Which is colder, Midnight or Sunrise?

          What is coldest time during a day? Common sense may suggest that it is Midnight and experience would suggest that it is just before sunrise. How many of you ever wondered why is it so? Its a common man's question, no? Sun is our supplier of heat and so the coldest time should be midnight, since that is the time we miss our Sun the most. Then why isn't midnight the coldest of all hours?
          Of course, Sun is our supplier of heat. But the thing is, he doesn't supply it to us directly. The heat (or temperature, loosely) we feel normally is that of the lower atmosphere in contact with the earth's surface. This heat is not the same heat coming from Sun. The energy coming from Sun, when it reaches earth's surface contains majorly visible light which does not have heat content. Our lower atmosphere (or the gases present there) cannot interact with this visible light. Our earth absorbs this heat and gets heated up. Then earth begins to give out this energy in form of longer wavelength radiation called Infra Red (IR) radiation (When you are near a fireside, visible radiation is what you call 'the light' and IR radiation is its warmth). The gases in the lower atmosphere including water vapor and carbon dioxide can absorb this IR radiation and that is what we feel as atmospheric temperature. In short, it is not Sun that gives the warmth we feel, but the Earth. In day time, our Earth stays taking in and giving out radiations, keeping a balance. But during night time there is no taking in, but only giving out. It is this given out heat by Earth that keeps us warm during nights. Otherwise we would have all gone frozen to death. Earth keeps on giving out heat energy without any intake of energy until the Sun shows up again. Now you can guess what happens just before sunrise no? Earth has lost maximum of its energy content and that is why dawn is the coldest of all time. Now it is also clear why isn't midnight the coldest of all hours. Because at midnight, the heat loss from earth is only half along its way to dawn.

Why shouldn't we use mobile phone at petrol pumps?

          All among us have seen a warning board 'Don't use mobile phone' or something like that in petrol pumps (gas station in US). Haven't we? But do we really know why we should not? Isn't it interesting to notice that this warning is based on a pure myth? Yes, it is.
          The warnings of mobile phone hazards in petrol pumps started circulating by the beginning of 2000's, pointing to a petrol pump fire happened in Indonesia in 1999. The driver of the car was said to be using his mobile phone and the pump got fire. But the truth is, there is no direct evidence available anywhere to prove that such an incident ever happened.  Many other similar baseless stories are circulating widely through internet. There are independent authentic study reports published by American Petroleum Institute, Australian Transport Safety Bureau and Australian Mobile Telecommunications Association all of them saying they could never find a cell phone ever causing a fire. They had chosen around 300 petrol pump fires happened worldwide, for their studies. And so this warning stands purely based on a myth! Almost all the reported petrol  station fires have been caused by static electricity (similar to what happens in clouds in thunderstorms).
          Now a few words on the science of the matter. The risk which the petrol pumps are taking is that of a spark that can set off the petrol to fire and so to explosion. The minimum energy a spark should possess to ignite petrol vapor is around 0.2mJ. It is true that a fully charged mobile phone battery contains around 5 million times this energy. But the problem is, they are not designed to make sparks! If the internal circuitry is very faulty, lithium ion batteries can explode while charging. But how many of us use a mobile phone that is being charged in a petrol pump? Of course, the internal electronics of the phone can make a spark but it will be too small. Why should we bother only about mobile phones when the stereo or pocket-torch you use has higher risk of spark inside? Leave them all, what about the heavy Car battery which is capable of giving you a good shock if you don't handle it properly? Anyway it is becoming customary to blame mobile phones for whatever happens wrong, from infertility to memory loss, right?

(Possibly there are two reasons why mobile companies themselves issue such a warning. One is mobile phones don't come with in-built safety measures against truly hazardous highly inflammable situations. Second is the fear of legal liability if ever anything goes wrong somehow. Anyway let us strictly avoid mobile phones while driving)

Moon doesn't always rise in the evening!

