Food is an integral part of our life. We eat food 3-5 times a day, and our health depends on what we eat. appearance. Today we will not just talk about food, but we will learn interesting facts about food and drinks that we have not heard anything about before. For example, did you know that the very first soup was made back in the 60th century BC, and from hippopotamus meat?
Interesting facts about food in different countries: East Asia
The Japanese live on an island surrounded by the Pacific Ocean, and therefore they have always eaten seafood and algae. According to the results of the research, it was found that in the digestive tract of the Japanese there are special microorganisms that are able to better break down and assimilate these products.
The banana is not a fruit, as many people think, it is just a herb. But a person who has eaten a banana begins to exude a smell that attracts mosquitoes.
If you smoked and decided to eat tomatoes or carrots, then be careful: tobacco smoke reacts with beta-carotene, after which it becomes carcinogenic to your body. Although smoking in itself is a poison for humans.
The role of smell and hearing in eating
It has been stated by many aircraft passengers that eating in the air is different from eating on the ground. This is due to the fact that not only the sense of smell affects the taste buds of a person, but also hearing. Due to the noisy operation of the engines, the food seems more crunchy, but less sweet and salty.
If you close your eyes and pinch your nose, you will not be able to distinguish the following foods from each other: onions, potatoes and apples. Since they are similar in taste, they have a similar texture.
What You Didn't Know About Drinks
Tequila is commonly called "cactus vodka", although in fact it is made not from a cactus, but from agave juice. But the forty-degree strength of the drink allows it to be considered a fellow vodka.
Green tea has 50% more vitamin C than black tea. Hibiscus is mistakenly called "red tea", but this drink has nothing to do with tea, rather, the meaning of a decoction or infusion is applicable to it.
In China, there are some varieties of tea, which provide for the addition of not sugar, but salt to the cup.
The wine is called dry because it contains fully fermented sugar.
in food
Today, almost all the food we eat contains chemical additives. And how do they affect our body?
Despite the fact that additives starting with the index "E" are considered to be harmful, there are useful additives, for example vitamin C(E300) and lecithin (E322). But these components should be in limited quantities in our diet.
To enhance the taste of their products, many manufacturers resort to the use of glutamic acid and its salts (E620-E625), as well as preservatives - benzoic acid and its salts (E210-E219). Despite the fact that glutamic acid and its salts are natural components for our body, their excessive content negatively affects the functioning of the central nervous system, it can also be dangerous for the cardiovascular system. Thanks to spices in the cuisines of China and Japan, this component is found in in large numbers, which is why excessive consumption of this acid and salts is sometimes referred to as "Chinese/Japanese Restaurant Syndrome".
Scientists have proven that food colorings in baby food are the reason for the increased activity of babies. Mostly it is red and yellow colored supplements. Also, an excess content of components that enhance taste can damage a fragile body. For example, when overeating crackers, chips, carbonated drinks and so on.
Some parents forbid their children to eat fruits before meals, referring to the fact that the child will "kill the appetite." In fact, fruits contain sugars that promote the release of insulin into the bloodstream and, as a result, stimulate appetite. It is recommended to eat vegetables and fruits from the native area, rather than from exotic countries. Since there are enzymes in the digestive tract aimed at splitting the usual products.
Is the benefit of extra fine porridge different from whole grains? Of course yes. The fact is that the smaller the grinding, the more degrees of processing the cereal has passed, and as a result, there is a decrease in its useful properties for the body. We remind you that various additives that are often found in instant cereals are not beneficial, but rather, on the contrary, harm the body.
There are countless oddities to be found in the animal kingdom. However, the more shocking facts about animals we learn, the more these facts are overgrown with myths, false information and exaggerations. In this compilation, you will learn about the most common of them and the truth behind them.
Myth: Humans are descended from chimpanzees.
Chimpanzees and humans have an astonishing amount of similarities, even with a 98.8% DNA match. Chimpanzees and humans do have a common relative who lived 6-8 million years ago, but a lot has changed since then. In the process of evolution, there are many genetic changes that take shape over many, many generations.
Modern chimpanzees have evolved into a separate branch of great apes.
Myth: Dogs and cats see everything in black and white.
These animals have much better eyesight than many people think. Both see green and blue, and they have more photoreceptors than humans, so they see much better in low light.
This myth appeared due to the fact that each animal sees colors differently than humans.
