The nice bright white glossy paper we have uses a high clay content to give the paper its qualities. Kaolin is the clay, it is named after the mountain in China where it was mined from in the early days.
Anyone have any random nerdy facts?
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Sooner Boomer
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And the Kaolin used to be mixed with a plant derivative pectin to make an anti-diarrhea medicine, Kaopectate. The types of clay were switched, then removed completely. The current formula includes bismuth subsalicate, like Pepto Bismol.
(Speaking of paper) The light reflected from the black ink of a newspaper (remember newspapers?) in full sunlight is more than the light reflected from the unprinted areas indoors. I would not be surprised to learn that this is also true of better quality paper.
NTP2
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I actually read a newspaper, honestly I find it clumsy the pages are so big that they are constantly falling over and you have to shake it back into place.
dr wogz
Fly caster
busses (and trains..) used to be filled with people reading papers.. everyone had a knack of folding it just right to make it / them manageable..
NTP2
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A lost skill it appears…
And men wore hats.
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Still read papers, still wear hats. Don't ride trains, so hats and newspapers are mutually exclusive now. Come to think of it, don't wear suits anymore, either. I have officially become a Luddite. They never go out of style. Lol.
Poland's F-35's are apparently going to be called "Hussars." I cannot even begin to express how much this name for a modern military aircraft pleases me.
Sloths don't fart.
And Wombat turds are cubes.
And unicorns piss... never mind.
See post #4
Beavers (as well as some other animals) eat their poop.
https://www.livescience.com/59601-why-do-animals-eat-poop.html
https://www.livescience.com/59601-why-do-animals-eat-poop.html
Koalas feed their poop to their baby Koalas which gives them the bacteria to digest Eucalyptus. As we're getting poopy....
And as you're looking at this photo and wondering about 2 thumbs.....
https://www.google.com/search?-lm&q=would+2+thumbs+and+3+fingers+be+better
And as you're looking at this photo and wondering about 2 thumbs.....
https://www.google.com/search?-lm&q=would+2+thumbs+and+3+fingers+be+better
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dr wogz
Fly caster
If you think this is funny then you are a nerd.
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dr wogz
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But... how do they calibrate the fabric?!?
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Our dog occasionally chews on a dried turd she finds. She also seems to want to roll in any non-canine poop she finds. Like cat, which is awful. We got some gardening soil this afternoon to plant veggie beds. Let her out in the back yard where we were working and she started rolling on one of the bags; it smelled like manure is a significant component of the mix.
dr wogz
Fly caster
I did actually know he was a pilot because he flew a tour plane for Iron Maiden, "Ed Force One."
dr wogz
Fly caster
Grew up with him.
Saw him (And thtm) in concert .. twice.. (late 80's early 90's)
Saw him (And thtm) in concert .. twice.. (late 80's early 90's)
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Random nerdy fact:
Dogs roll in poop in order to disguise their scent from prey. It's like hunters spraying fox urine on their boots.
Technically, it can be said that the lightest element is not hydrogen. It's positronium (Ps), with one electron and one positron. It was postulated back in the 1940s. Unlike the other elements, in Ps the electron and positron circle about their center of mass.
Ps-H and Ps-Ps have been made. Such materials would make rather interesting propellants if it weren't for the fact that the lifetime of Ps is about 0.1 ns.
There are analogues of Ps, e.g., protonium (proton and antiproton).
Ps-H and Ps-Ps have been made. Such materials would make rather interesting propellants if it weren't for the fact that the lifetime of Ps is about 0.1 ns.
There are analogues of Ps, e.g., protonium (proton and antiproton).
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This has my vote as the best random nerdy fact in this thread!Technically, it can be said that the lightest element is not hydrogen. It's positronium (Ps), with one electron and one positron. It was postulated back in the 1940s. Unlike the other elements, in Ps the electron and positron circle about their center of mass.
Ps-H and Ps-Ps have been made. Such materials would make rather interesting propellants if it weren't for the fact that the lifetime of Ps is about 0.1 ns.
There are analogues of Ps, e.g., protonium (proton and antiproton).
Scanning electron microscope, capable of ca 100,000x or thereabouts:
Modern scanning tunneling microscope, capable of atomic resolution (ca 200,000,000x):
That's a commercial unit, 20x20 cm, from AzoNano...
