Do the three laws of robotics need updating? The three laws of robotics were an invention by Isaac Asimov and they were meant for a story, not to be a literal way of controlling the robots and AI in our lives today. We will need some kind of laws that robots have to follow at […]
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Is “I think therefore I am” true? Probably. “I think therefore I am” is probably the most famous philosophical quotation of all time. It is probably the only one that most people will have heard of. It was coined by René Descartes in 1637. He was born in France in 1596 and he was a
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How can opera singers sing so loud? By training their diaphragm, their lungs, using their mouths to amplify the sound as much as possible, and adjusting the frequency of the sound they are making. Opera singers are louder than the average person, but they also have a way of making their voices easier to hear,
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Why do we say “hack writer” and “quack doctor”? Hack comes from Hackney and quack comes from quacksalver, the Dutch for a seller of medicines. A hack has a negative image, but there is no reason why it should. The word was first used in about 1700 to refer to someone who is hired to
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What is the steepest railway track a train can go up? The steepest track is the Calçada de São Francisco in Portugal, and it has an incline of 13.8%. This question has several parts because there are different ways that trains connect to a track. The most common type of train attaches to the track
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How was a mummy made? Along with many other steps, a mummy was made by emptying the body, preserving and drying it, and then carefully wrapping it. The mummies from Egypt are probably the most famous, but they were not the only people to make them. The Incans, some aboriginal Australian tribes, the Aztecs, some
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What are “Spaghetti Westerns”? They are Westerns that were filmed in Italy rather than the United States. Westerns are movies that are set in the Wild West of America, and they generally feature cowboys and gunslingers. Western movies appeared almost as soon as silent movies appeared. The first real Western was The Great Train Robbery
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How does an e-cigarette work? It uses a battery to heat an element that vaporizes a solution of liquid nicotine which the smoker can inhale. The tobacco plant is native to Central and South America. People there started to eat the leaves as far back as 5000 BC. From there, it changed to burning the
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What are totem poles for? They have many different uses, but a common use it to show the lineage of a family or notable events that have happened and need to be remembered. They are a kind of written record for the tribe. When we watch Hollywood movies, every Native American tribe has a totem
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How does a TV screen display different colors? By using different intensities of red, green, and blue. These colors can be displayed with liquid crystal or with gases. All screens, no matter how they are made, are divided up into pixels. The word pixel was made from a combination of “picture” and “element”. One pixel
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