Jeans

Today my dad babysat Avery for a few hours at my house and when I got home, Ken was watching this show about how jeans were made.  Now this is one of those things that I have never sat down to think about how they are actually made, so of course I was intrigued.  Without recapping the entire hour-long show, I will give you a few highlights.

-At this one factory in Mexico, they make 400,000 pairs of jeans a day.
-They dye the thread yellow first because the blue dye doesn't stay as well; something about dying the thread yellow first helps the blue dye hold, although as most of us know, new jeans still bleed blue a little because it is really hard for the blue dye to stay on cotton.
-For every three blue threads, there is one white thread

There was a lot of information on the show and it really made me want to watch more of this show.  Fortunately, I can't even remember the channel or the name of the show, which is good because I have too many things to watch anyway.

What I Learned: How jeans are made.

Mandrake

For book club this month, we are reading The Dovekeepers. I am really enjoying this book. Today, I read a part that talked about the mandrake plant and its supposed magical properties. Now, I have heard of the mandrake plant thanks to Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, but I guess I just assumed that the mandrake was a made-up plant for the book. With J.K. Rowling, it's so hard to tell what's real and what's made up because all of it seems so real! Anyway, the mandrake is a real plant. I kind of feel stupid that I never knew this before. Interestingly enough, J.K. Rowling got the idea about mandrakes screaming and their magical properties from actual legend and magic books. In The Dovekeepers, it is used in a magical ritual as well.

So the mandrake, or mandragora (as Hermione points out), is real and poisonous and the root actually does resemble a small human (hence the myths surrounding the plant). The mandrake is also in the Bible in two places although it looks like there is some speculation about the translation of this and it could possibly really be ginseng since ginseng is known to help with fertility and the plant is mentioned in the story of Rachel and Leah when Rachel is trying to conceive with Jacob.

What I Learned: The mandrake is a real plant.

Hertz

Today's Google logo was in honor of Heinrich Rudolf Hertz' birthday (2/22/1857). Everyone's heard of the hertz as a unit of measurement for frequency but that's about all I knew about him. So I did some research and found out that he was responsible for clarifying the electromagnetic theory of light. He also proved the existence of electromagnetic waves by making instruments that could transmit radio pulses. I also learned that a hertz technically stands for cycles per second.

What I Learned: What exactly Heinrich Hertz accomplished as a scientist, as well as what a Hertz more specifically stands for.

Leprosy

This month, for the book club I'm in, we are reading Moloka'i which is a novel about the leper colony in Hawaii. It is a really good book and I realized while reading it that I don't really know that much about leprosy other than what's in the Bible. Upon further research, I found out that what is called leprosy today is not actually what leprosy was in the Bible. However, since it was translated as leprosy in the Bible, this created the idea that leprosy nowadays is super contagious, requiring people diagnosed with it to be sent to leper colonies. People still consider leprosy to be a really contagious disease.

The book, which takes place in the late 1800s and early 1900s, relates how scientists were trying to figure out the disease-both how it was spread and how to cure it. In my own research I found that scientists still aren't exactly sure how it's spread, but one thing is certain-it is not as contagious as people think. About 95% of people are naturally immune to it first of all. The disease is not spread by contact of the lesions as was once thought, but possibly by respiratory droplets. So you basically would get it much like you would catch a cold, except it's not that easy to catch and like I said, most people are naturally immune and can never get it. With all this information, I think it's even sadder that all these people were ripped from their families, some when they were just 7 years old, and sent to live in leper colonies in Hawaii. It was all so unnecessary!

What I learned: Leprosy is not very contagious and is a completely different disease than what is called leprosy in the Bible.

Sublime

Tonight we were playing a rousing game of Trivial Pursuit for my mom's birthday and the question was thus: What happens to a solid when it sublimes?

I have never heard this term before. I mean, I have heard of the word sublime, of course, but always as a noun or adjective, but not in this context (as a verb). So I was surprised to hear the answer: that it turns into a gas. Upon further research I found that the exact definition states that not only does the solid turn to gas upon heating without ever liquefying, but it also implies that it then turns back into a solid upon cooling. How have I never heard this before? Then I remember who I had for a chemistry teacher in 10th grade and am no longer surprised.

What I learned: When a solid sublimes, it turns into a gas when heated and turns back into a solid when cooled.

Otter

I was reading an article in Time today about Yasuni National Park in Ecuador. Some scientists consider this area to be the most biodiverse spot on the planet. What I found the most amazing is that the park is home to 28 threatened or near threatened vertebrate species. One of these species is the giant river otter which can grow to nearly 7 feet. Wait, what? SEVEN FEET?! Holy crap, that's huge. Can you imagine seeing an otter that's 7 feet?

What I learned: The giant river otter can grow up to 7 feet long.