Why do shoes smell? Shoes smell because bacteria break down the sweat and dead skin cells from our feet, producing waste products that smell bad. Bacteria live all over our skin, not just on our feet. These bacteria are called the skin microbiota. You may have heard of the gut microbiota, which is the name […]
#1034 Why do shoes smell? Read More »
Why are mince pies called mince pies and why are puddings called puddings? Mince pies are called mince pies because they used to contain minced meat (ground beef) and puddings are called puddings because they used to be encased in some kind of skin and steamed. Mince pies are a traditional food eaten at Christmas
#1033 Why are mince pies called mince pies and why are puddings called puddings? Read More »
Why are the police called cops? Police officers are called cops because “to cop” meant to arrest someone. There are many expressions used to refer to the police in English speaking countries. Probably the most famous expression is cop. It is so common that many police officers even refer to themselves as cops or coppers,
#1032 Why are the police called cops? Read More »
What is the Mercator projection? It is a map projection that tries to put the countries from a sphere onto a rectangle. Almost all world maps you see, and all of the ones we learned about at school, use the Mercator projection. Because of this, we all have a distorted view of how big countries
#1031 What is the Mercator projection? Read More »
What were punks rebelling against? They were rebelling against the establishment, the commercialization of music, hippie culture, and the general economic hardship in the UK and Europe. The word punk probably started as an insult that the punk movement took control of and owned. Punk meant “something worthless”, “inferior”, “bad”, “a worthless person”, and “a
#1030 What were punks rebelling against? Read More »
How do animals sense earthquakes? No one actually knows how animals can sense earthquakes. They might be able to hear them. Possibly they can smell them. It could be that they sense the changing pressure. The surface of our planet is constantly moving and there are several hundred earthquakes a day. Many of them are
#1029 How do animals sense earthquakes? Read More »
Why did the Louvre become a museum and art gallery? It was decided that the Louvre Palace should become an art gallery during the French Revolution. There is some argument as to why the Louvre is called the Louvre. There are four competing theories. It could be because the Louvre was built on an area
#1028 Why did the Louvre become a museum and art gallery? Read More »
How can sunflowers clean up radiation? They take the radioactive isotopes out of the soil and combine them into their stems and flowers. There is radiation all around us, all of the time. Radiation is simply energy that moves from one place to another. The light energy that bounces of a rose and hits our
#1027 How can sunflowers clean up radiation? Read More »
Why are more plane crashes survivable? Because of technology, training, the way the planes are laid out, and the materials the planes are made of. Many people have a fear of flying and a lot of people have an image that flying is very dangerous. This couldn’t be further from the truth. This fear is
#1026 Why are more plane crashes survivable? Read More »
What are the doldrums? They are an area of windless ocean where sailing ships used to get stuck. The doldrums are not a problem for modern shipping because they don’t rely on wind power. They are a problem for yachts and other types of sailing boats. A Salvadoran fisherman called Jose Salvador Alvarenga spent 14
#1025 What are the doldrums? Read More »
