Why?

2023-04-27 21:00:31 WHY is the thumb called the "big finger" if it is the shortest of all?

The thumb is opposed to the others; such a position allows us to make varied and precise movements. Only humans are capable of grasping, holding, and masterfully manipulating both large and tiny implements, from a punching machine to a pin. Such diverse functions might be impossible if the thumb were longer or shorter than its actual size.

Despite the thumb's seemingly small size - it appears to consist of only two phalanges - it fully lives up to its name, both in importance and size.

The muscle responsible for the thumb is the most massive in the palm of the hand. Besides, a special part of the brain, unrelated to the one that controls the actions of the other fingers, coordinates its movements. Открыть/Комментировать

2023-04-27 14:00:46 WHY are Siamese twins born?

Siamese twins is one of the phenomena of multiple pregnancy, resulting in the birth of babies who share some organs or body parts.

This pathology is caused by the fact that the fertilized cell develops initially as a single embryo, and then "decides" to split into two parts, while some organs are already formed. Unlike the appearance of normal twins, the division of the embryo occurs an order of magnitude later, not at the cell level, as it should be, but at the level of the embryo.

Siamese twins have a very low chance of survival, from 5 to 25% of the total number of births, and girls are the most common among them. Открыть/Комментировать

2023-04-26 21:00:36 WHY do movie theaters sell popcorn?

For every popcorn eater, the owner of the buffet earns about 400 to 700% profit. Also, keep in mind that popcorn makes people thirsty and makes them buy more drinks. And another significant fact is that it can be stored for a really long time.

Therefore, buffet owners decided long ago that this product would be the most profitable. Открыть/Комментировать

2023-04-26 14:00:45 WHY would the compass fail to work on Mars?

Mars lacks a complete planetary magnetic field. There are only small magnetic anomalies, where the field is about 500 times weaker than on Earth. They are generated by magnetized rocks in the crust of Mars, not by the magnetic dynamo in the planet's core, as in the case of Earth.

Zones of magnetic anomalies are located irregularly, so that even a very sensitive compass capable of picking up their weak fields will not indicate a certain geographic direction. Открыть/Комментировать

2023-04-25 21:00:32 WHY does White move first?

First-move advantage in chess is the hypothetical advantage of the player (White) who makes the first move in chess. Chess practitioners and theorists generally agree that White starts the game with some advantage.

Gathered statistics since 1851 support this notion; White consistently wins slightly more frequently than Black, and typically scores between 52 and 56 percent. White's winning percentage is about the same for human-to-human and computer-to-computer tournament games. However, White's advantage in blitz and beginner-to-freshman games is less significant.

Chess player and mathematician Mihai Shuba and others claim that sometimes White's initiative disappears for no apparent reason as the game progresses. The current style of playing for Black is to strive for dynamic, unbalanced positions, rather than simply trying to equalize them. Opinions exist that Black has certain compensating advantages Открыть/Комментировать

2023-04-25 14:00:45 WHY do cucumbers feature bumps?

Numerous species of wild cucumbers are covered with impressive spines. They prevent animals from eating the fruit before the seeds ripen in them; then the spines dry out and break off.

Still in the ancestors of the cultivated cucumber, which grew in humid tropical climates, the spines were transformed into organs through which excess water drips off. Thus, only tubercles remained of the spikes. Открыть/Комментировать

2023-04-24 21:00:35 WHY do dogs mark trees already marked by other dogs?

By leaving a mark, a dog communicates its presence to its kin and gets an indication of what sex, size and physiological condition dogs have been here. In neutral territory, it is a message that the individual is also using it.

On the borders of the pack territory, the mark means that the area is occupied; the tag of a dog from another pack on the same object is a sort of "boundary post." On someone else's territory, it is a challenge to its owners, a claim on it. Marks are sometimes associated with the assertion of social status and with the search for a sexual partner. Открыть/Комментировать

2023-04-24 14:00:41 WHY is "SPAM" called that?

Originally, Spam was an inexpensive canned food from Hornel Foods, which came on the market in 1937. The name quickly caught on due to its simplicity and grandiose advertising campaign.

The American firm was so persistent in its advertising that many citizens complained to newspaper and magazine editors that their publications were impossible to read because of the ubiquitous SPAM stew ads. The quality of the product left much to be desired, but it was cheap, which made it popular as a raw material for cooking various dishes in small cafes and bars.

In fact, there was nowhere to run from SPAM dishes. This commercial success had a downside - spam began to be called anything that was imposed, advertised, and anything that was not of decent quality. Открыть/Комментировать

2023-04-23 21:00:28 WHY can't you compare the megapixels of cameras with the sensitivity of the human eye?

You have probably seen many factual pictures comparing the human eye to a camera. In fact, scientifically speaking, the eye cannot be equated with a camera. It has about 120 million visual cells, but they don't capture the picture pixel by pixel.

The eye perceives an object with all cells at once, with some cells being responsible for colors and others for lightness. However, according to the latest data, the human visual acuity factor is 1.7. Accordingly, the radius at which the eye distinguishes pixels is -0.39 arcminutes.

If we take the angle of view as 90 degrees horizontally and vertically, it turns out that the resolution of the eye is 324 megapixels. And if you add peripheral vision, you get 576 megapixels. Открыть/Комментировать

2023-04-23 14:00:38 WHY is the Great Wall of China called the longest cemetery?

The Great Wall of China is the largest architectural monument ever built by human hands. Its total length (together with its branches) is almost 9 thousand kilometers (however, some researchers argue that the length of the Great Wall of China actually exceeds 21 thousand kilometers). The width of the wall makes from 5 to 8 meters, height - about ten meters.

A huge number of people were involved in the construction: peasants, criminals, soldiers, the latter also protected workers from nomadic attacks and ensured that workers did not run away from the construction site.

During the construction of the Chinese Wall, due to diseases, accidents or other causes, millions of people died and were buried within the walls of the Chinese Wall, so it is also called - The Longest Cemetery of the World or the Wall of Tears. Открыть/Комментировать