Have you ever noticed that when a car or train speed past you, the sound it makes changes in pitch depending on where it is? For example, imagine a train loaded with a marching band. You watch the train come closer and closer to the station where you wait, while the band plays a single note. As the train approaches, the pitch of the note gets higher and higher. The train does not see you and races past the station. As it gets further from you, the note played by the band becomes lower and lower in pitch again. If you cannot imagine this, the next time you see a police car or ambulance racing past you, carefully listen to the sound of the siren.
This change in pitch is called the Doppler effect. The Doppler effect is defined as the change in frequency of a wave (such as sound) for an observer moving relative to the source. It occurs because of the nature of waves. When the source of the sound is still, sound waves ripple out in all directions at a uniform speed. But when the source begins to move, the waves in front of the source begins to bunch up as the source moves with the wave, shortening the distance between each successive wave. As the waves bunch up, the frequency of the sound wave increases, causing a stationary observer to hear it as a higher pitch. This is essentially the same as the waves in the front of a moving boat being bunched up.
The Doppler effect is very useful as it lets the observer measure the speed of the moving object from the amount of “shift” that occurred in the measured wave. This is how speed guns work. Astronomists can use the shift in colour of a star to measure the speed at which it is moving away from or towards us (known as a blue or red shift respectively). In medicine, the Doppler effect is used to visualise the flow of blood in the heart or through vessels on an ultrasound.
In modern society, life gets extremely busy and we have to move quite fast to catch up with it. But like with the Doppler effect, sometimes moving too fast can distort things. You might lose track of what your hopes, dreams and priorities are. People might see a distorted version of who you really are and say that you have “changed”. So no matter how busy you are and how fast the world spins on, remember that it is okay to slow down every now and then just to get a clear picture of where you are, who you are or what you are doing. For in the wise words of Ferris Bueller: “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it”.
Biologists state that the driving force behind evolution can simply be summarised as four forces: fight, flight, feed and mate (“fuck”). These are known as the Four Fs. Evolution is described as the process by which species adapt to an environment through modifications in the genomes of successive generations. The Four Fs describe the adaptations most commonly seen in evolution; that is, the four things that species evolve in order to better adapt and survive their environment. For example, carnivores developed sharp teeth and claws to hunt better and herbivores developed faster legs to flee from their predators better. Nature is a vicious battleground where different species compete with each other for survival, and the Four Fs are the most powerful weapons of survival.
As much as we’d like to think that we are higher-order, civilised beings, human beings are still driven by the basic four forces that drive every other species in the world. Obviously, our bodies are well-adapted to these forces, such as our fight-or-flight drive activating in the face of danger to let us fight harder or run faster through adrenaline. Anyone can see that nature has done her job well by bestowing us the gift of satiety and orgasm to promote our feeding and mating. But what is interesting that the Four Fs go beyond our “natural evolution” to affect the evolution of our civilisation.
Consider this: what is the purpose of war? Since the dawn of time, mankind has spent a considerable amount of resources figuring how to most efficiently kill another group of people, or live in fear that other people will kill us. If we study the behaviour of chimpanzees (one of the few species other than us that wage warfare), we can see that their motivation is for food and sex (i.e. mating partners). This also applies to mankind and it is not a story of ancient times. It is well-known that raping and pillaging runs rampant during wars. Less than 800 years ago, a man named Genghis Khan was so successful in waging war that DNA evidence suggests that 0.5% of the world population are descended from him. Even in the present, countries wage war to secure natural resources to ensure that their people can eat, as the health of the economy directly correlates with the ability of people to put food on their plates. Almost every war essentially boils down to a fight for food.
Then what about sex? Like it or not, sex has been a tremendously influential force in history. From Cleopatra’s seduction of Caesar preventing Rome’s invasion of Egypt, to Henry VIII turning against the Catholic Church to marry Anne Boleyn, sex has been a timeless motivator for humanity. Although the consequences would not be as dramatic as those described, a significant proportion of our actions are also based on our primal desire to reproduce.
Of course, this is not always the truth and human beings are capable of acting on less wild motivators such as happiness and altruism. However, the next time you make a decision or see a conflict on the news, question this: how much of an impact did food and sex have to motivate that?
Mirrors are perhaps one of the most useful yet underrated inventions that we use every day. From shaving in the morning to fixing make-up during lunch, the modern man or woman will use a mirror (or some other reflective surface) at least once a day. Mirrors show us an accurate reflection of the world that we cannot see. We can only look forwards and need a mirror to reflect light going the opposite way to see behind us or – more importantly – ourselves. To do this, a mirror must directly reflect every photon (particles that make up light) at exactly the right angle so the image is not distorted. If the mirror is not completely flat or perfectly polished, light will not be reflected at the exact angle and we will see a distorted image – much like looking into a mirror at the circus. Therefore, one could say that a perfectly flat, clean mirror is absolutely honest, as it will reflect exactly as it sees.
