Let's Learn About the History of the Bunsen Burner

When the University of Heidelberg hired Robert Bunsen in 1852, the authorities promised to build him a new laboratory building. Heidelberg had just begun to install coal-gas street lighting, so the new laboratory building was also supplied with gas. The laboratory required heating from the gas as well as illumination. For heating, it was desirable to maximize the temperature and minimize the luminosity. Previous laboratory lamps left much to be desired regarding economy and simplicity, as well as the quality of the flame for a burner lamp.

While his building was still under construction late in 1854, Bunsen suggested certain design principles to the university’s mechanic, Peter Desaga, and asked him to construct a prototype. (Similar principles had been used in an earlier burner design by Michael Faraday as well as in a device patented in 1856 by the gas engineer R W Elsner.) The Bunsen/Desaga design succeeded in generating a hot, sootless, non-luminous flame by mixing the gas with air in a controlled fashion before combustion. Desaga created slits for air at the bottom of the first cylindrical burner, the flame igniting at the top. By the time the building opened early in 1855, Desaga had made fifty of the burners for Bunsen's students. Bunsen published a description two years later, and many of his colleagues soon adopted the design. Bunsen burners are now used in laboratories all around the world.

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bunsen_burner

Let's Learn About Sick Bay

A sick bay is a compartment in a ship used for medical purposes — the ship's hospital.

The sick bay will contain the ship's medicine chest which may be divided into separate cabinets such as a refrigerator for medicines which require cold storage and a locked cabinet for controlled substances such as morphine. The sick bay and the medicine chest should be kept locked, with the keys only being available to the medical officer and the ship's master.

The term is also applied ashore by the United States Navy and Marine Corps to treatment clinics on naval stations and Marine bases.

Sick bays appear in popular science fiction franchises, such as Battlestar Galactica or the Star Trek series, as the medical facility on board a starship.

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sick_bay

Bear Feels Sick

Let's Learn About Tsunami Etymology

The term tsunami comes from the Japanese, meaning "harbor" (tsu, 津) and "wave" (nami, 波). (For the plural, one can either follow ordinary English practice and add an s, or use an invariable plural as in the Japanese.)

Tsunami are sometimes referred to as tidal waves. In recent years, this term has fallen out of favor, especially in the scientific community, because tsunami actually have nothing to do with tides. The once-popular term derives from their most common appearance, which is that of an extraordinarily high tidal bore. Tsunami and tides both produce waves of water that move inland, but in the case of tsunami the inland movement of water is much greater and lasts for a longer period, giving the impression of an incredibly high tide. Although the meanings of "tidal" include "resembling" or "having the form or character of" the tides, and the term tsunami is no more accurate because tsunami are not limited to harbours, use of the term tidal wave is discouraged by geologists and oceanographers.

There are only a few other languages that have a native word for this disastrous wave. In the Tamil language, the word is aazhi peralai. In the Acehnese language, it is ië beuna or alôn buluëk (Depending on the dialect. Note that in the fellow Austronesian language of Tagalog, a major language in the Philippines, alon means "wave".) On Simeulue island, off the western coast of Sumatra in Indonesia, in the Defayan language the word is smong, while in the Sigulai language it is emong.

As early as 426 B.C. the Greek historian Thucydides inquired in his book History of the Peloponnesian War about the causes of tsunami, and was the first to argue that ocean earthquakes must be the cause.

The cause, in my opinion, of this phenomenon must be sought in the earthquake. At the point where its shock has been the most violent the sea is driven back, and suddenly recoiling with redoubled force, causes the inundation. Without an earthquake I do not see how such an accident could happen.

The Roman historian Ammianus Marcellinus (Res Gestae 26.10.15-19) described the typical sequence of a tsunami, including an incipient earthquake, the sudden retreat of the sea and a following gigantic wave, after the 365 A.D. tsunami devastated Alexandria.

