Mick (ed) OHare - Do Polar Bears Get Lonely?

Do Polar Bears Get Lonely? — read online for free the complete book (whole text) full work

Below is the text of the book, divided by pages. System saving the place of the last page read, allows you to conveniently read the book "Do Polar Bears Get Lonely?" online for free, without having to search again every time where you left off. Put a bookmark, and you can go to the page where you finished reading at any time.

Light

Font size:

↓

↑

Georgia Tahoma Arial Verdana

Reset

Interval:

↓

↑

Bookmark:

Make

1234567...45

Table of Contents

LIn>

Its a fair bet that youve never considered what compels you to choose random numbers in the Lotto draw. But now that weve told you that you do, youll almost certainly want to know why. If you are truly perplexed, turn now. And has it ever struck you that if you go back forty generations your ancestors will total more than the number of people who have ever lived? How can that be? Find out the flaw in the logic. And what about eating bits of yourself in order to stay alive you might not like what we suggest. Come to think of it, we dont like what we suggest.

For nearly fifteen years the readers of New Scientist magazine have been contributing their astounding knowledge to the Last Word column of science questions and answers. We now know why cheese goes stringy and what time it is (or isnt) at the North Pole. We know how to weigh our heads and we certainly know why penguins feet dont freeze. Weve also put to rest a couple of urban myths along the wayto find out if human hair and fingernails really do continue to grow after death. And weve also been happy to admit our own errors. To find out just how humiliated we were by a few broken drinking glasses.

But thats all part and parcel of scientific investigation. You propose a hypothesis, bash it about a bit, run a few experiments on it and then reject it or accept it while fine-tuning it along the way. And like all great scientists, that is exactly what the contributors to this book have donededuced answers from the evidence available and then been supported or contradicted by their peers, which is what makes the Last Word columnand this booksuch fascinating reading.

Both in the weekly magazine and online, New Scientists community of Last Word readers continues to come up with the answers to the worlds strangest questions. And more people are always welcome. You can pose your own questions or answer new ones (or even contradict those who have gone before) by buying the weekly magazine or visiting the website ( http://www.newscientist.com/lastword ). There you can join in the forum, read the blog, or simply offer your knowledge in answering some of lifes astounding conundrums. You may even become the star of the next book!

In the meantime enjoy this one, in which we seem unduly concerned by thirstyou can find out in chapter 5 whether fish, sharks, or spiders get thirsty and, along the way, satisfy your own thirst for the world of scientific trivia.

MICK OHARE

A big thank-you is due to Jeremy Webb, Lucy Middleton, Ivan Semeniuk, the production, subbing, art, Web, press, and marketing teams of New Scientist , James Kingsland, Frazer Hudson, and Paul Forty and Andrew Franklin among many people at Profile Books for their tireless efforts in the creation of this volume. I also thank Robin Dennis, my editor at Henry Holt and Company in New York, for bringing this project to the States. Thanks as well to the team at Holt, including Justin Golenbock, Emi Ikkanda, Tom Nau, Rita Quintas, and Kelly Too, for their hard work. Special thanks are also offered to Sally and Thomas for their patience while this book and its predecessors were created. Finally, good luck to Ben Usher on his travels.

FOOD AND DRINK

Upon cracking open my breakfast boiled egg, I found a whole new egg inside. It was not a double-yolked egg, it was a double-egged egga completely new egg with a shell and yolk inside another. Can anybody explain it?

Liam Spencer

An egg within an egg is a very unusual occurrence. Normally, the production of a birds egg starts with the release of the ovum from the ovary. It then travels down the oviduct, being wrapped in yolk, then albumen, then membranes, before it is finally encased in the shell and laid.

Occasionally an egg travels back up the oviduct, meets another egg traveling down it, and then becomes encased inside the second egg during the shell-adding process, thus creating an egg within an egg. Nobody knows for sure what causes the first egg to turn back, although one theory is that a sudden shock could be responsible. Eggs within eggs have been reported in hens, guinea fowl, ducks, and even Coturnix quail.

Incidentally, it is especially unusual to encounter this phenomenon in a shop-bought egg, because these are routinely candled (a bright light is held up to them to examine the contents), and any irregularities are normally rejected.

Alex Williams

As the curator of the British Natural History Museum egg collection, Ive come across quite a few examplesegg/b>

The Dominican friar and polymath Albertus Magnus mentioned an egg with two shells as far back as 1250 in his book De animalibus , and by the late seventeenth century pioneering anatomists like William Harvey, Claude Perrault, and Johann Sigismund Elsholtz had also given the phenomenon their attention.

