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MercTech -> RE: Did you know? (9/3/2010 1:43:04 PM)
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"Dreamt" is the only English word that ends in the letters "mt".... "Dreamt" is not a word. That is the way "dreamed" is pronounced in several colloquial versions of English but it is spelled with an ED.
"Almonds are a member of the peach family."... And peach pits are also known as "bitter almonds" and are a natural source of cyanide.
"Babies are born without kneecaps. They don't appear until the child reaches 2 to 6 years of age."... Kneecaps (patella) is all cartilidge at birth and hardens to solid bone over time. Just like the soft spot at the top of the baby's head.
"Our eyes are always the same size from birth, but our nose and ears never stop growing.... Then why do you need larger diameter contact lenses as you grow older from teen years?
"There are only four words in the English language which end in "dous": tremendous, horrendous, stupendous, and hazardous." A spacious specious comment that doesn't seem to hold true.
"In the last 4,000 years, no new animals have been domesticated."... American Bison
"Peanuts are one of the ingredients of dynamite!" ... "dynamite" is nitroglycerine mixed with a cellulose material to act as a stabilizer. Sawdust, peanut hulls, and even shredded paper will work just as well.
"Rubber bands last longer when refrigerated." ... Rubber bands, and other items of natural rubber, last longer when kept away from ozone and hydrocarbons that deteriorate them. A refridgerator that seals them off from outside air would make them last longer even if turned off. In fact, the classic method for measuring the "pollution index" is to suspend a weight from a rubber band and measure the elongation over time as the air pollutants deteriorate the rubber. (Flashback to 1968 Science Fair project)
"Leonardo Da Vinci invented the scissors" ... Created left handed scissors so he could cut comfortably... he was a lefty and even kept his personal notes writing backwards from right to left.
"The microwave was invented after a researcher walked by a radar tube and a chocolate bar melted in his pocket.." then went to talk to actual radar operators to see if they had noticed similar problems around klystron tubes and found one of them dangling a hot dog on a fissing line in front of the radar dish to cook it. He went on to file the basic patent on using a klystron radar tube as a cooking applicance... the Amana Radar Range was born. BTW, he didn't walk by but was doing low power testing on new design of radar transmitter and it melted the chocolate bar in his pocket.
"There are more chickens than people in the world." ... the standard commercial chicken house will contain around 25,000 birds. Yes there is a breed called a "Cornish Hen" but the difference in the cornish hen you find in the grocery store and the broiler hen is simple: two weeks.
Pedantically Yours,
Stefan
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