One morning I decided that I wanted to learn a new thing every day. So I decided to share my experience with everyone.

Friday, June 29, 2007

Silence is golden

I'm sick today ... I did try to find a good fact, but i'm too tired to find the answer I'm looking for. Meanwhile I still have a cool fact, but it's kind of short. Do you ever wonder why we had silent film ? I'm mean in back in 1896 the microphone was already invented.

Up until around 1925, most silent films were shot at slower speeds (or "frame rates") than sound films, typically at 16 to 23 frames per second depending on the year and studio, rather than 24 frames per second. Unless carefully shown at their original speeds they can appear unnaturally fast and jerky, which reinforces their alien appearance to modern viewers. At the same time, some scenes were intentionally undercranked during shooting in order to accelerate the action, particularly in the case of slapstick comedies. The intended frame rate of a silent film can be ambiguous and since they were usually hand cranked there can even be variation within one film. This implie that we couldnt just play a disk while the film was playing, since the film speed wasnt constant.

Although attempts to create sync-sound motion pictures go back to the Edison lab in 1896, the technology became well-developed only in the early 1920's. Although The Jazz Singer's release in 1927 marked the first commercially successful sound film, silent films formed the majority of features produced in both 1927 and 1928. Thus the modern sound film era may be regarded as coming to dominance beginning in 1929.

Next monday is also an holiday, so no fact until tuesday !!!

Have a great weekend.

Thursday, June 28, 2007

Stay Tuned

As you probably know, theres two major way to transmit information through radio wave. Amplitude modulation (AM) and frequency modulation (FM). (Theres also Phase modulation PM, but i dont think its ever been used).

Amplitude modulation transmits sound waves by adjusting the amplitude of the radio wave, or carrier wave to match the changes in the sound. In AM transmissions, the frequency is kept constant and the amplitude is adjusted. If radio was broadcast using visible light, this would mean that each radio signal would have its own color, and the signal would be broadcast by brightening and dimming the light.

Commercial AM radio stations transmit at set frequencies between 535 kHz and 1,605 kHz. The good thing about transmitting at these frequencies is that they can be reflected and refracted by the layer of the atmosphere called the ionosphere. This means that AM radio can be heard very far away, even over mountains. The problem with AM radio, though, is that interference from things like lightning, machinery, and UFO?s affect the amplitude of the signal. This is why during thunderstorms and alien attacks, AM radio sucks even worse than it usually does.

Frequency modulation transmits sound by adjusting the frequency of the radio wave. The mechanics behind frequency modulation are more difficult, but the main point is that the amplitude of the radio wave stays constant, while the frequency fluctuates around a basic carrier wave. This is like keeping a light at a constant brightness, but changing the color to transmit information.

Commercial FM stations transmit between 88 MHz and 108 MHz, frequencies which aren?t reflected by the ionosphere. This means that FM stations need to be placed in high spots so that they can cover more area. However, FM isn?t affected by changes in amplitude, so the things that interfere with AM signals don?t affect FM signals. Unfortunately, controlling annoying passengers who fiddle with your car radio is still beyond the power of modern science.

Wednesday, June 27, 2007

Faster than light

Today I answered a question that I asked myself a while ago. I was browsing though yahoo answer to find today’s subject when I stumble across this question:

Physics question?
When you're in a car and the driver brakes suddenly, why do you get flung forward?

The answer is obviously inertia. The car stop but your body continues to move forward due to inertia … and then I remembered a question that I asked a long time ago to one of my teacher. If your running a 5 km/h in a train going a 300 km/h from an outside perspective (someone watching you from outside the train) you will be running a 305 km/h. The question is, If I open a flash light in a train going a 300 km/h, will the light will goes a e+300km/h from an outside point of view ?

The answer to that, is probably that the light doesn’t have any inertia since its doesn’t have a mass. The speed will remain the same from the outside view, but should be a bit slower actually from the inside. Not noticeably of course, but if we take this to the extreme and we were in a train going at e (light speed) and we would light up a flash light, from the inside of the train, the light would appear to be still. Well if the light is still you wouldn’t see it because it wouldn’t reach your eye, but still … you get the point J

Tuesday, June 26, 2007

Red red wine. Stay close to me.

Do you remember the time when you wake up in the morning with a serious hangover? The first think we usually do when this happen is to brush our teeth to remove the taste of alcohol of our mouth … and the chunk of pizza from between your teeth. This can be a thing of the past if from now on, you get drunk on wine!!

