Today I found out why mint tastes cold. Similar to why peppers taste hot, what’s going on here is there is a chemical in mint, menthol, which is tricking the brain into thinking that the area the menthol is applied to is cold; even though in fact, it’s the same as it was before. More specifically, menthol binds with cold-sensitive […]
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Today I found out bananas are naturally radioactive. This comes from the fact that they contain relatively high amounts of potassium. Specifically, they contain Potassium-40, which is a radioactive isotope of potassium. The fact that bananas are radioactive has actually given rise to the radiation unit: “banana equivalent dose” (BED); this is the average amount of radiation you are exposed to by eating […]
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Today I found out why peppers taste hot. The heat sensation is caused by capsaicin, which is a colorless, odorless, oily chemical found in peppers. Capsaicin binds with certain sensory neurons which then more or less trick your body into thinking that it is being burned or at least experiencing excessive amounts of heat in the area that the capsaicin […]
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Today I found out what causes muscle soreness after workouts. Since the early 20th century, this specific type of muscle soreness, called “delayed onset muscle soreness” (DOMS), was thought to be cause by lactic acid buildup in the muscles during strenuous workouts where your body’s oxygen supply is depleted. Recent research has shown this is not the case at all […]
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Today I found out turkey does not make you drowsy after you eat it. Now to be clear, turkey does contain tryptophan. Tryptophan is an amino acid which the human body doesn’t naturally produce, but is essential to proper body function and, thus, must be acquired from food. The reason tryptophan is tied to drowsiness is that it is used […]
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Today I found out shaving does not make your hair grow back thicker, stronger, faster, or any other “er”. In fact, contrary to what parents the world over tend to tell their kids when their kids start shaving, it has been proven by numerous studies going all the way back to the 1920s that shaving has absolutely no effect whatsoever […]
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Today I found out what hemisphere you are in does not affect the way water spins down your drain. So why do some textbooks, most tour guides, and pretty much all TV shows like The Simpsons get it wrong? The myth that water in your drain will spin differently depending on what hemisphere you are in primarily stems from taking […]
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Today I found out humans have a lot more than five senses. It turns out, there are at least nine senses and most researchers think there are more like twenty-one or so. Just for reference, the commonly held definition of a “sense” is “any system that consists of a group of sensory cell types that respond to a specific physical […]
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Today I found out how the completely blind dream. It turns out that if they went completely blind before around the age of 5-7 years old, they will typically dream without any visual experiences. In the very few cases where some report having visual experiences in their dreams, these experiences are more in the abstract sense where they feel like […]
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Today I found out that sugar does not make kids hyper. In fact, it has been proven in numerous studies that it doesn’t affect their behavior at all. In one such study, it was found that mothers who think their kids have been given sugar (even though their kids haven’t been given any), will almost always say their kids are […]
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Today I found out why popcorn pops. First a little background, Popcorn or “zea mays everta” is a special kind of Flint corn, also known as “Indian corn” and sometimes “Calico corn”. Flint corn is readily recognizable as the kernels have a hard outer shell, likened to flint, hence the name. This hard outer shell is essential in making popcorn […]
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Today I found out what causes “eye floaters”. For those who’ve never experienced this phenomenon, eye floaters are little oddly shaped objects that appear in your vision, often when one looks at bright light such as a blue sky. Their shapes vary greatly, but will often appear as spots, cobwebs, or randomly shaped stringy objects. These are not optical illusions, […]
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Today I found out the world’s strongest animal is the copepod. Relative to their size, typically about 1mm long, copepods are also the world’s fastest animal, being able to jump at a rate of about a half a meter per second. Their incredible strength, relative to their size, makes them over ten times stronger than any other known species on […]
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Today I fount out that all lifesavers spark when chewed, not just the Wintergreen Lifesavers (also known as Wint-O-Green). The flash you see when these hard sugar candies are crunched is caused by triboluminescence, which is similar to the electrical charge build-up that produces lightning, except on a much smaller scale here. With most hard sugar candies, this flash tends […]
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Today I found out there was once a woman who had immortal cells. These immortal cells have multiplied to the point that if you were to weigh all of them that live today, they’d weigh about 50 million metric tons, which is about as much as 100 Empire State Buildings. So who was this woman and why are scientists keeping […]
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Today I found out why the sky is blue. For the short answer, when light from the sun enters our atmosphere it collides with molecules in the air. The blue part of the light gets scattered more than the other parts during these collisions and thus makes the sky appear to our eyes as blue. If the light from the […]
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Today I found out Moon dust smells like spent gunpowder. This is according to the astronauts that have had the opportunity to smell fresh Moon dust that had been tracked into the lunar module after excursions out on the surface of the Moon. The astronauts didn’t just smell the dust though, they also touched and tasted it. They say it […]
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Today I found out how glow in the dark stuff works. Glow in the dark products all contain some type of phosphor. Phosphors are any substance that radiates light after being energized in some way. There are literally thousands of chemicals that are phosphors. These chemicals all have varying degrees of brightness, color, and length of time they glow after […]
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