Why do we hiccup? Hiccups are caused by muscular twitches in the diaphragm. The diaphragm is the muscle that we use to breathe. It is a dome shaped muscle that is below the lungs. It is connected to the sternum at the front, the bottom of the rib cage and the spine, to make a […]
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Why does hair turn white? The pigment cells in the hair follicles die. Our hair is colored by melanin that is produced by the pigment cells in each hair follicle. Melanin is what colors our skin as well. Melanin is produced in cells called melanocytes and different quantities or types of melanin can alter the
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Why are blueberries blue and strawberries red? Because of the animals the plants want to eat their fruit. Flowers and fruit tend to be a certain color because they have either evolved to attract a certain kind of animal or to repel a certain kind of animal. A lot of flowers and animals as well
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How big was a Megalodon? The largest ones could have been 20 meters long. Megalodon was a species of giant mackerel shark. Mackerel sharks have two dorsal fins, an anal fin, five gill slits, eyes without nictitating membranes, and a mouth that extends behind the eyes. Great white sharks are in this family. Megalodons lived
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Why are truffles so expensive? They are very rare and very difficult to grow. What is a truffle? The truffle is the fruit part of a fungi, and it is similar to the top part of a mushroom. A truffle is a type of fungus that grows around the roots of some trees. They are
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How does the female lac bug make plastic? They scrape bark from trees and mix it with a resin that they produce. The female lac bug produces a resin, which is a plastic. Plastics are made when molecules connect together to make long chains of polymers. These are what give plastics their strength and durability.
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Why did Tyrannosaurus rex have short arms? No one really knows. They could have no reason and be left over from longer arms that evolved away. They could have been used for slashing, gripping prey, and longer arms might have been bitten off by other Tyrannosauruses. They may have been used to help the dinosaurs
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Norman Ernest Borlaug was known as the father of the Green Revolution because of the new strain of wheat he developed and the millions, possibly billions, of people he saved from starvation. He is said to have saved more lives than any person who has ever lived. There have been numerous agricultural revolutions over human
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Where does cork come from? Cork comes from the bark of the cork oak tree. The primary use of cork is to stop up wine bottles. About 20 billion bottles of wine are produced a year and about 80% of those bottles have cork stoppers in them. That is a huge amount of cork and
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Henrietta Lacks developed cervical cancer and the cells taken from a tumor biopsy have formed the HeLa cell line, named after her. Ms. Lacks didn’t know that her cells had been taken and she died in October 1951, before the significance of her cells was known. She was only 31 years old. She did not
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