Watch this on YouTube How do spiders make webs? By producing silk from their bodies and weaving it into a strong web. There are two parts to this question: how do spiders produce silk and how do they make their webs. Let’s look at how they make silk first. Spiders are able to produce silk […]
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Watch this on YouTube What is the difference between a moth and a butterfly? Amongst other things, their wings, their bodies, how they behave, and how they pupate. Butterflies and moths both belong to the Lepidoptera family. Lepidoptera is a huge insect family and it contains 180,000 insects, which is approximately 10% of all living
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What are the Dead Sea Scrolls? They are a series of ancient Jewish manuscripts discovered between 1946 and 1956 on the northern shore of the Dead Sea. The first of the scrolls were found in 1946 by Bedouin shepherds. They were discovered in a cave near to the Dead Sea. The story is that a
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How does cacao become chocolate? Through fermentation, drying, roasting, grinding, and adding milk and sugar. Cacao beans grow on a cacao tree, which is native to the Amazon basin in South America. The tree is called “Theobroma cacao.” “Theobroma” means “food of the gods” in Greek and “cacao” is the Spanish form of “kakaw” and
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What is the difference between socialism and communism? They are sometimes confused as being the same thing, but socialism and communism have some key differences. In socialism, all citizens own and share equally in all resources and wealth. In communism, all property and economic resources are owned by the state, which is entrusted to share
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Why do some trees make rubber? It protects the trees against pests and helps them heal when they are injured. Rubber is not what comes out of the tree or plant. The liquid that is tapped out of the tree is called latex and it has to be refined before it can be used as
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Do the gulags still exist? Technically no, but actually yes. The gulag is not actually a place. We use the expression gulag to refer to a Russian prison, but it is really the name of the government agency that was in charge of the forced labor camps during the Soviet era. The word gulag is
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What is botulism? Botulism is an illness caused by a toxin that the Clostridium botulinum bacteria produces. Clostridium botulinum is a very strong bacteria. They are usually found in the soil in spore form, but they grow very rapidly on the surface of fruit, vegetables, seafood, meat, and any kind of food. They like a
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What is the difference between a castle, a fort, and a palace? A castle is a fortified building constructed for the nobility. A fort is just a fortified building. A palace is a large house built for royalty, or very wealthy people. Forts appeared long before castles. A fort is a fortified building and the
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When did people start using soap? In 2800 BC in Babylonia. Archaeologists have found soap-like materials in clay cylinders that have been dated to 2800 BC. The tablets are inscribed with “fats boiled with ashes”. Soap is first mentioned on a Sumerian clay tablet, which has a formula for how to make it. It says
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