Quirky Science Facts!

[Guest chendoh]

I have actual first-hand experience of this.

 

The Sycamores that are here in the Middle Atlantic States, are of a same mind.

 

They love to hold the water, and to cut one is a job.

I've dulled many a saw ta' fell one.

 

My helper has a Back Hoe:

1 day pokin an' proddin

1 day diggin, pokin an' proddin

1 day diggin, pokin an' proddin

 

3 days, a 14' hole, 12' round, a lot of P&P, an the tap root broke off 4' to go. FINally!!!!!!!!!

Glad ta get that one done.

 

By the way 'twas 80' tall....

[Michaelangelica]

I thought it was amazing.

The trees become rock hard.. He does explain a little why he thinks this happens on the talk.

Does it happen to all varieties of trees?

Do all parts of the tree become hard or just where the lightening runs?

I wonder.

Does this sequester CO2 like Terra preta? or do insects eventually get at it?

Here is Karl's answer

Back to On-air homeTriple jay

From the triple j Science talkback - Thursday May 24, 2007

Question: Shane from Coffs Harbour tried to chop down a tree that had been hit by lightning, but found that the wood would not burn. It'd only smoulder. What gives?

 

Karl: Wood gets made very hard when the tree it is in is hit by lightning. Re the burning, solids don't actually burn. What happens is that the volatiles get turned into gas and it�s the gas that burns. But the theory is that if the woods been hit by lightning, a lot of the volatiles get zapped, so its harder for the wood to catch fire.

Question

[Barry Scott]

how about the longest word thats not in the dictionary, thats interesting, its also very big

[Michaelangelica]

how about the longest word thats not in the dictionary, thats interesting, its also very big

 

So what is it?

or should we start a thread for it:confused:

 

Making one tonne of cement produces one tonne of Greenhouse gases.

 

In 1997 we burned c 422 years of fossil sunlight. (TWM TF):eek_big:

 

". . .half of the energy generated since the Industrial Revolution has been consumed in just the last 20 years" (TWM TF) p167:evil:

 

(The Industrial Revolution started in England around 1733 with the first cotton mill.)

[Jay-qu]

a bundle of nanotubes one square centimeter in cross section could conduct about one billion amps!

[Boerseun]

Get this:

 

13 percent of the entire planet's workforce lives in rural China!

 

That being the case, 1 in 50 Hong Kong citizens are US dollar millionaires!

 

With that much money and that much labour available, the 21st century will belong to China. It will be China's world, the rest of us will simply live in it.

[Guest chendoh]

Get this:

 

13 percent of the entire planet's workforce lives in rural China!

 

That being the case, 1 in 50 Hong Kong citizens are US dollar millionaires!

 

With that much money and that much labour available, the 21st century will belong to China. It will be China's world, the rest of us will simply live in it.

Inflation is just starting to rear its ugly head there.

What are your observations on what will happen to the rest of the world when China defaults?

[Michaelangelica]

Didn't uncle Al have something about this in one of his posts?

In one of the Superman movies, our Man of Steel squeezes some coal in his Super Fist, and turns it into a huge sparkler.

Yup, temperature and pressure will turn carbon into diamond – something over 400°C and 30,000 times our atmospheric pressure.

. . .

And science has thrown over another lovely myth – diamond is no longer the hardest substance. Two recently synthetised materials, aggregated diamond nanorods, and ultrahard fullerite have taken away its title for Hardest Stuff in the Universe.

Can Diamond Cut It - Great Moments in Science - The Lab

[Michaelangelica]

Leprosy is now called Hansen's Disease after Armauer Hansen the Norwegian who discovered the bacterium that caused it (Mycobacterium leprae) in Norway in 1873. In fact, it was the very first bacterium that caused a human disease to be discovered.

. . .

But today the number of people with leprosy is somewhere between 2 and 15 million people.