However, this statement is not entirely true as what you see in the mirror is a mirror image of reality. This may seem trivial, but it has significant consequences. This is most obvious when you hold a book up to a mirror. Without training, it is very difficult to read something that is mirrored. This is why Leonardo da Vinci wrote his notes in mirror image. This phenomenon of something becoming completely different is also seen in chemistry. Because of the way molecules are arranged, it is possible to have a property called chirality – where two molecules with the same elemental composition are built in the mirror image of one another. Essentially, it is as if the molecule can be either left- or right-handed. It turns out that even if the composition is the same, two molecules of different chirality (called enantiomers) can act completely differently. This effect may be as simple as changing the way a liquid polarises light to making a drug completely inert or even toxic. For example, the amino acid carvone that gives the spearmint taste only tastes like spearmint if it is L-carvone (“left-handed”), whereas D-carvone (“right-handed”) is tasteless despite having the same molecular formula.
Since the topic of chirality is rather technical and hard to understand, let us move on to the field of literature. One of the best examples of how mirrors can completely change something is seen in Lewis Carroll’s novel Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There. Lewis Carroll understood the significance of mirror images in chemistry and wrote this novel to portray how quirky and strange a “mirror world” may be. Through the Looking Glass is a sequel to the famous book Alice in Wonderland and describes a world that is the mirror image of Wonderland. Carroll cleverly wrote the first book so that it would be the opposite of the first book. The first book starts outdoors, is set in the summer, uses changes in size as a plot device and focuses on the theme of trump cards. The second book starts indoors, is set in the winter, uses changes in direction as a plot device and draws on the theme of chess. There are even characters such as Hatta and Haigha who are the mirror images of the Mad Hatter and the March Hare from the previous book. Although they are very similar, they are just not the same and hence Alice does not recognise them. Perhaps the line that best shows Carroll’s understanding of the dangers of mirror worlds is this: “Perhaps Looking-glass milk isn’t good to drink”.
The field of psychology is also heavily interested in mirrors. It is a well-known fact that our brains recognise the purpose of mirrors. If you put a mirror in front of someone, you know that the person will examine themselves, groom themselves or simply make funny poses. A simple experiment shows how used to mirrors we are. If you angle two mirrors at right angles and fit a transparent sheet of glass in front of the two to make a prism shape, the image you see through the glass is a reflection that is not mirrored. Because it is not mirrored, you can hold up a book to it and still read it fine. This is known as a non-reflecting mirror. An interesting experiment shows that if you make people use this kind of mirror, they become incredibly confused as they are too used to using a mirror image to see themselves. Even though the reflection they see is a “truer” image, because their brain automatically flips the mirrored image, they become uncoordinated and keep moving their hands in the opposite direction.
As mentioned at the start, mirrors are a human invention. Although reflection occurs in nature, such as on a clear surface of water, animals generally are incapable of using mirrors. This is such a universal fact that animal psychologists use a mirror test to determine whether a specie of animal is self-aware or not. The test is done by showing an animal a mirror. Most animals will see their reflection and automatically believe that it is another animal, as they are incapable of thinking that it is a reflection of themselves. Hence, they will try to threaten, attack or flee from the image they see. But if you show a higher-order animal such as an ape or dolphin a mirror, they will start to groom themselves as they realize that the mirror is simply showing themselves.
This is what sets us apart from animals. Not only are we capable of recognizing ourselves in a mirror, but we have the ability to go one step further and reflect on ourselves using the mirror of our minds. Some people may take a look at the person in this mirror and be content with who they are. But some will gaze into the mirror and, much like the animals in the mirror test experiments, see a completely different person they do not recognise. This may cause disappointment, frustration or even disgust as we realize that we are not who we think we are or aspire to be. Then again, sometimes you will gaze into the mirror and see a person that has strengths such as courage – a person you could be if you realized your true potential. The most frightening realisation would be to discover that there is no one in the mirror.
Lastly, we could consider the mirror of behaviour. Goethe said that “behaviour is a mirror in which everyone displays his own image”. The corollary to this is that human beings read behaviour to try and interpret another person’s character. One can use this to greatly improve the relationship and connection with another person. Mirroring is the act of subtly copying the other person’s behaviour to build rapport– where an empathic bridge is constructed between two people. Rapport is particularly useful in jobs that involve earning the trust of strangers in a short time, such as in healthcare or business. By matching the other person’s body language, such as posture or actions like taking a sip of water, the other person will open up more easily to you. The same applies to verbal and emotional mirroring where you subtly reuse the words the other person spoke and reflect their emotions such as excitement. Obviously, one must be subtle with mirroring as a direct imitation will appear mocking and strange. If you are able to subtly copy their behaviour, the other person’s subconscious mind will be tricked into thinking that you are similar in character and trust you more. This skill is extremely useful in improving your interpersonal and social skills.
A mirror is a paradoxical object that is absolutely honest yet relatively deceitful. Reflections in the mirror are true yet completely different. If you take a peek into the mirror of your mind, perhaps you will see the person you think you are now or the person you could be in a mirror world. If you are happy with what you see, then cherish that and be proud of who you are. Otherwise, you can always do what Alice did and jump through the looking-glass to find an alternate you – the best you that you can be.
