Sharpen Your General Knowledge

[Shamim Ansary]

Can Cats See In the Dark and Do Cats Have Night Vision In Complete Darkness?

But even with their powerful night vision, cats cannot see in complete darkness.

No animal can see in the dark without at least a little light, however, cats have a distinct advantage on us in the dark.

For one thing, their pupils can expand three times wider than ours can.

Also, they have a layer of crystalline material behind their retinas that reflects light back out, giving their eyes a second chance to pick up images.

This layer, called the tapetum lucidum, is also the reason that cats’ eyes shine eerily at night when they catch a glint of light.

Unfortunately, what cats gain in night vision they lose in daytime sharpness.

While their eyes are perfectly suited to picking up movement, their overall vision is blurry, so much so that if something stops moving, the cat is likely to lose track of it.

Which is why you sometimes see cats watching television, but almost never catch them reading a book.

[rumman]

Thanks Mr. Ansary for your productive post. There are many things that we are not yet aware in this world. However, we should have knowledge on these interesting things.

[Shamim Ansary]

Why Is a Newspaper Called a “Gazette”, What Does It Mean, and Where Did the Word Come From?

In 59 B.C. Julius Caesar introduced the first handwritten daily newspapers, which were posted in prominent locations around Rome.

However, it wasn’t until long after Gutenberg’s printing press was invented that news became an industry.

During the mid-sixteenth century, citizens of Venice paid to hear public readings of the news.

The price for these readings was a small copper Italian coin called a gazetta, which gave us the word gazette for a newspaper.

[Shamim Ansary]

Why Does Salt Melt Snow and Ice?

When you put salt on ice or snow, it begins to melt. This is because the salt lowers the freezing point of water. The more salt added, the more it melts.

As the salt dissolves, it creates heat, melting more water and dissolving more salt. That’s why towns plow roads to clear them of snow and then put salt on them to melt the remaining ice and keep it from freezing up again.

Fresh, unsalted water starts to freeze at 32 degrees F., but water with even a small amount of salt in it won’t begin to freeze until the temperature drops to 28 degrees F.

Unfortunately, salted sidewalks and streets can be harmful to your pet’s feet. If you walk them in an area that has been salted, be sure to wash their feet afterward.

[Shamim Ansary]

How Does a Chameleon Change Colors?

Chameleons are lizards known for their ability to change colors. But contrary to popular belief, the chameleon does not change its color to match its background. It changes as a result of its mood, the temperature, or light conditions.

Most chameleons have brown or green as their main color, but they can turn to an off-white, yellow, or light green. When they are cold, their color is lighter than when they are warm.

The chameleon’s skin has several layers, with different color pigment cells in each layer. The inner layer has black pigment cells. The chameleon’s nerves control the expansion and contraction of the color cells. When the black cells either move closer to or farther from the skin surface, they blend with, blot out, or intensify other cells. This causes the chameleon’s color to change.

The chameleon’s tongue, which always hits its prey, can be extended more than twice the length of the chameleon’s body!

[Shamim Ansary]

What Are X-Rays and When Were X-Rays Discovered?

X-rays are electromagnetic radiation with short wavelengths, 10-3 nanometers, and a great amount of energy.

They were discovered in 1898 by William Conrad Roentgen (1845-1923).

X-rays are frequently used in medicine because they are able to pass through opaque, dense structures such as bone and form an image on a photographic plate.

X-rays are therefore commonly used to take images of the inside of objects in diagnostic radiography and crystallography.

[Shamim Ansary]

What Is the Moon’s Landscape Like and What Other Features Does the Surface of the Moon Have Besides Craters?

The Moon’s surface has highlands and lowlands just like earth.

The main feature on the Moon’s surface are the hundreds of thousands of craters, or the remnants of craters, found in both regions, some with crater rays of ejected lunar material emanating out from their edges.

Besides craters, there are mountains, mares, rills, and domes.

The South Pole-Aitken basin is the largest, deepest and oldest basin recognized on the Moon.

At about 2,240 km in diameter, it is also the largest known crater in the Solar System.

[Shamim Ansary]

Is Snow Frozen Rain?

Hail or sleet is frozen rain, but snow is never formed as a frozen raindrop.

Snow forms from ice crystals high above the earth. These particles turn into snow without first becoming rain.

At the height that snow usually forms, the temperature is from 20 to 60 degrees below zero, far too cold for water to exist as a liquid.

[Shamim Ansary]

How Does Soap Get You Clean?

Have you often felt what a bother it was to use soap when a quick swish of your hands under plain water would do just as well? Most kids prefer it that way. But while water alone may remove some of the dirt from the surface of your skin, soap added to the water does get you cleaner.

