What is Lou Gehrig’s disease? It is a disease that causes progressive degeneration of the nerve cells in the spine and brain. The disease is called Lou Gehrig’s disease after a famous baseball player who died of it, but the disease’s actual name is amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). “Amyotrophic” comes from Greek. “A” means “no”. […]
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Does a tugboat tug? They do pull, but they also push, too. In the very early days of sea travel, boats were not big enough to need something like a tugboat. They could usually be sailed right into the dock. If the wind wasn’t right, they usually had oars and oarsmen who could get the
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What is acid reflux? The acid from the stomach comes back up the esophagus, causing a lot of pain and sometimes even damage. Most animals that have a stomach that digests their food produce stomach acid. The acid in our stomachs is very strong. It has a pH of roughly 2, which makes it a
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How quickly does a river cut through rock? It depends on the type of rock, the material the water is carrying, the amount of water, the speed of the water, and the acidity of the water. This is not a simple question. When we think about the erosive power of water we often think of
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How can a baseball player possibly hit the ball? They have to swing at where they think the ball will be because they cannot actually see it. There are different types of baseball pitches, and they travel at different speeds, so let’s just look at the fastball, which is a simple and straight pitch. The
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Do bulls really hate red? No, they don’t. It is the movement that they don’t like. The fact that bulls hate red has become common knowledge. It is even in sayings, such as, “like a red rag to a bull” meaning a trigger to anger someone, and “seeing red”, meaning in such a blind rage
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Are plexiglass and fiberglass actually glass? Plexiglass is a type of plastic and not real glass, but fiberglass has glass fibers in it. Let’s look at plexiglass first. Plexiglass is a registered trademark because it is the name of a product. It was originally written in all capitals as PLEXIGLASS®. It was invented by a
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What is a bookworm? A bookworm is any number of insects, or the larvae of insects, that eat books. They are not actually worms. Why would an insect eat a book? What food is there in a book? Some insects don’t actually eat the books, but fungi and mold that grow on the pages of
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What is the difference between AM and FM radio? The radio waves are moderated differently. AM radio waves are Amplitude Modulated and FM radio waves are Frequency Modulated. First, we need to look at how a radio broadcasts a signal. The radio has three jobs. It has to take the voice or music that is
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What is a hernia? There are different types of hernia in different parts of the body, but they are all caused by something pushing through a tear in a muscle. The hint to what it is is in the name. The word hernia comes from the Latin “hernia”, which means “rupture”. There are technically 9
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