There's also atomic force microscopy, also capable of atomic resolution, with different capabilities and limitations. Both inventions have spawned variations with other capabilities.
Modern scanning tunneling microscope, capable of atomic resolution (ca 200,000,000x):
That's a commercial unit, 20x20 cm, from AzoNano...
There's also atomic force microscopy, also capable of atomic resolution, with different capabilities and limitations. Both inventions have spawned variations with other capabilities.
(I just posted this elsewhere, but I guess it counts here too.) The two letter postal abbreviations for states, provinces, and territories are coordinated between the US and Canada so there are no duplicates. So if you're thinking "Which state is NS?" don't worry, it's Nova Scotia (just for example).
drewnickel
Resident Hybrid Nut
The physical characteristics of every object in the universe can be sorted by mass.
- At small enough scales, electrostatic forces dominate and you can have clumps of dust.
- At high enough masses you can begin to have gravity take over the accumulation, at which point the rate of growth of an object passing through space grows exponentially.
- Small asteroids are often covered in loose dust and rubble due to the fact gravity isn't high enough to fuse the materials together (rubble piles for example).
- Larger asteroids have strong enough gravity that the particles can fuse into a solid mass.
- Larger still, around 500 km in diameter, and you get into objects that become self-rounding, the forces acting on loose objects on the surface want to minimize the potential energy of the system and so they collapse into a sphere (the shape at which the average distance to the center is minimized).
- Once you get to the scale of something like Ceres or Mercury, you can begin to hold onto gasses and form a tenuous atmosphere (usually heavier gasses, as the lighter gasses are blown away by the sun's solar wind in such a weak gravitational field).
- At the scale of Venus, there is enough gravity to sustain a CO2 atmosphere but not quite enough yet to retain water vapor.
- With Earth being marginally heavier than Venus it is actually capable of retaining water vapor, but not helium or hydrogen.
- Getting to something around the mass of Neptune or Uranus, hydrogen and helium can be retained despite the sun's solar wind trying to blast the gasses away. Once you have an object heavy enough to retain these gasses, their potential size grows exponentially due to these gasses being the most abundant in the universe.
- Once an object is around ~75x the mass of Jupiter, the pressure at the planet's core is sufficient to squeeze hydrogen atoms together and sustain fusion and a star is born. For these stars they will continue to fuse hydrogen until there is no longer enough to sustain fusion, at which point the star will die and remain a hot but steadily cooling ball of gas known as a brown dwarf.
- Heavier stars on the order of 0.2 to 1.3 solar masses will follow the same trend as our sun. As the hydrogen fuses, helium will accumulate in the inner core of the star. Once fusion within the inner core stops due to this accumulation of helium, it will continue in the outer core and cause the star to gradually swell into a red giant. Once hydrogen is exhausted and there is no radiation pressure pushing out against gravity, the star will collapse and trigger secondary fusion of the helium into heavier elements such as carbon and oxygen. This secondary fusion blows off the outer layers of gas, forming a planetary nebula, and the material left behind remains a hot ball of inert gasses known as a white dwarf.
- Stars several times the mass of the sun are so massive that they can continue to fuse the helium, and then the lithium, and then progressively heavier elements until it gets to iron (which releases less energy from fusion than it takes to initiate the fusion). When the star begins producing iron there is no longer enough radiation pressure being produced to keep the star from collapsing, and when it does it does so violently producing a supernova and many of the heavier elements we see. The inert remnants have enough mass to force protons and electrons together into neutrons (K-electron capture), producing a neutron star.
- Heavier still and the stars will collapse more violently in a hypernova, with a stellar mass black hole rather than a neutron star being all that remains.
- It is theorized the largest of stars in the early universe (>1000 solar masses), termed proto-stars, were so massive that their cores would eventually collapse into a black hole. If the mass of the star was sufficient to prevent the surrounding material from being blown away, the outer layers would continue fusion and a quasi-star would be formed. The coalescence of intermediate-mass black holes at the centers of these stars may have been the source of the supermassive black holes which form the heart of galaxies today, with the outer layers providing the material for new star formation.
And, because rabbits are among those, but only eat particular turds, it is suspected that this might be the reason that rabbits were counted among ruminants as "clean" animals in ancient Hewish dietary laws.
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