Shades of red may appear green to cats, and purple may appear blue. And dogs have fewer cones (one of 2 types of photoreceptors), so scientists believe that their color perception is about 1/7 of a human.
Myth: When an ostrich gets scared, it hides its head in the sand.
Ostriches never put their heads anywhere. When someone frightens them, they either run away or fall to the ground and pretend to be dead.Myth: Sharks can smell a single drop of blood from miles away.
This is a big exaggeration. If you get hurt in the water, then the sharks will not swim at you from the other side. Sharks have a really good sense of smell thanks to a developed area in the brain that is responsible for smells.
If they lived in a pool, they could smell a drop of blood, but the ocean is huge. On the most suitable day for them, when water flows are able to quickly “deliver” odor molecules, sharks can smell one drop of blood for several hundred meters, but not kilometers.
Myth: A shark will die if it stops swimming.
Some believe that sharks can only breathe while swimming, when their body movements push water over their gills.
But this applies only to some sharks, while most sharks live at the bottom of the oceans and can pump oxygenated water into their gills without moving.
All sharks lack a swim bladder, so if they stop swimming, they will simply sink to the bottom. However, due to the structure of its body, rapid pressure drops do not harm sharks.
Myth: 1 year for a dog is equal to 7 human years.
From a developmental point of view, 1 year in a dog can be compared to 17 years in a human. However, you can’t just take and compare these indicators, because each breed has a different life expectancy.
Myth: Healthy dogs have wet noses.
A wet nose is more of an indicator of a dog's activity than its health.
Myth: Owls are wise birds.
In fact, owls are one of the dumbest birds on earth. Scientists have even calculated that ravens are much smarter than owls.
Myth: Bees die after they sting you.
There are over 20,000 varieties of bees. One species dies after it stings, and all the rest do not.
Myth: Cats always fall on their paws.
Although cats have the ability to bend their spine so that they can adjust to a fall in the air, they cannot always fall on their paws. These are cats, not superheroes.
Incredible Facts
People are half bananas, and a piece of paper can reach the moon. These facts seem implausible, although in fact they are absolutely true.
1. The human eye is so sensitive that if the Earth were flat, we would see a candle in the dark at a distance of 32 kilometers.
The most distant object visible to the naked eye is the Andromeda galaxy, which is located at a distance of 2.6 million light-years from Earth.
2. If you remove all the empty space in the atoms of all people, then the entire human race can fit in a sugar cube.
Humanity or the atoms that make us up are 99.9999999999999% of empty space. In theory, if you remove all the empty space, then you can put humanity in the volume of a sugar cube.
3. Alaska is the most northern, western and eastern state of the USA.
Alaska is considered the easternmost and westernmost state. The Aleutian Islands of Alaska cross the western and eastern hemispheres.
Amazing facts of the world
4. A deck of cards is never shuffled in the same order.
If every star in our galaxy had a trillion planets, and every planet had a trillion people, and everyone had a trillion decks of cards, and shuffled the cards 1,000 times a second, and have done so since the Big Bang, then it's only possible now. the order would be repeated.
5. Every 200th person living today is a descendant of Genghis Khan.
Ruler of one of the largest empires in history, Genghis Khan went to great lengths to pass on his genes.
6. If a nickel were the size of the Earth, an atom would be the size of a nickel.
If you were to receive an atom of gold every second that has passed since the Big Bang, your gold jewelry would weigh no more than 0.14 milligrams.
7. 1 out of 10 photographs taken in the history of mankind was taken in the last 12 months.
According to some estimates, people took about 880 billion photos in 2014, and these are mostly selfies.
8. Your blood vessels are long enough to circle the Earth 12 times.
In the human body 160,000 km blood vessels. This is enough to circumnavigate the Earth with a diameter of 12,742 km.
9. There are more stars in the universe than there are grains of sand on all the beaches of our planet.
There are about 10 sextillion stars in the universe (1 with 22 zeros). There are approximately 5 sextillion grains of sand on all the beaches of the Earth.
10. Antarctica is the world's largest desert.
Although Antarctica does not look like a desert, it receives less than 5 cm of precipitation per year. The Sahara Desert receives up to 10 cm of precipitation per year.
11. A line of all possible combinations of the Rubik's Cube can reach the Sun more than 17 million times.
If you had a separate cube for each possible permutation of the Rubik's Cube, and you put them in a continuous chain, then it would stretch for 262 light years. For comparison, the Sun is 8 light-minutes away, and the nearest star, Proxima Centauri, is 4 light-years away from Earth.