If you looked at a cross-section of your skin under a microscope, you would see that it has many hollow areas, or valleys, where particles of grease and dirt can become embedded. Water alone may get under the dirt and push some of it out, but when that water hits grease, it will simply sit on top of it in a bubble or just roll off.

But add soap to that very same water and you have a completely different action. The action of mixing soap into water pumps air into the water and forces it to spread out as it creates bubbles. A bubble is actually a balloon of air with a thin outer covering of soap and water.

While bubbles seem to be very delicate and weak things, they actually work like dozens of strong magnets. Just as magnets pull tacks towards them, soap bubbles-pick up dirt and pull it away from the skin. Then the dirty bubbles are carried away in the rinse water, leaving your skin clean.

[Shamim Ansary]

Why Are There More Female Babies Born Than Males?

In fact, each year more males are born than females. The normal slight excess of male births is usually attributed to the slightly greater motility of sperm carrying the male, or Y, chromosome.

It was recently discovered that in the average ejaculation, there are slightly more sperm carrying the X chromosome, necessary for conception of a female, than there are sperm with the Y chromosome. But emerging studies of embryos that have been conceived through in vitro fertilization indicate that more males are actually conceived.

Scientists suggest that the Y-bearing sperm are so much better at fertilizing eggs than the X-bearing ones that even though there are fewer of them to begin with, they end up penetrating more than half of all eggs.

What happens to the sex ratio after conception is another story. For example, in societies where women are not valued as much as men, they may be purposely aborted, neglected, or actually killed. In others, where men are subjected to greater stress or risk (from wars, for example), more women survive longer.

The ratio of males to females can vary from time to time and from population to population, whether it is animals or people, and there are numerous suggested reasons.

For example, it has been reported that women in lower socioeconomic groups, presumably under greater stress, bear slightly more girls than boys.

[Shamim Ansary]

What Is a Balloon Mortgage?

The balloon mortgage offers very low interest rates in the beginning and then after a certain period of time the balance either must be refinanced or paid in full.

In a variety of the balloon mortgages, after the specific time period, the loan is recalculated with the interest based on a specific index or margin, which makes the total payment significantly increase.

[Shamim Ansary]

What Makes the Stars Twinkle?

Not only does the light from the stars appear to twinkle or jump about, it also appears to change color.

When the light from the stars is traveling through space, there is no twinkling or changing of color. It is the earth’s atmosphere that makes the stars twinkle and change color.

This is brought about by the winds in the earth’s atmosphere, which make tiny dust particles move at different speeds. Light passing through these jumbled layers is refracted and appears to change color and jump about.

Some nights the stars appear to jump about more than usual. That’s because on that night there are greater differences in the speeds of the winds in the atmosphere.

Did you know that when you look at the stars with a big telescope, all the twinkling is exaggerated? Sometimes the stars jump about so much astronomers just give up and turn off their big telescopes.

[Shamim Ansary]

What Are the Most Common Surnames In the United States?

The most common surnames in the United States in order, are Smith, Johnson, Williams, Jones, and Brown.

A surname is a name added to a given name and in many cases, a surname is a family name.

In Western countries, a surname is also known as a “last name”, but in many countries in Asia, the family name, or surname, comes before the person’s first name.

In Iceland, however, most people do not use family names. Instead, a person’s surname indicates the first name of the person’s father.

[Shamim Ansary]

What Do You Do If a Deer Runs Out In Front of Your Car While You’re Driving?

If a deer runs out in front of your car, stay calm, and try not to further endanger yourself, your passengers, other traffic, or the deer as you would in any other collision situation.

But there are several preventative steps you can take to avoid running into deer in the first place.

The first is being aware of the season. Deer are most prevalent in June, when young fawns are on the move, and from October through December (mating season).

A good thing to remember during these times, and always, is to lower your speed in heavily deer-populated areas; if you see deer signs, heed them.

And keep your eye especially keen during the dawn and dusk hours, when deer are most active.

Most car-deer collisions happen during these low-light times of day. If you do hit a deer, some states allow you to keep the carcass.

Whether you want venison for dinner or not, contact the authorities and alert them about the hit immediately.

[Shamim Ansary]

What Battle Was Fought After the War Was Over?

One of the most famous battles of the War of 1812 was the Battle of New Orleans, in which General Andrew Jackson and his troops defeated a larger British army.

The battle was fought on January 8, 1815, 15 days after a peace treaty between the United States and England had been signed in Europe. But the news, which came across the Atlantic Ocean on a ship, didn’t reach Jackson or the British troops before the battle.

Although the Americans were outnumbered more than two-to-one at New Orleans, they lost only 71 men while the British lost 2,000!

At the time of the battle, even President James Madison in Washington, D.C., didn’t know about the treaty or the battle!