Wow! What an incredible scientific phenomenon!

Author: Simon Torok (Australia), Paul Hollop | Translator/Country: Mainland China
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-01-01
Features: Blue-eyed babies Although we have never seen you, we know what color your eyes are—or at least we know what color they used to be: blue! Babies are born with blue eyes, although the color may change shortly after birth. Want to lose weight? Go to space! Here’s a great way to reduce your waistline, and if you do it, your thighs will also slim down, and you’ll even grow 5 cm taller. It’s simple—just hop a ride on the next space launch! Astronauts often return to Earth thinner and taller. This is because their vertebrae are stretched and straightened in space, their internal organs are slightly elevated, and leg muscles force blood to circulate upward. Virtual injuries Scientists at Spain’s San Ana Hospital agree that children may be injured from spending too much time watching TV, and this risk is increasing. These scientists believe that for every additional hour children spend in front of the TV each day, their risk of harm rises by one-third. They also say that one possible explanation for these findings is that children can no longer distinguish between virtual life and real life. Slow down, don’t create waves Australian police regularly check the speed of car drivers using radar guns, and speeding drivers are fined. In Venice, Italian police are worried that fast speedboats speeding along the city’s historic canals may create waves that damage ancient buildings, so they have started using portable laser guns to check boat speeds. Now, within a 500-meter range, if any boat is traveling too fast and hidden patrol boats cannot catch up, the police can track and report the details via radio, and the patrol boats go after the speeding boats to issue fines. Is fire good for your feet? In many countries around the world, walking barefoot across hot coals is considered a religious ritual: a group of people walk barefoot one after another across a bed of glowing red coals. Sometimes, people walk on fire to demonstrate how willpower can control the body and resist pain. It may indeed look like a heroic act, but walking on fire might actually be relatively easy. Scientists believe that although the coals are hot, they are very poor conductors of heat. When you step onto the coals, your feet extinguish the flames. Additionally, it takes more than a second for heat to travel from the glowing coals to your soles. So if you walk quickly across burning coals, you may not get burned because the high temperature doesn’t have enough time to transfer to your feet. (Please don’t try this experiment on your own!) P28-29