Most of us think Moon does the night-duty in an office where Sun does the day-duty. Majority of our literature pictures Moon like that; someone who rises in the evening after sunset and sets when Sun rises. But the fact remains, only once in a month our Moon does like that. If you are a good observer without much knowledge in astronomy, you may know that the fact I said is right. But still, you don't know why it is like that. This time we will talk about the Moon's drama up there in the sky.

As you all know, the shape of Moon we see is not always the same. It waxes and wanes in size and shape (വൃദ്ധി-ക്ഷയങ്ങള്‍) called the phases of Moon. Most of us think that this is due to Earth's shadow falling on Moon, don't we? But thing is NOT like that. Earth's shadow has nothing to do with this. It is because, as Moon goes around Earth, from here we see it from different angles on different days. I can make it more clear with a picture below.

Here the situations of Moon being at different positions around Earth is shown. Sunlight will illuminate Moon as it does to Earth. As Moon is a sphere, only half of it will be illuminated at a time (Exactly this is how half of Earth experience day and other half experience night at the same time. When at one side of Earth it is noon, the opposite side of it will have a midnight as shown in picture). As Moon goes once around Earth in every 27 (approx) days, its position around Earth with respect to the Sun rays will be different on every day of this 27 days period. Just take a little time to look at the picture. Seeing from Earth, when Moon is in the direction where sunlight comes from, the part of Moon illuminated by Sun is on the back side and so we cannot see Moon at all. In other words, we are seeing the 'night' in Moon. That day is what we call New Moon. Now consider when the position of Moon is opposite to the direction of Sun, the whole of illuminated Moon is visible to us, giving us a full moon day. (From picture you can also make out that a full moon comes right ahead on sky at midnight) On all other days we can see only a part of illuminated surface of Moon which becomes larger when we go from new moon day to a full moon day. In short it is not the shadow of Earth but the shadow of Moon itself, that causes the phases.
Now let us come to the point in title. First of all, we have to remember that the rise and set of any object on sky is due to the rotation of Earth around its on axis. As we have seen, on a new moon day Sun and Moon are on the same direction and so they rise together. (Yes, Sunrise and Moonrise are together!) But on a full moon day, they are on opposite positions and so Moonrise and Sunset happens together. That means Moon can rise at any time. On a particular day it will rise 5o minutes later it rose the previous day due to its motion in its orbit around Earth.

A shock-relieving talk on Shock Treatment

       Majority of us keep a horrifying picture about Shock treatment used for the cure of mental illnesses. The bad credit goes mainly to the movies that mislead us and give a feeling that it is some kind of torture or punishment given to the most violent of mental patients.
       So, here we are going to have a talk on the same Shock Treatment that I hope will untether you off some misconceptions.
       'Shock treatment' is just a nickname of this method. Psychiatrists call it as 'Electroconvulsive Therapy' or simply ECT. It will be interesting to know that ECT is the first discovered meaningful treatment method in psychiatry (for movies have always picturized it as a last resort). For the sake of a little history, there was no meaningful treatment for mental illness around just 70 years ago. Von Meduna, a Hungarian psychiatrist, observed that epilepsy and schizophrenia rarely coexist. Even if they did, the seizures (or fits, loosely speaking, the sudden movement of muscles) associated with epilepsy reduced the severity of psychosis. This lead him to develop a treatment for psychosis: to induce seizures artificially using drugs. But use of drugs had many limitations because there was no considerable control over the way seizures occurred. Thereafter, Carletti and Bini, two Italian psychiatrists discovered that electricity can be used to induce seizures in a much controllable way. In 1938, the first experiment of ECT was done on humans, to be found a great success.

