Today I found out there is a parody set of Nobel Prizes given out annually for trivial scientific achievements. These prizes (10 per year in a variety of categories) are called the IG Nobel Prizes (play on words: “Ignoble Prize”) and are given to those whose work “first makes people laugh, and then makes them think”. Essentially, they are given […]
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LEDs are much more efficient than “regular” incandescent light bulbs due to the fact that they give off almost no heat; so a much higher percentage of the electricity used goes towards making light, rather than in incandescent bulbs where a good percentage of it ends up being converted to heat. How an LED Works
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TNT is poisonous and skin exposure will generally cause irritation and your skin will turn bright yellow or orange. Further, if you eat TNT, your pee will turn red and look like blood, though it is not. During WWI, munitions workers who handled TNT were called “canary girls” or “canaries” because their skin that was exposed to the TNT turned […]
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Today I found out honey can be used for a variety of medicinal purposes. You may be skeptical about this because many such “natural” alternatives to medicine put forth are not backed by any scientific research. These types of claims are often based primarily on anecdotal evidence, which can be misleading. (I personally was extremely skeptical about honey’s medicinal value, […]
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Myth: The “Big Dipper” is a constellation. In fact, the Big Dipper is an asterism. A constellation is an officially recognized group of stars as defined by the International Astronomical Union. Constellations are used to split the celestial sphere into different sections that aid in locating objects in the sky, kind of like landmarks on a map. An asterism, on […]
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Today I found out what causes a stroke. A stroke, known in the medical field as a cerebral vascular accident (CVA) or brain attack, is more or less a “heart attack” for the brain. Like any organ in the body, the brain needs blood to supply it with oxygen and nutrients. Should this blood flow become blocked by a clot […]
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Today I found out it is actually quite safe to fly through an asteroid field. The reality is that the asteroids in asteroid fields are incredibly far apart and most of the objects in these fields are very tiny. There are generally hundreds of thousands of miles between these objects and most of them are no bigger than a tennis […]
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##EMBED## Not only did Marie Curie win two Nobel Prizes, but her family has been the recipient of five total Nobel Prizes. She won two, her husband, Pierre Curie, won one. Her daughter, Irène Joliot-Curie, won the Chemistry Prize in 1935 with her husband. Her second daughter was also the director of UNICEF when it won the Nobel Peace Prize […]
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##EMBED## To date, four people have won a Nobel Prize twice. Those include: Maria Sklodowska-Curie (1903 and 1911, for discovery of radioactivity (physics) and later for isolating pure radium (chemistry)); John Bardeen (1956 and 1972, for invention of the transistor (physics) and for coming up with the theory of superconductivity(physics)); Linus Pauling (1954 and 1962, for research into the chemical […]
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##EMBED## Click Here for Sources and to Learn More Interesting Astronomy Facts Text Version: The Sun does not have enough mass to go supernova and explode. However, in about 5 billion years it will enter a red giant phase steadily expanding until it consumes the Earth. But fear not, the Earth will already be dead in about 1 billion years […]
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Myth: De-oxygenated blood turns blue. The common misconception that blood that lacks oxygen turns blue probably comes from the fact that veins appear blue and blood in the veins is typically heading back to the lungs, hence depleted of oxygen. It is also possibly from the fact that when people are suffocating or the like, their lips and complexion seem […]
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