What is tofu? Tofu is made from solidified curds of soy milk. The word tofu came into English from Japanese, which, in turn, came from Chinese. The two characters 豆腐 mean 豆 bean and 腐ferment (or rot). Tofu is sometimes called fermented soybean, but it is not actually fermented. The meaning of rot might be […]
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What is the cosmic microwave background radiation? The cosmic microwave background radiation is the heat leftover from the Big Bang. In the early 20th century, Edwin Hubble proved that the universe was expanding. He looked at the red and blue shift of distant galaxies to prove this. If the source of a wave is heading
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What are the Ms in m&m’s? The Ms in m&m’s stand for Mars and Murrie, the two makers of the confectionery. If you have never tried them, m&m’s are a sugar coated chocolate candy made in the USA and sold around the world. They come in many colors and there are different kinds of fillings
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What did Marie Curie win two Nobel Prizes for? She won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1903 for her research in radiation (shared with her husband), and she won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1911 for discovering radium, polonium, and isolating radium. Marie Curie is not the only person to have won two
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Is brown sugar healthier than white sugar? No, brown sugar is not healthier than white sugar. In fact, they are both pretty much the same thing. We have become very used to assuming that the brown version of a type of food is healthier than the white version. Brown pasta and brown rice are healthier
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Why can’t you open an airplane door mid-flight? You can’t open the door while an airplane is flying because of pressure, the design of the door, and because of safety mechanisms. Large planes, such as the 747, have several doors on each side of their fuselage. Each door appears to be closed with only a
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Why were so many pharaohs buried in the Valley of the Kings? So many pharaohs were buried in the Valley of the Kings because it is fairly well hidden, close to the capital, in a very religious place, and it became the done thing. The Valley of the Kings is very close to the city
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Where do lily-livered, carpetbagger, mad as a hatter, pleased as punch, turncoat, bigwig, rule of thumb, and skeleton in the cupboard come from? All of these expressions have fascinating origin stories. Let’s look at them one by one. Lily-livered is a British phrase that means someone is cowardly. If you are not British, you may
Why can’t we walk in a straight line with our eyes closed? We can’t walk in a straight line with our eyes closed because our brain depends on visual cues, and without an external reference point, small random errors in the body’s sense of “straight ahead” build up over time, and the brain has nothing
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When did cigarettes become mainstream? Cigarettes increased in popularity after their manufacture was automated, but they became mainstream after World War 1. Tobacco wasn’t known in Europe until the Spanish brought it back from South America in the 15th century. Before tobacco arrived, people in Europe had other drugs to smoke, but they were more
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