Italian researchers have found that wine can help fight cavities. The test was done using some valpolicella (an Italian red wine) and pinot nero (an Italian white wine). The researchers started by stripping the alcohol out of the wine. They did that to prevent ethanol from interfering with their lab tests. Next, they marinated cavity-causing streptococcal bacteria in the wines. Both types of wine countered those bacteria and other streptococcal bacteria that cause some cases of throat infection and morning bad breath.

The researchers also isolated acids found in red wine and white wine and tested those acids against the same bacteria, which are called S. mutans and S. pyogenes.
The isolated acids were more effective against the bacteria than the wines. So the researchers reason that while wine fights S.mutans and S. pyogenes, wine also contains compounds that dilute those benefits, to some extent.
I already know that wine was good for the heart, but now there’s no excuses why not to get drunk J

(Before you toast the findings, remember that the study was done in test tubes. So it's too soon to count on a glass of wine to chase your cavities away.)

Thursday, June 21, 2007

Eye Candy

There are 3 true colors in the eyes that determine the outward appearance; brown, yellow, and gray. How much of each color you have determines the appearance of the eye color. The color your eyes turn depends on how much of these colors are present. For example, green eyes have a lot of yellow and some brown, making them appear green. Blue eyes have a little yellow and little to no brown, making them appear blue. Gray eyes appear gray because they have a little yellow and no brown in them. Brown eyes appear brown because most of the eye contains the brown color. Brown is the most common, blue is second, and green is rarest.

This is the begging of a loooooooooong weekend ... see you on tuesday.

Wednesday, June 20, 2007

Sinking bubbles

A long time subject of bar conversations is the Guinness cascade, where the gas bubbles appear to travel downwards in a pint glass of Guinness.
The effect is attributed to drag; bubbles that touch the walls of a glass are slowed in their travel upwards. Bubbles in the centre of the glass are, however, free to rise to the surface, and thus form a rising column of bubbles. The rising bubbles create a current by the entrainment of the surrounding fluid. As beer rises in the center, the beer near the outside of the glass falls. This downward flow pushes the bubbles near the glass towards the bottom. Although the effect occurs in any liquid, it is particularly noticeable in any dark nitrogen stout, as the drink combines dark-coloured liquid and light-coloured bubbles

Tuesday, June 19, 2007

Oh Say, Can You See?

Today’s lesson is about who really discovered America. I remember when I was younger a friend of mine came to me with this question.

- Do you know who discovered America?

Obviously it’s was trick … I just knew it, but I still answered “Christopher Columbus”!!!
Then my friend replied : “No, it is Amerigo Vespucci”. He had to be wrong. So I told him that I trusted my history teacher more than I trust him on this subject, but then he told me something that I couldn’t deny … it’s been discovered by Christopher Columbus, how come isn’t called Columbia ?

I was in big trouble. The closest thing to Internet at the time was my father; he was the one with all the answer and even him couldn’t answered my question properly. A few years later I had the chance to read a bit about my good friend Amerigo. Now I don’t recall exactly what the books was about (in fact I cant even remember what I did yesterday), so I’ve grab this from wikipedia to explain my point :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amerigo_Vespucci

In 1507, Martin Waldseemüller produced a world map on which he named the new continent "America" after Vespucci's first name, Amerigo. In an accompanying book, Waldseemüller published one of the Vespucci accounts, which led to criticism that Vespucci was trying to usurp Christopher Columbus's glory. However, the rediscovery in the 18th century of other letters by Vespucci has led to the view that the early published accounts were fabrications, not by Vespucci, but by others.

Soooooooo, it wasn’t Amerigo that discovered America. Still I find very interesting to at least know where the name is coming from.

So if a you ever encounter someone that ask you the same question, you will know what to answer : Viking (Gunnbjörn Ulfsson first sighted Greenland in the early 900s)

Monday, June 18, 2007

Freezing Rain

I don’t have a lot of time, so today’s fact will be a short one. I was looking to talk about another subject while I found this: Pure water actually freezes a -42C (-43.6F). This will only happen if no nucleators (like dust) are presents. But since dusts (and other nucleators) are pretty much present everywhere in the environment, water normally freeze a 0C.

Friday, June 15, 2007

Jingle bells, Jingle bells …

Today’s fact regards the number of Inuit words for snow. A popular belief is that Eskimo as more than an hundred words for snow. In the Central Alaskan Yup'ik language, there is less than 25 words to describe snow.