A psychotron used to control ECT

       ECT is not at all a cruel treatment. Before applying ECT to a patient, he is always undergone a 'fitness test' including EEG, and X-ray. To those who think it is a torture, ECT is never conducted on a conscious patient but is always given after an anesthesia. That means you don't feel any pain at all. Also drugs are given to prevent very violent movement of muscles during seizures. While doing all these pre-ECT steps, the patient is allowed to breath pure oxygen (a process called hyperventillation). The amount of current passed  is only around 0.5-0.8 ampere and that is for less than 4 seconds, using an apparatus called psychotron. This current never reaches the brain. It just flows through the scalp tissues and so there is no 'struck by lightning' type effects as we see in movies. This current can stimulate brain activity. It is this stimulated brain activity and NOT the electrical stimulus that causes the sudden muscular movements. When the effect of anesthesia wears off, the patient would wake up comfortably.
ECT produce recovery faster than drugs. It is also used in drug-resistant subjects (that is if patient does not respond to medicine) It is not necessarily meant for only the very violent and uncooperative patients (for such patients ECT will be the only way) but is also prescribed for very depressed patients. Psychiatrists say that patients who have received ECT find it less frightening than going to a dentist!
       One more interesting fact: despite being a 70 year old and globally used method, no one knows exactly how ECT works in human body!

Polysomnography: Measuring sleep!

Today let us talk about another interesting term, Polysomnography. Those who already know that the Latin word 'somnus' means sleep, can guess what polysomnography deals with. Yes, it is a standard procedure to evaluate sleep, mainly for the cure of sleep disorders.

Well, when I say 'measuring sleep' what actually are we measuring? Polysomnography is a multi-parametric test (means it measures different parameters connected to the sleep activity, lest you are frightened by the term multi-parametric) Mainly there are three parts in your body that responds directly to your sleep; brain, eyes and muscles. The study of activity in these three parts constitute the core of polysomnography. Measurements are carried out by placing electrodes on specific parts of the body and measuring the voltage change associated with the corresponding activity.

Now let us have a close look at the core parameters:

Brain activity:

It is studied by the ordinary EEG (Electro Encephalography) technique. It is based on measuring the bioelectric aactivity of brain by placing electrodes on the scalp of the person in sleep. EEG will look like a polygrah, the one you see in a seismogram record of earth quake. Like a random scribble made by a pen. But by looking at EEG, the researcher can understand the various stages of the person's sleep.

Eye movements:

It is studied by a technique called Electro Oculography (EOG). It is based on a rarely known fact that the front part of our eye called Cornea is electrically positive with respect to its hind part Retina. This voltage will obviously change when eye moves left, right, up or down. EOG is based on the measurement of this voltage, thereby giving an idea about the eye-movements.

Muscle activity:

This is studied by a technique called Electro Myogram (EMG). The movements of our muscles are a result of rapid electrical activity within the muscle tissues. EMG measures the voltage change associated with it. In polysomnography, EMG electrodes are usually placed over the chin muscles.

A sample polysomnogram

Along with these many similar activities in the body can also be studied for a very detailed analysis, three of them being  breathing, heart rate and contraction of leg muscles.

QWERTY Keyboard: Why is it the way it is?

       If you are reading this, surely you have a keyboard in your front. I assume you are using a QWERTY keyboard, which is the most common layout of keyboard.(If you don't know what QWERTY means, it is the name of the way in which keys are arranged in your keyboard. The name obviously comes from the first six letters of the top row of alphabets in your keyboard.)
       Now my question is, do you know why keys are arranged in some seemingly random way rather than in an order? I had asked this question myself and to others, and frankly the answer I could end up in was 'this way makes typing more fast and efficient'. But how? I got many explanations from many and even from myself (rather fit-to-reality type explanations!) all of them being supportive to the making-typing-faster concept.
       But actually, fact is just the reverse. QWERTY layout was invented to make people type slowly, and not fast! Yes it is. This layout was designed by Christopher Sholes in 1874 as part of his design of the first typewriter for Remington & Sons. Obviously, the first typewriter was purely a mechanical device in which pressing of a key would cause a bar to strike against the paper through an inked ribbon. In that machine there was a problem: if you type too fast the bars corresponding to different keys would collide with each other and thereby would jam the machine. Sholes found out an easy remedy for this. He just placed the most commonly used letters in hard to reach positions! And there it was, the QWERTY layout. The Remington typewriters became so popular that even after the invention of electronic typewriters, the Sholes' layout had to be followed as such because people had got used to it. That is how this layout became a universally accepted standard for keyboard.