12. If you fold a sheet of paper 42 times, it will be thick enough to reach the moon.
Every time you fold a sheet of paper, its thickness increases by geometric progression. By the time you have folded the piece of paper 20 times, it will be 9.6 km tall, taller than Everest. This means that 42 additions will be thick enough to reach 239,000 km from the Moon.
13. There are more nerve connections in your brain than there are stars in the galaxy.
The number of synapses in the average human brain is in the trillions, namely 0.15 quadrillion. AT milky way about 100 billion stars.
14. If there are 57 people in a room, then there is a 99 percent chance that at least two will have the same birthday.
Add 13 more people and the odds go up to 99.99 percent.
15. There is a whole "jungle" in your navel.
In the tiny cavity of your belly is a jungle-sized ecosystem. After examining 60 navels, scientists found 2,368 species of bacteria there, 1,458 of which are not known to science.
The most incredible facts
16. The world population of ants has the same weight as the world population of humans.
Ants outnumber humans by a ratio of 1 million to one, which makes up for their small size.
17. The weight of the Internet is equal to one strawberry
Much of the digital information in motion is made up of electrons, just like everything else. It is estimated that the world's Internet traffic weighs about 50 grams.
18. A calculator more powerful than the computers that landed on the moon in 1969
And the memory capacity of the iPhone5 is 240,000 times greater than that of the Voyager spacecraft.
19. 50 percent of human DNA is similar to a banana
Our DNA is 95 percent similar to chimpanzee DNA, and 50 percent banana. We all come from the same family tree, the tree of life, and therefore we have similar characteristics.
20. The surface of Mars is better explored than the ocean floor.
About 72 percent of the Earth's surface is covered with water. So far, we have explored only 5 percent of this vast area.
21. Human fingers are so sensitive that if they were the size of the Earth, they would feel the difference between houses and cars.
Human fingers are able to feel incredibly small imperfections on a nanoscale on an apparently completely smooth surface.
22. Plankton produce 50 percent of the Earth's oxygen.
Phytoplankton, just like trees and plants, use photosynthesis to turn light into energy.
23. Russia has more landmass than Pluto
Pluto is one of the largest dwarf planets. The surface area of Pluto is 1.67 x 10^7 square meters. km. The size of Pluto is approximately 3.3 percent of the Earth's surface.
24. Every day a video is uploaded to YouTube,equivalent to 16 years
Every month, 6 billion hours of recorded human history are uploaded.
25. The deepest place in the ocean is so deep that if Everest were placed on the bottom, the top would still be submerged 1.6 km under water.
The Mariana Trench, which is about 11 km deep, is located in pacific ocean and is home to the most mysterious marine life.
Much of what we learn in school will never come in handy. Most of this large part we will never even remember. And yet, some crumbs of "useless" information will remain in memory. Paradoxically, it is thanks to them that we feel like educated people. The luxury of keeping in mind not only vital information, but also “information surplus” increases self-esteem and gives a sense of intellectual consistency.
And “unnecessary information” surprisingly turns out to be the most interesting. This interest can become a magical key for children from the vast world of science, which is often hidden behind boring formulas and incomprehensible definitions.
In this article, we have collected nine scientific facts that can be used in the lessons of mathematics, physics, geography, chemistry and biology to clearly show that science is not something abstract from real life, but situations that we face every day.
Fact number 1. On average, an ordinary person travels a distance equal to three equators of the Earth in his life
The equator is approximately 40,075 km long. Multiplying this figure by three, we get 120,225 km. At medium duration life at 70 years old, we get about 1717 km per year, which is a little more than five kilometers per day. Not so much, but it runs for life.
On the one hand, this information has no practical application. On the other hand, it is much more interesting to measure the distance traveled not in meters, steps or calories, but in equators. And calculating the percentage of the length of the equator will draw attention not only to geography, but also to mathematics.
The following two facts may come in handy in mathematics lessons. Using the first, you can calculate the number of children in parallel or even in the entire school who were born on the same day.
Fact #2: If there are 23 random people in a room, there is over a 50% chance that two of them will have the same birthday.
And if you put together 75 people, then this probability reaches 99%. A 100% chance of a match can be in a group of 367 people. The probability of a match is determined by the number of pairs that can be made from all the people in the group. Since the order of people in pairs does not matter, the total number of such pairs is equal to the number of combinations of 23 by 2, that is, (23 × 22) / 2 = 253 pairs. Thus, the number of pairs exceeds the number of days in a year. The same formula calculates the probability of matches for any number of people. So you can estimate the number of children born on the same day in parallel or even in the entire school.
