I learned this today. A letter of marque was a license from a government for a private citizen to attack and capture vessels of an enemy nation in order to gain reprisal for that country’s actions in a war. It was very expensive for a country to have a standing navy and a lot of […]
#136 What is a letter of marque? Read More »
I learned this today. Bluetooth is a short range, low power technology that can transmit data over radio waves. Bluetooth works on frequencies in the 2.400 to 2.483.5 GHz short-range radio band. Radio frequencies around the world are generally regulated so that different frequencies don’t get mixed up. That is why different radio stations broadcast
#135 How does Bluetooth work? Read More »
I learned this today. Diazepam is a benzodiazepine drug that works by increasing the amount of a chemical called GABA in the brain to inhibit electrical impulses. GABA is Gamma-aminobutyric acid. It is a chemical that your brain produces. It is an amino acid and is an inhibitory neurotransmitter in the brain. It inhibits brain
#134 How does Valium (diazepam) work on the brain? Read More »
I learned this today. Corals are animals because they don’t produce their own food. Corals are sometimes thought to be rocks and sometimes thought to be plants, but they are neither. They are animals. They are thousands of tiny animals collected together. Because of this, they are known as colonial organisms. They belong to the
#133 Is coral a plant or an animal? Read More »
I learned this today. The first account of a crime syndicate that was an American Mafia was published in the New Orleans Times in 1869. It could be argued that the Mafia started in Italy during the end of the 16th and the start of the 17th centuries. Its vertical structure, with a don at
#132 When did the Mafia come to America? Read More »
I learned this today. A machine gun works by using the recoil or the gas of the cartridge explosion to reload and re-cock the gun after each shot. There are basically three different types of machine gun: recoil actuated, gas-operated reloading, and externally actuated. Recoil and gas-operated reloading guns follow the same theory, which is
#131 How does a machine gun work? Read More »
I learned this today. We have 24 hours in a day because of Hipparchus. We have 60 seconds in a minute and 60 minutes in an hour because of Claudius Ptolemy, Al-Biruni, and the Babylonians. Before we look at this topic, we have to remember that needing to know the time exactly is a fairly
I learned this today. There is no reason why the speed of light is 299,792,458 m/s. It just is. The speed of light is the top speed that matter or energy can travel at. All forms of electromagnetic radiation travel at the speed of light. Radio waves and electricity, for example. Nothing can travel faster
#129 Why is the speed of light 299,792,458 m/s? Read More »
I learned this today. Moore’s Law, that the number of transistors on an integrated circuit will double every two years, is no longer true. Moore’s Law was coined by George Moore in 1965. He was working at Fairchild Semiconductor where he was the director or R&D. Electronics Magazine asked him what was going to happen
#128 Does Moore’s Law still apply today? Read More »
I learned this today. Cancer kills people because it grows into key organs, nerves or blood vessels and impairs their function. Cancer is caused when cells start to change abnormally. New cells in our bodies form through growth and division. When cells become old and need to be replaced, they are switched off and die.
#127 How does cancer kill people? Read More »