@ at 'Did You Know' !

     @ is one of the most common symbols used nowadays. @ became so popular after the invention of e-mail. But how many of us know the standard name of that symbol? Alas! I was sad to know that @ symbol has no standard name! You may be calling it as 'at symbol' (so do I). But there are dozens of other names for @ that reflects similes for the symbol.  Examples are apestaart (Dutch for "monkey's tail"), snabel (Danish for "elephant's trunk"), kissanhnta (Finnish for "cat's tail"), klammeraffe (German for "hanging monkey") etc.
     Before it became a standard symbol in e-mail addresses, @ was used as 'at the rate' for referring to cost or weight of things (e.g. Books @ $5 each). It seems the actual origin of the symbol is still unknown. Some evidences show that before printing presses were invented people who made copies of books used '@' as a short form of 'at'. Another story tells that @ was used as an abbreviation of 'amphora', an old unit of measurement. Anyway solid records are there to show that the symbol @ was used even in 14th century.

The Science of Falling in Love

"Love is a temporary disease curable by marriage"
Let me begin by apologizing to those who are much passionate about their lovers and associated fancies, for rationalizing their feeling. How many of you have thought about the fact that the much-praised, much-glorified, much-romanticized thing called 'falling in love' is basically chemical in nature? Now let us have a talk on the science of falling in love:
According to Dr. Helen Fischer, an anthropologist and researcher in Rutgers University, USA, love has three distinct stages namely
1. Lust
2. Attraction and
3. Attachment
       If these three stages of your love happen with the same person, you have a very strong bond.
       After seeing the meaning of 'lust' in your English dictionary, don't misinterpret the first stage. Lust is your 'desire to experience love' and for most of you people, that stage might be long gone during your teenage days. For your romantic partner, you may or may not feel lust, both being normal according to Dr. Lisa Diamond (Current Directions in Psychological Science, vol 13 no. 3) Lust is driven by the sex hormones estrogen and testosterone.

       Attraction is what we refer to as 'love' in common language and what we write stories and songs upon. This stage is a playground of a large number of intense chemical reactions. Most often, this begins in the form of infatuation- an unbearable attraction towards someone. This stage is carried out by a virtual explosion of a few neurochemicals that are similar to the stress hormone adrenaline. Yes, it means a pleasant stress: your knees shake, palms sweat, heartbeat and pulse shoot up, you breath heavily and so on. This is caused by the release of a natural chemical called Phenylethylamine (PEA, nicknamed 'the molecule of love'). The release of PEA can even be triggered by very simple things like meeting of eyes or touching of hands. (Since the sense of men are more visual in nature, it is observed that men get love-stricken easily.) Assisted by the chemicals like dopamine and norepinephrin, PEA creates a state of emergency in your body! At that time your condition will be no different from a drug addict. You get addicted to these chemicals. It seems your entire existence depends on the source of their release, that is the person who triggered it. As long as these chemicals are there in your body, you feel energized or even floating on air and you can talk with your partner for hours on end without fatigue. Put the blame on these chemicals, all the attributes of social obligations, other relations, sense, sensibility etc you had kept in mind for matching get neglected and you fall in love with a person without any of those qualifications. Literally your mind soars with these chemicals.
       Researchers in the University College of London discovered that people in love show lower levels of serotonin similar to the case of those affected by Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. That explains why people in love often get obsessed by their partner. Researchers also found that the neural circuits associated with the way one assess others are suppressed. That means your way of assessment get tampered and you tend to idealize your partner and you don't see any flaws in her or him! 