Well, this might still seem a lot, but in English, there’s at least 40 words including berg, frost, glacier, hail, shush, flurry, sleet. Now you can argue that all of this words describe a different state/form of frozen water, but this is exactly the same for the Yup’ik language.

Thursday, June 14, 2007

Nothing but blue sky …

Why is the sky blue? The short answer is because the light from the sun is diffused in the atmosphere. But why blue? First we need to define the term scattering. Light Scattering is when the light is forced to deviate from a straight trajectory by one or more localized non-uniformities in the medium through which it passes.

The sky appears blue because, air scatters short-wavelength light in preference to longer wavelengths. Blue have the shortest wavelength of the color spectrum, while red have the longest one.

This explains the blue sky, but what about the red one. During daytime, about 25% of the lights is scattered in the atmosphere. Near sunrise and sunset, most of the light we see comes in nearly tangent to the Earth's surface, so that the light's path through the atmosphere is so long that much of the blue and even yellow light is scattered out, leaving only the red wavelength.

Wednesday, June 13, 2007

Lighter than Light

By definition, a black hole is an object with a gravitational field so powerful that a region of space becomes cut off from the rest of the universe – no matter or radiation, including visible light, that has entered the region can ever escape.

Now, in school we learn that the gravitational force (F) is calculated by F = Gmn / r*r where G is the universal gravitational constant, m the mass of the first object, n the mass of the second object and r the distance between the object.

We also learn in school that light as no mass. This had me thinking … if light as no mass, it shouldn’t be attracted by the gravitational field of a black hole. It appears that Einstein thought of that before me. Einstein proposed in is general theory of relativity that mass and radius of an object (its compactness) actually curves space-time. The stronger the gravitational field of an object, the more the space around the object is curved. In other words, straight lines are no longer straight if exposed to a strong gravitational field; instead, they are curved. Since light ordinarily travels on a straight-line path, light follows a curved path if it passes through a strong gravitational field. This is what is meant by "curved space," and this is why light becomes trapped in a black hole.

Tuesday, June 12, 2007

Happiness is 22 milliseconds away

Yesterday, I friend of mine ask me if I knew why vendor where insisting that a lower refresh rate on LCD computer monitor was a necessity. He was arguing that a 8ms refresh rate should be more then enough since the human eyes only see 24 images per second (1/24 so 1 image by 42ms). Above that, CRT monitor have typically 22-28 ms refresh rate and the image is crystal clear.

He had a good point. So I did my homework and I found the difference. Each pixel in a CRT emits most of the light in under 1ms. So if you have a 22ms monitor, each pixel need 23 ms (22ms refresh rate + 1ms to emit the light) to change state. In a LCD, will emits light for a much longer type … nearly 20ms. So if you add this to the refresh rate of an old LCD (between 12 to 25) you can have a display time of 45ms … which is way over the 42ms baseline.

This explain why old LCD where kind of blurry when playing a movie. Nowadays LCD have a much better refresh rate, between 2 to 8. But again, this add up to 22ms to 28ms for a whole cycle which is more closer to the average CRT monitor.

Monday, June 11, 2007

The Forbidden Fruit

I guess nobody will be surprised to read that a Tomato is a fruit. I had this discussion with my girlfriend daughter a short while ago. I explained to her that fruit grows in tree and bushes while most of the veggies grow underground. So a tomato is a fruits since it grows in a plant … but then it occurs to me: what about sweet pepper (bell pepper). I made a few research and I found that it’s also a fruit.

I found that a lot of vegetable are in fact fruits by definition. This include: cucumbers, tomato, peas, beans, corn, and eggplant.

So next time you order a Fruit Salad, be sure to ask what in it !

Friday, June 8, 2007

Seize the Day!

I always wonder why doctors (mostly in TV show, because I never saw a real case) were turning the patient on the side during a seizure. It appears that by doing so, this open the airway and allow secretions to drain (so basically it will help prevent the patient from choking).

I was once told that we should put something (like a comb) in the patient mouth to prevent him to bite is tongue. It appears that it would in fact not be a good thing to do.

Other first aid tips are :

- Prevent further injury. Place something soft under the head, loosen tight clothing, and clear the area of sharp or hard objects.
- Do not force objects into the person’s mouth.
- Do not restrain the person’s movements unless they place him or her in danger.

http://www.epilepsyfoundation.org/answerplace/Medical/seizures/types/genConvulsive/seizuretonic.cfm

Thursday, June 7, 2007

Elephants hear through their feet

A Stanford University team as discovered that elephant may hear through their feet. That right, the animal with the biggest ears can also use their feet to hear. Soft skin of the foot acts like a drum head to sense vibrations which travel from the toe nails to the ear by bone conduction. Foot stomping and low-frequency rumbling generated by one group of elephants are picked up by another group far away.