Now you know.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsunami
Tsunamis and Other Natural Disasters: A Nonfiction Companion to High Tide in Hawaii (Magic Tree House Research Guide #15)

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Let's Learn About a Rorschach Test Controversy

Some skeptics consider the Rorschach inkblot test pseudoscience, as several studies suggested that conclusions reached by test administrators since the 1950s were akin to cold reading. In the 1959 edition of Mental Measurement Yearbook, Lee Cronbach (former President of the Psychometric Society and American Psychological Association) is quoted in a review: "The test has repeatedly failed as a prediction of practical criteria. There is nothing in the literature to encourage reliance on Rorschach interpretations." In addition, major reviewer Raymond J. McCall writes (p. 154): "Though tens of thousands of Rorschach tests have been administered by hundreds of trained professionals since that time (of a previous review), and while many relationships to personality dynamics and behavior have been hypothesized, the vast majority of these relationships have never been validated empirically [sic], despite the appearance of more than 2,000 publications about the test." A moratorium on its use was called for in 1999.

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rorschach_test#Controversy

Let's Learn About Touché

In fencing, touché (French pronunciation: [tuʃe]), the French word for "touched", is used to acknowledge a hit, called out by the fencer who is hit. Conversely, if a fencer concedes a hit when no hit was actually made, the fencer's adversary would say, "'pas de touché'" (French pronunciation: [pɑ də tuʃe]; English: no touch) to indicate that the hit should not be counted.

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Touch%C3%A9

Let's Learn About the History of Rock-paper-scissors

According to Xie Zhaozhe (谢肇淛)'s book ‘’Wuzazu(五杂组)‘’, in the Chinese Ming dynasty period, the game could date back to the time of Chinese Han dynasty, it is called (手势令). Li rihua(李日华)'s book Note of Liuyanzhai(六砚斋笔记)also reveals this game, calling it shoushiling(手势令), or huozhitou（豁指头, or huoquan（豁拳. In the 18th century these games were popular in Japan. The Japanese people invented Janken(Rock-paper-scissors) in the latter half of 19th century. As for Rock-paper-scissors, it came to be played all over the world in the 20th century. Jan-ken-pon (じゃんけんぽん?), or more commonly janken (じゃんけん?), often transliterated in other ways such as jack-en-poy (tagalog), janken-po, etc., sometimes called rock ken (石拳, ishiken?), and known as rock-paper-scissors or paper-scissors-stone in the English-speaking world. The origin or the derivation of the name is unknown. ken (拳, ken?) is a fist in Japanese and Jan-ken-po is categorized as a "ken (fist) games" (拳遊び, ken asobi?). Janken is believed to have been based on two older ken games, sū ken (数拳, number competing game with fingers, likely similar to or identical with Morra) and san sukumi ken (三すくみ拳, san sukumi means the freezing aspects of a snake, frog, and slug with fear). San sukumi ken has existed in Japan since ancient times, and sū ken was imported from China in the late 17th century; the name in China of sū ken is shǒushìlìng (手勢令). Ken games began to increase in popularity in the middle of the 19th century.

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock-paper-scissors

Let's Learn About Concrete

When one thinks of concrete, the image of a dull, gray concrete wall often comes to mind. With the use of form liner, concrete can be cast and molded into different textures and used for decorative concrete applications. Sound/retaining walls, bridges, office buildings and more serve as the optimal canvases for concrete art. For example, the Pima Freeway/Loop 101 retaining and sound walls in Scottsdale, Arizona, feature desert flora and fauna, a 67-foot (20 m) lizard and 40-foot (12 m) cacti along the 8-mile (13 km) stretch. The project, titled "The Path Most Traveled," is one example of how concrete can be shaped using elastomeric form liner.

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concrete

Let's Learn About Iron Use Before the Iron Age

Meteoric iron, or iron-nickel alloy, was used by various ancient peoples thousands of years before the Iron Age. This iron, being in its native metallic state, required no smelting of ores. By the Middle Bronze Age, increasing numbers of smelted iron objects (distinguishable from meteoric iron by the lack of nickel in the product) appeared throughout Anatolia, Mesopotamia, the Indian subcontinent, the Levant, the Mediterranean, and Egypt. The earliest systematic production and use of iron implements originates in Anatolia, beginning around 2000 BCE. Recent archaeological research in the Ganges Valley, India showed early iron working by 1800 BC. However, this metal was expensive, perhaps because of the technical processes required to make steel, the most useful iron product. It is attested in both documents and in archaeological contexts as a substance used in high value items such as jewelry.

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Age