       Attachment, actually, is the stage of real love. You enter that stage after passing the fantasy world of attraction. Feelings of passionate love in the attraction stage (or the chemicals responsible for that) are not long lasting. They diminish after 3 or 4 years. After that, suddenly your lover has faults and maybe you complain that she or he has changed a lot. But actually they might not have changed at all! Only thing is, you have started seeing him rationally without the blinding chemicals. Thank to the hormones Oxytocin, Vasopressin and Endorphin, otherwise your relation will come to end soon. These chemicals are released when having sex. Oxytocin is called cuddling hormone and it promotes the need to be physically held, have close contact with the mate and makes both the partners more caring. Endorphins are chemicals that make a relationship steadier, intimate, dependable, warm and a great sharing experience. They do not induce an 'emotional high' as the PEA does, but induce calmness and stability. Hence they are the reason why people stay married. They trigger grief on a spouse’s death or long separation. Vasopressin is another hormone responsible for long-term relations and also for the monogamy. Vasopressin helps you cling to your partner, even in spite of small adjustment problems. According to Dr. Fischer, Oxytocin and Vasopressin interfere with the pathways of Dopamine and norepinephrine thus explaining why passionate love fades as attachment grows. Endorphins are body's natural pain killers. They also produce a general sense of well-being, including feeling soothed, peaceful and secure.
        Next time when you are enjoying your time with your partner, thank these chemicals for the pleasure part.

Let's cry a bit scientifically!

It seems a funny question when I ask "why do our eyes get wet when we cry?". We all know that we cry when we are sad. But how many of us have ever thought 'why do we cry when we are sad?'
Well, science says crying is more complicated a phenomenon than it seems to be. There are three kinds of tears
1. Basal tears: It keeps our eyes constantly wet so that eyes are well lubricated. Basal tears is the paint that our eye-lids paints over our cornea while we blink our eyes
2. Reflex tears: It is produced when our eyes get irritated by any external things like dust. This is the same tears that we produce when we cut an onion (why?)
3. Emotional(Or psychic) tears: This is what we mention when we simply say 'tears' in literature. It is produced when we are hurt or emotionally affected.
This classification is based on the chemical composition of tears. The emotional tears contain the highest amount of hormones. Actually (emotional) tears is a defense mechanism of our body when it is unable to express through words. When we are affected by emotions, like loss of love, realization of a failure etc, our body produces a lot of chemicals and hormones that creates a feeling of being upset. On this, our nervous system stimulates the cranial nerve. This results in the production of neurotransmitters to the lacrimal glands which are situated on the upper outer portion of the cavity in brain where eyes are situated. Thus we cry. As long as the chemicals remain in our body, our state of being upset is continued. That is why the brain gives command to flow these chemicals out through tears. Once these chemicals are disposed, our body relieves from the upset state. Now you can guess, why we feel a bit calm after crying.
Can you guess why we end up crying after a heart-breaking laugh? It is obviously because, our lacrimal grands get squeezed by the intense muscular movement resulting from laugh. 

What is blue in Bluetooth?