Researcher recorded the made by the elephants when a predator was around the herd. The later replay the recording in the ground, by sending the correct seismic vibration to find out that the elephants hearing it start acting as if a predator was near.

Wednesday, June 6, 2007

Don’t forget to put chocolate on your grocery list!!!

Scientists from the Salk Institute have discover that the chemical epicatechin help to boost the memory of mice. This chemical is found in grapes, blueberries, tea and of course chocolate. Its also seems to boost the blood flow in certain parts of the brain.

Now the real question is: how do you test the memory of a mouse ? Obviously you cant ask it : “Do you remember last week when we share a piece of blue cheese …”. I guess that you can make them go into a maze, repeat the operation until the mouse know exactly the way, calculate the amount of time needed to the mouse to forget the way through the maze, fat her up with chocolate and wait the same amount of time to see if this time she will remember (yeah my imaginary mouse is a female).

I guess my point is that checking a product cure cancer is more maybe a bit more straightforward to accurately test whether or not chocolate is good for you.

Tuesday, June 5, 2007

Resistance is futile

Today I intended to verify a citation from Star Trek: The Motion Picture. V'ger (SPOILER : If you have been living in a cavern for the last 28 years, don’t read this post) which is revealed to be the unmanned scientific probe Voyager 6, wanted to destroy the human race, which he refer as the carbon life-based.

I wanted to see how much this is true, since the most common citation are about that our body is constituted of about 70% of water. Obviously there’s no carbon in water so I was really wandering about this carbon thing.

It appears that carbon is a base element of our DNA and RNA. It’s also part of sugars, celluloses, chitins, alcohols, fats, aromatic esters, alkaloids, antibiotics, amino acids and proteins.

Another interesting fact is that the fat free mass of a human body is made of 70% of water. Note that the fat free mass is the total mass minus the total fat weigh. Since a normal man should have between 13 and 17 percent fat and a female should be composed of between 20 and 25 percent fat the real percentage of water in the human body should be closer to 58%.

Monday, June 4, 2007

Everything is not Black & White

What is black? Most people will say that it is the absence of all colors. This is a half truth. The real definition would be that it doesn’t reflect light of the visible spectrum. Some will call me a purist, but the distinction is important. Especially when you think about the next question: What is white? Now, after reading this, a five years old could figure out that the answer is that white reflect all the light of the visible spectrum.

But what about our good old definition: White is a combination of all colors & Black is the absence of all color. Well its all depend of the system your are referring to. This is true is the additive color system. In the subtractive color system, it is the opposite (try to mix paint of all colors together, you will get Black). This difference would be a big deal if our primary reference system would be the additive one. But if you ask a kid what are the primary color, he will answer yellow, red & blue (which is not even correct, the real colors are yellow, magenta and cyan). Theses colors are the primary color of the subtractive system. In the additive system, the primary colors are red, blue and green (like for a television).

Now what about Gray? We often hear those grays are note a color, but a shade or a tint. Gray is a color … but it’s also a shade. A tint is a mix of a color and white. A shade is a mix of a color and black. Since White is considerate as a color (but not black), Grays are then a mix of a color (white) and black. So they are a shade.

Friday, June 1, 2007

Show me the finger!

A recently read a article about how the lengths of the index and the ring fingers can be used to predicts SAT result, aggressive behavior, homosexuality, risk of a heart attack, sexual appetite and many others.

In fact it’s all a matter of testosterone and estrogen. The number of testosterone in the early stage of development seems to affect many aspect of our life. This also affects the lengths of our finger. The normal male pattern is to have is ring finger slightly longer that the index. For the women, both fingers are the same length.

So basically men with the female pattern are more likely to become a scientist and to be in touch with there feminine side. The estrogen is believe to causes the right side of the brain to develop, which is responsible for spatial and analytical skills.

On the opposite, female with male pattern will have a bigger sexual appetite and will be more aggressive.

In conclusion, the longer the ring finger the most testosterone you had. So don’t be shy … show me your finger.


Most of the articles on these pages are taken from different site. Since I tend to strip the article to only keep the essential, I don’t use quote because it would (to keep it simple). Link to the used resources are kept in the link section. If you want to know the sources for any particular article, just ask the question in the comment form.