skin on a foetus’s fingers, in a similar way to land masses buckling to form ridges under compression. Not everything is alike about identical foetuses in the womb; their positions, the lengths of their umbilical …
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When you brush against a stinging nettle, tiny hairs on the leaf pierce your skin, injecting you with various chemicals that cause a painful stinging sensation. When this occurs, many people will instantly begin hunting fora nearby dock leaf, claiming that rubbing it on the affected area soothes the pain. However, no one quite knows …
Black, green, and white teas are all made from leaves of the same species of plant, but their differences arise from the level of oxidation that they have undergone during processing. Once tea leaves are picked, they begin to wither. Exposure to oxygen triggers a series of chemical reactions that cause the leaves to turn …
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Laughing gas, or nitrous oxide, is used for pain relief. It is a small molecule, and when it gets into your bloodstream it travels to the brain and interferes with the transmission of chemical signals from one nerve cell to the next. It has three main effects – pain relief, relaxation, and anaesthesia – and …
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There were once an estimated 20,000 different languages spoken throughout the world, but now there are less than 7,000. The most common way a language becomes extinct is when one language spoken by a bilingual nation becomes more socially dominant than the other. If someone is more likely to find a job or make friends …
Whether it brings you luck, grants your wishes or simply costs you a penny, throwing coins into fountains certainly benefits someone. Eventually all that loose change is collected by the fountain’s owner, who may pocket it themselves, put it towards the upkeep of the fountain, or donate it to charity. Up to £3,000 of loose …
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It’s believed there are hundreds of billions of galaxies in the observable universe, but the exact number isn’t known. To count them all, astronomers need to be able to look deep enough into space, and far enough back in time, to see when galaxies were formed. Using current telescopes, they can see galaxies just over …
Plants produce their own chemical sunscreens, known as flavonoids, which shield them from the harmful effects of UV-B radiation. Exposure to UV-B light stimulates a doughnut-shaped photoreceptor protein called UVR8, which in turn activates genes that produce flavonoids. This ‘sun block’ is then deposited on the outer tissues of leaves, where it absorbs UV-B rays, …
Ice baths or cold rooms cause athletes’ blood vessels to contract, reducing blood flow and alleviating the inflammation caused by muscle damage. The ice bath treatment involves sitting waist deep in a bath at around ten degrees Celsius. Although many sportspeople swear by this popular recovery aid, the science behind it is inconclusive. An ice …
Designed in the 1960s to spy on the Soviet Union, the American SR-71 Blackbird reconnaissance plane could fly over three times the speed of sound, at altitudes of over 25,000 metres. Even today it would still fly faster and higher than most 21st century airplanes. So why was it retired in the 1990s? After the …
Just like the science and engineering that make it work, ownership of the International Space Station (ISS) is complicated. Ownership is shared between the different partner organisations, namely the US, Russia, Canada, Japan and the European Space Agency. However, rather than owning a percentage of the whole ISS, different partners each own different parts of …
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Ships are normally larger, more complicated and more powerful than boats, making them better suited to sailing the oceans. However, submarines are referred to as boats no matter what their size.