It was a few years before a friend of mine asked me whether I have Bluetooth in my phone. I asked him what kind of tooth it exactly is, because I had no idea what he was asking (I was using my gaudy Nokia 1110i at that time and he laughed on seeing it coming out from my pocket). Forgetting the fact that I have often been lagging behind technologies, let us talk about Bluetooth this time.
I'm sure many of you might have wondered how such a name fell upon a most modern technology. I had many scientific hypotheses of myself on this name before I stumbled upon the fact that Bluetooth got its name from that of a Danish king! Yes really. This name came from that of Harold "Bluetooth" Gormsson, who ruled Denmark in the first century. Actually, Bluetooth was his nickname because of his fondness for blueberries which made his teeth blue. He is considered as one of the most influential kings of Denmark and that was why Ericson, which is a Danish company, named their technology after him. The Bluetooth logo is the initials of Harold Bluetooth in runic alphabet. He was famous for uniting the rebellious tribes of Scandinavia and for bringing them under a single kingdom. If you don't know it, that is exactly what 'our bluetooth' also does- uniting various technologies.
If you are not so bored yet, let me tell you a bit of technology now. You know that bluetooth is an electronic communication technology. When two electronic devices want to communicate with each other, they have to agree on several conditions. First, how to communicate physically. It means, whether to use wires or some wireless signal forms and if they use wires how many wires are required and so on. Even after settling on this, there are many other problems to solve. E.g.,how much data will be sent at a time; the transfer rate which depends on the device used. It means, for an effective communication a set of commands and responses known as Protocol has to be developed. Bluetooth is a protocol developed for this purpose by Ericson in 1994. The Bluetooth technology uses radio frequency waves and takes very low transmission power which saves battery charge (Now you can guess why Bluetooth transfer works only in small distances). It establishes automatic agreement between two electronic devices and so does not require the intervention of user.
[Note: There is an international body called Bluetooth Special Interest Group(SIG) that oversees the development of new Bluetooth standards and new technologies and trademarks.] 

All Fool's Day- April 1

One of my friends' birthday is April 2. When I was told this I just told her, 'Oh dear, you just missed the right day for you to be born'. So boring a comedy, right? The self-pity on this dialogue of myself made me think a bit on the All Fool's Day, April 1. Why is April 1 a day of pranks and foolishness, or that of Fools literally?
Well, it seems the exact reason is not quite certain. But majority of resources show that it is related to the reformation of calendar around 1582 in France. Before that Julian calendar was widely in use. Due to some astronomical reasons(which is worth another post in this blog) Julian calendar had to be reformed and that resulted into the adoption of Gregorian calendar which is the International civil calendar we use nowadays. The major change in this new system was the beginning of New Year on January 1, rather than on The New Year's Week, March 25- April 1, in the old system. But we can imagine in those days how fast news would have traveled. In fact it took several years for all to know about this change. Some rebellious fellows still continued to celebrate New Year on April 1 even after knowing about this change. These people were called 'Fools' by the general populace. They used to play pranks on them too. This harassment evolved over time and a custom of prank-playing continued on the first day of April. This slowly spread from France to Scotland and England and the found its way into America. Because this spread into other countries, April Fools' Day has taken an international flavour with each country celebrating the day in its own way.
And so it is, the Fools' Day, on which you are licensed to play prank on others.

Kleptomania

Well, all of you might have figured out that this is some kind of 'mania', a special interest. But what exactly is this kleptomania? It is an irresistible tendency to steal things, especially things of trivial value. Funny eh?
Yes, if you are a kleptomaniac you steal as a habit! This is listed as a mental disorder and was first identified in 1960's in US. Kleptomaniacs usually steal things of very little importance like pens, paper clips, ribbons etc. This is different from usual shop lifting or theft because they are interested in the act of stealing and not in what they steal. In fact, some kleptomaniacs may not even be aware that they have committed a theft. This can appear associated with other mental disorders like Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Researches also show that frequent acts of stealing like pick-pocketing or shop-lifting can become a mania and the person may become addicted to stealing.
A traumatic brain injury or carbon monoxide poisoning can lead to kleptomania.  

Yellow Journalism

We are all familiar with the adjective 'Yellow Newspaper' or 'മഞ്ഞപ്പത്രം'. A yellow newspaper refers to one which runs behind sensationalism, uses distorted stories, biased opinions and misleading photographs in a crazy attempt to increase circulation.

But do you know how this word 'Yellow Journalism' came to use?