Four general types occurvariations of yolkless and complete eggsbut this form in which a complete egg is found within a complete egg is relatively rare. Several theories have been proposed for the origin of these double eggs, but the most likely suggests that the normal rhythmic muscular action, or peristalsis, that moves a developing egg down the oviduct malfunctions in some way.

A series of abnormal contractions could force a complete or semi-complete egg back up the oviduct, and should this egg meet another developing egg traveling normally down the oviduct, the latter can engulf the former; more simply, another layer of albumen and shell can form around the original egg.

Often when no yolk is found within the dwarf or interior egg, a foreign object is found in its center. This object has served as a nucleus around which the albumen and shell were laid down, in a process not dissimilar to the creation of a pearl.

Anybody interested in learning more about this subject should try to find a copy of The Avian Egg by Alexis Romanoff and Anastasia Romanoff (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1949) and read pages 28695.

Douglas Russell

Curator, Bird Group, Department of Zoology
The Natural History Museum, Hertfordshire, United Kingdom

Why do bottle caps on beer bottlesat least the few hundred thousand that I have drunk fromalways have twenty-one sharp bits?

Volker Sommer

We have three explanations for this one. Were still waiting for a bottle-top aficionado (of which there seem to be many) to rule between them.Ed.

The bottle cap on any bottle is regulated by the internationally accepted German standard DIN 6099, ensuring all bottle caps are the same. Along with specifying the diameter of the bottle neck, the form of the rim around which the cap is crimped, and the materials the cap may be constructed from, this document specifies the form of the crimp. One requirement is that the closure be sufficiently circular to maintain a tight seal all around the circumference, which implies a high number of crimps (and thus points). It must also be robust, however, which implies reducing the number of crimps to give each anaos=0 Dcrimp a larger bearing surface. Using twenty-one crimps is a good compromise between these requirements and is mandated in the standard. As to why it is twenty-one crimps rather than twenty or twenty-two, the best answer is simply because it is.

S. Humphreys

Through trial and error, William Painter, the inventor of the crown cork, or bottle cap, discovered that the optimum number of teeth on a mold made of steel for securing carbonated drinks was twenty-four. He registered a patent for his design and for many years the twenty-four-tooth capping mold was standard. However, around 1930 the steel mold came under threat from a cheaper version made of tinplate. This newer mold could not win a patent if it also had twenty-four teeth, so it was changed to twenty-one to avoid infringing the original design. The new figure is the smallest number of teeth needed to prevent leaks and is now used across the world.

Next page

1234567...45

Light

Font size:

↓

↑

Georgia Tahoma Arial Verdana

Reset

Interval:

↓

↑

Bookmark:

Make

Similar books «Do Polar Bears Get Lonely?»

Look at similar books to Do Polar Bears Get Lonely?. We have selected literature similar in name and meaning in the hope of providing readers with more options to find new, interesting, not yet read works.

Sara L. Latta

Polar Scientists: Studying the Antarctic

New Scientist

Cats vs Dogs: 99 scientific answers to weird and wonderful questions about animals

New Scientist

Know It All: 132 Head-Scratching Questions About the Science All Around Us

Mick OHare

Know It All: 132 Head-Scratching Questions about the Science All Around Us

OHare

Why Dont Penguins Feet Freeze?

NewScientist

Will we ever speak dolphin?: and 130 other science questions answered

Mick OHare

Does anything eat wasps?: and 101 other unsettling, witty answers to questions you never thought you wanted to ask

Mick OHare

Do Polar Bears Get Lonely?: And 101 Other Intriguing Science Questions

New Scientist

Why Are Orangutans Orange?: Science Questions in Pictures - With Fascinating Answers: More Questions and Answers from the Popular ’Last Word’ Column

New Scientist

Will We Ever Speak Dolphin?: And 130 other science questions answered

New Scientist

Why Cant Elephants Jump?: And 113 Other Tantalizing Science Questions Answered

Mick O’Hare (Editor)

Why Dont Penguins Feet Freeze? And 114 Other Questions

Discussion, reviews of the book Do Polar Bears Get Lonely? and just readers' own opinions. Leave your comments, write what you think about the work, its meaning or the main characters. Specify what exactly you liked and what you didn't like, and why you think so.