Leprosy - Great Moments in Science - The Lab

(USA In 1999 the incidence rate of leprosy was .04 for every 100,000 population or 108 reported cases total. )

 

0.0001% (12) of hospital consultant episodes were for leprosy (Hansen’s disease) in England 2002-03 (Hospital Episode Statistics, Department of Health, England, 2002-03)

Statistics about Leprosy - WrongDiagnosis.com

Leprosy

 

Leprosy is a chronic infection of the skin and peripheral nerves with the bacterium Mycobacterium leprae. Leprosy is a rare disease in Australia, with the majority of cases occurring among Indigenous communities and migrants to Australia from leprosy-endemic countries.

 

In 2003, four leprosy cases were notified compared with three in 2002. The cases in 2003 occurred in New South Wales, Victoria and Western Australia. Two were male and two female and the age range was 21 to 42 years. Two cases were multibacillary (lepromatous, more than 5 skin lesions), two were paucibacillary (tuberculoid, less than 5 skin lesions) leprosy and one had evidence of neuritis at presentation.

 

The WHO has established the goal of eliminating leprosy from every country by 2005, which is defined as a reduction in the prevalence of leprosy to less than one case per 10,000 population. The Western Pacific Region, comprising 37 countries including Australia, reached this target in all but two countries in 2003.34

Australia’s notifiable diseases status, 2003: Annual report of the National Notifiable Diseases Surveillance System - Other bacterial infections

Ex-leper: Ah, yeah. I could do that, sir. Yeah. Yeah, I could do that, I suppose.

What I was thinking was, I was going to ask him if he could make me a bit lame in one leg during the middle of the week.

You know, something beggable, but not leprosy, which is a pain in the arse, to be blunt. Excuse my French, sir.

Life of Brian (movie) | KnowProSE.com

[Michaelangelica]

 

Blood letting used to be a common medical practice.

 

Blood letting actually does have a useful medical effect.

It reduces temperature.

[Michaelangelica]

15 For organs to form during embryonic development, some cells must commit suicide. Without such programmed cell death, we would all be born with webbed feet, like ducks.

http://discovermagazine.com/2006/sep/20thingsdeath/

[Boerseun]

...A malfunction of which might explain why some people are indeed born with webbed feet, like ducks!

[CerebralEcstasy]

...A malfunction of which might explain why some people are indeed born with webbed feet, like ducks!

 

It'd be nicer if some of them were born with a webbed mouth.....hehe. (Like my teens for instance)

[Hill]

Whiptail Lizards and Parthenogenesis In 15 of the Cnemidophorus species there are no males. They reproduce without fertilization, a process known as parthenogenesis of "virgin birth". Parthenogenesis is well known in lower animals, such as aphids,bees, and Daphnia but is rare in vertebrates. The offspring of parthenogenic lizards are clones, identical to the mother.

 

 

 

Whiptail Lizard

[Hill]

The Passenger Pigeon (Ectopistes migratorius) or Wild Pigeon was a species of pigeon that was once the most common bird in North America. It is estimated that there were as many as five billion passenger pigeons in the United States at the time Europeans colonized North America. They lived in enormous flocks, and during migration, one could see flocks of them a mile (1.6 km) wide and 300 miles (500 km) long, taking several days to pass and probably containing two billion birds. The species had not been common in the Pre-Columbian period, until the devastation of the American Indian population by European diseases. Over the 19th century, the species went from being one of the most abundant birds in the world to extinction. At the time, Passenger Pigeons had one of the largest groups or flocks of any animal, second to only the Desert Locust.

 

Passenger Pigeon - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[Hill]

There are at least 10 times more stars in the universe than there are grains of sand on earth. Next time you go to the beach, pick up a handful of sand, let it trickle out through your fingers, and consider this...

 

CNN.com - Star survey reaches 70 sextillion - Jul. 23, 2003

[Hill]

Hummingbird hearts beat up to beat up to 1260 beats /minute (Blue-throated Hummingbird). Their wings beat up to about 80/second. (Amethyst Woodstar).

Common small North American hummers like the Ruby-throated and Rufous average around 53 per second in normal flight.

 

About Hummingbirds