Here is the story: In the 1880's, during the Industrial revolution machinery became so cheap that publishers could print enormous copies of dailies easily. This had stimulated an unhealthy spirit to increase circulation among the newspapers. At that time, there were two leading newspapers in New York, The New York World run by Joseph Pulitzer and The New York Journal run by William Hearst. Pulitzer's World  had a very popular comic series by cartoonist Robert Outcault called 'Hogan's Alley' featuring a character 'Yellow Kid'. But this fellow Hearst simply hired Outcault and another staff member of New York World and began printing 'Yellow Kid' in his Journal. Pulitzer got angry on this. What he did was, he hired another cartoonist and started printing 'Yellow Kid' in his front page! This comic strip used a special, non-smear yellow ink. On seeing this silly fight between Pulitzer and Hearst, the critics coined a word 'Yellow Journalism' referring to the significance of the cartoon. 

Jumping out of a bus: A physics challenge!

If you have studied Physics at least upto Higher Secondary level, you will be well aware of inertia and its plays. And here goes a popular question; why do we run forward after jumping off a running bus? You should notice that 'forward' is highlighted. When I asked this question to a post graduate in physics, he felt it insulting!
'Who doesn't know that it is inertia? Don't you treat me like a school boy!'; that was his reply.
Well, after asking this to a lot of people I feel this is not a school-time question. If you also say 'It is obviously inertia', you should answer this question;"Then why do you jump forward?" Let me explain this question a bit: Here, what you mean by inertia is your inability to come to rest by yourself, since, before jumping out you were moving forward with the velocity of the bus. If you don't nullify the effect of that velocity you will fall forward, right? I hope you don't disagree upto this point. But the crucial question here is, if you jump forward, how will you nullify that effect? You are just adding extra velocity to that forward velocity! In order to cancel the effect of a forward velocity, you have to introduce a backward velocity, not a forward one. So it means if you jump off a bus and run forward, you cannot cancel the effect of inertia.
Most of you may not agree to this because your experiences tell the reverse. But I didn't say you have to jump backward next time while jumping off a running bus. I just said, you cannot cancel inertia by jumping forward. Actually, the answer to that question is not purely physics but at the most physiology! If you are to cancel the inertia effect, physics tell you to jump backward. But the physiology of your body is not suitable for that. As long as you cannot jump back with a velocity greater than that of the bus' forward velocity, your resultant velocity will be along the bus' direction and you tend to fall back. Now because human body cannot prevent a backward fall, you should not do that. Human body is well equipped to prevent a forward fall (that is what we do while walking and running) with two legs and that is why we jump forward although it increases the effect of inertia.
Still don't agree? Suppose you throw a glass bottle from a running bus to the road. When will it break more easily, when you throw forward or when you throw backward? The answer to this question will solve our first question well.

The most expensive beverage in the world!

'Beverage' is one of the most popular terms in our society. So it can be interesting to know about the most expensive beverage in the world, right? Its name is Kopi Luwak. It is basically a coffee bean and it costs between 200 to 1,200 US dollars per kilogram. Then it should be something very great, isn't it?
But then you should know how it gets this value. Kopi Luwak is also called civet coffee (Civet or Luwak is a small mammal found on certain regions of Asia). It is made from a type of coffee bean berries. What civets do here is to eat these berries first, for their fleshy pulp. Then these berries go  through the digestive tract of civets, gets mixed with various enzymes and digestive juices there and finally gets defecated! Now we have to collect it. Yes, I mean it, we have to collect shit! After gathering, washing, sun drying and brewing, these excreted beans yield a highly aromatic coffee. And there it is, the most expensive beverage in the world. Looking at the size of a civet, you can imagine how difficult the production of this coffee can be,

Kopi Luwak is produced mainly in the islands of Sumatra, Java, Bali and also in Indonesia and Philippines.