Fact number 3. The number of living organisms in a teaspoon of soil is greater than the entire population of our planet
One square centimeter of soil contains billions of bacteria, fungi, algae and other organisms. About 60 million bacteria live in just one gram of dry soil. Nematodes, or roundworms (the most famous of which are roundworms and pinworms) in the same amount of soil are much smaller - only 10 thousand. A figure that is incommensurable with the human population, but no less unpleasant for that.
Practical application of the information: Wash your hands thoroughly after taking care of your indoor plants, as well as after work in the garden or garden. A zone of increased bacterial danger is a sandbox on any playground.
Fact #4: The average toilet seat is much cleaner than the average toothbrush
The bacteria on your teeth live at a density of about 10 million per square centimeter. The number of bacteria on the skin varies depending on the part of the body, but in any case it is much less than in the mouth.
But there are no bacteria on the skin of frogs at all. The reason for this is the mucus secreted by the frog and contains the strongest antibiotics. This is how frogs protect themselves from the aggressive bacterial environment of the swamps in which they live.
A person in this regard is much less adapted, so toothbrushes are advised to be changed every couple of months.
Fact number 5. In the evening, a person becomes 1% lower compared to his "day" height
Under the influence of loads, our joints tend to shrink. With a normal lifestyle, by the evening a person's height decreases by 1-2 cm, which is approximately 1%. The decrease is not permanent.
The maximum decrease in height occurs after weightlifting. Changes in growth can be three or more centimeters. This is due to the compaction of the vertebrae.
Fact #6: Using very high pressure, diamonds can be made from peanut butter.
Scientists from the Bavarian Research Institute of Geophysics and Geochemistry tried to simulate in the laboratory the conditions of the Earth's lower mantle, where at a depth of 2,900 kilometers the pressure is 1.3 million times higher than atmospheric pressure. During the experiment, some innovative ways of producing diamonds were discovered. According to one hypothesis, diamonds are formed from carbon under very high pressure. Carbon is found in almost all foods. And since the researchers had only peanut butter on hand, they tried it out. Unfortunately, the hydrogen, which is bonded to carbon in peanut butter, slows the process down considerably: even a small diamond takes weeks to produce. Thus scientific thought proves that the most incredible transformations are quite possible.
Fact number 7. The height of the Eiffel Tower can change by 12 centimeters depending on the air temperature
An iron rod 300 meters long expands by 3 mm when the temperature rises environment one degree.
This is exactly what is happening with the Eiffel Tower, which is approximately 324 meters high.
In hot sunny weather, the iron material of the tower can heat up to +40 degrees, and in winter in Paris it cools down to about 0 degrees (great frosts are rare there).
Thus, the height of the Eiffel Tower can fluctuate by 12 centimeters (3 mm * 40 = 120 mm).
Fact #8: A conventional microwave uses much more energy to keep the built-in clock running than it does when reheating food.
While in standby mode, a modern microwave consumes approximately 3 watts per hour. Already 72 watts come out per day, and if we multiply this number by thirty days, we get an energy consumption of 2160 watts per month.
If we assume that we use the microwave every day for 5 minutes, we get 150 minutes or 2.5 hours per month. Modern stoves consume about 0.8 kW / h in heating mode. It turns out that with this use, the energy consumption directly for heating food is 2000 watts. If you buy a more economical model that consumes only 0.7 kWh, we get only 1.75 kW per month.
Fact #9. The first computer mouse was made of wood.
Sometimes it's just curious to know the fate of the items that we use every day.
The computer mouse in the design familiar to us was introduced to the world in 1984 by Apple. Largely thanks to her, Macintosh computers have become incredibly popular. But this small, but such a necessary device begins its true history 20 years earlier.
In 1964, Stanford engineer Douglas Engelbart designed a manipulator to work with the oN-Line System (NLS) operating system. Initially, the device was a handmade wooden box with two wheels inside and a button on the case. After some time, the device has a third button, and a couple of years later Engelbart receives a patent for his invention.
Next, Xerox enters the business, but its modification of a computer mouse costs about $ 700, which by no means contributes to its mass distribution. And only the company of Steve Jobs is able to develop a similar device with a cost of $ 20-30, which was included in everyday life billion people.