Pseudologia Fantastica

Funny term, ain't it? Doesn't it seem like a scientific term? Yes, it is. You may find it interesting to know that telling lies can be a disease!
Pseudologia fantastica is the scientific name of the disease 'pathological lying'. That is the state in which you tell lies as a habit or as a compulsion. While ordinary lies will be aimed at certain purposes like making profit, escaping punishments etc, pseudologia fantastica is characterized by lies without purposes.
It is a mental ailment usually reported in youth, typical onset age being 16. Most of the reported patients were found to have abnormalities in the central nervous system and this is not a kind of serious psychosis. A typical characteristic is that the lies told by the 'patient' may not be completely improbable, but may have some element of truth. If you force him, he may admit that it is a lie, although unwillingly. Also the tendency to make lies is long lasting, and most of the lies told will be in favour of the liar himself. E.g, telling a brave thing he had done, telling that some very famous person is his relative etc. This disease can also be present as a false memory syndrome, i.e., the sufferer actually believe that fictitious things have happened.

Going to Milan? Smile Please!!

You ever propose to go to Milan in Italy? You will suffer if you are a serious person. Because, in Milan if you ever appear in public, there should be a smile on your face! The law in the province of Milan requires every citizen to wear a smile. If arrested for violation, the fine can go unto $100. You are exempted from this law only if you are visiting a patient in hospital or you are attending a funeral.
Italy has got many strange laws, some nationwide and some pertaining to towns or provinces. Here are a few examples;
* In Italy, a man can be arrested if he’s wearing a skirt!
* In Turin(a city in Northern Italy), dog owners can be fined heavily unless they walk their dogs at least three times a day!
* In Lerici(another northern city in Italy), it’s illegal to hang a towel out of a window to dry it!
* In Rome, groups of three people or more are not allowed to sing, drink, dance, or eat in the streets of the city, lest they want to face a €500 fine!
* In Eraclea, it’s illegal to build sandcastles on the beach!

Although these laws are mostly ignored by citizen in Italy (as is the case with public smoking in our place), there do are such laws there. It means, if somebody wants to give you a kick, there can be many ways of doing it in the form of fine.

Go to Hell!

Have you ever shouted 'Go to Hell!' to somebody? At least, you must have heard someone shouting it so and the one to whom it is shouted is definitely insulted.
But in Norway many people may say this casually because they have a place named 'HELL' there! In Norwegian language, the word 'hell' means 'luck'. And due to this peculiar name, this place has now become a tourist attraction where the visitors wish to take photograph in front of Hell Railway Station.

Before building your home in Switzerland!

One of my dear friends is very enthusiastic about Switzerland. Its her over-enthusiasm that made me have a skimming through a few details of Switzerland. I stumbled upon a strange law there,
"Every inhabitant in the country is by law required to have access to a bomb-shelter"
Quite funny, eh? For many Swiss citizens, this space is in a large civil defense shelter, but for others, and specifically non-Swiss, this shelter space comes in the form of a heavy-duty basement shelter. The bomb shelter isn't a nice-to-have or a government recommendation, but it's a mandatory requirement. That means, if you are to move to Switzerland and to build a house there, first of all you have to build a strong bunker beneath your basement. Don't think this is a simple thing. A heavy-duty bunker is very costly to build, having long and thick concrete walls along with carbon steel, vault-style doors, air filters etc.
This law is the proof that Switzerland is very serious about its civil defense and this tradition dates back to World War II, where bomb-shelters were essential against the fear of German invasion.

Have you ever felt sulfuric acid in your eyes?

Question itself is a bit frightening, right? The most cruel chemical sulfuric acid falling into our eyes!
Well, if your answer to my question is a 'No', then that means you have never cut an onion in your life. Yes, sulfuric acid is the villain that makes you cry while cutting onions.
Let's talk some chemistry this time. When you cut onions, you are breaking the cells in it which releases a sulfur containing chemical called amino acid sulfoxide and some enzymes. These enzymes convert the sulfoxides into sulfenic acid, which is a highly unstable compound. It is suddenly converted into a gas called propanethiol S-oxide. It is a low density gas and so wafts up in the air soon. As you know, our eyes always produce tears necessary to prevent our eyes from going dry. When the propanethiol S-oxide reacts with the water in our eyes, caustic sulfuric acid is formed. Can our brain wait anymore? Before sulfuric acid burns our eyes, brain give order to wash off this villain and we start crying.