How does a caterpillar become a butterfly? Every child and adult knows that they undergo a process of metamorphosis while in a chrysalis. But few know that the caterpillar has to dissolve all of its internal organs to form a pool of raw materials that it will use to build itself into a new butterfly. Although from the outside we only see a beautiful shell that appears to be just sitting there, in reality the caterpillar is undergoing a change so profound that it completely rebuilds its foundation.
What is interesting about the metamorphosis process is that it is not as simple as breaking down a caterpillar and rebuilding the pieces into a butterfly like one would do with Lego blocks. Once the puddle of cells is formed within the chrysalis, a new type of cells called imaginal cells appear. We do not know where they come from, but they just appear at a certain time. These cells are completely different from the original caterpillar cells – so different that the original cells begin attacking it as if it was a virus. However, even with all this cellular genocide, more and more imaginal cells pop up, until eventually the original cells cannot keep up. The imaginal cells start to cluster together, multiplying at an exponential rate. These clusters then grow and differentiate to form the parts of the new butterfly, such as wings and antennas. The original caterpillar cells slowly wither away as they are overrun by the new, fresh imaginal cells. The caterpillar becomes a butterfly.
Human beings, in general, are not good with change. We as a society fear something that would completely shift our paradigms and proceed to attack it viciously. Throughout history, ideas that would shake the foundations of society were often challenged and oppressed: the concept that the Earth is round, that the Earth revolves around the Sun or that we are the product of millions of years of evolution. These “imaginal cells” of society such as Charles Darwin and Galileo Galilei were faced with criticism, mocking and even punishment by those who could not accept the fact that what we know can be wrong. However, their ideas spread among like-minded people, until the number of people who believed in these new ideas greatly outweighed the people who did not. This is how society evolves and metamorphosed over time.
Change is difficult and scary, whether you are on the receiving end or on the side trying to change the world. Being the first imaginal cells of society is a painful road one to travel, but the effects of your actions can cause ripples throughout society to change the world for the better. Or perhaps you are experiencing change at a more personal scale, with your traditional way of life being threatened by some new force. But no matter what the change is – for better or for worse – you will adapt and society will adapt. Great ideas persevere and change for the better is inevitable.
There is no reason to be afraid, for everything is and will be okay.
Why is the sky blue? This is because of a phenomenon called Rayleigh scattering where molecules and tiny particles in the atmosphere scatter direct sunlight. Light scatters at different amounts depending on its frequency. Because of this, blue and violet light (short-wavelength light) scatters more than the other colours, causing the sky to be blue. But during sunrise and sunset, the light enters the atmosphere from an angle, causing blue and green light to be so scattered that you cannot see it. This produces a red or orange colour.
The deep ocean is blue for a similar reason; red and yellow light is absorbed while blue becomes scattered by the water. However, the colour of the sea is also largely dependent on the colour of the sky at the time, as it reflects the sky. The colour of the sea may change due to algae in the water, which can make it green, brown or even red.
A similar form of light scattering called the Tyndall effect is responsible for blue eyes, caused by a turbid layer in the iris. The Tyndall effect can also be seen in a glass of water mixed with milk, or flour suspended in water.
Blue has one of the most interesting histories compared out of all the colours. In the ancient world, blue was considered a lowly colour, with some cultures such as the ancient Greeks not even considering it a “real colour” such as red, black, white and yellow. In fact, the Greeks did not have a word for the colour blue; it was merely called bronze colour. The ancient Romans considered blue the colour of barbarians. The Romans stereotyped blue-eyed women as promiscuous and blue-eyed men as aggressive and foolish. Only the ancient Egyptians liked the colour blue, as they considered it a colour of divinity. They made blue dye from copper.
Perhaps the hatred for the colour blue was due to the difficulty of making blue dyes. This all changed nearer to medieval times as artists and dyers successfully created blue dyes from minerals such as lapis lazuli, azurite and cobalt. Blue became the colour of the Virgin Mary. Artists began painting the sky and the sea as blue, which were previously depicted using black, white and green. Nobles began wearing blue instead of the traditional red and purple, and dyers followed this trend by devising better blue dyes with a variety of shades.
This led to the thriving of blue dye industries in European cities such as Amiens, Toulouse and Erfurt, where blue dye was made from a plant called woad. Although this was a very lucrative business, blue was still a very expensive and difficult colour to use, with the dying process involving soaking the woad in human urine (which contains ammonia) to extract the colour.
Blue became a much more accessible colour in the 18th century when flourishing trade brought indigo from the Americas. Indigo was much easier to use, more concentrated and produced a richer, more stable blue than woad. As blue became more and more popular, synthetic blue dyes were discovered – one of the most famous being Prussian blue which was discovered in Berlin in 1709.
Throughout its history, perhaps the product that best promoted the status of blue as a colour is the denim jean (dyed with indigo blue), invented by Levi Strauss in 1873.
In modern times, blue is an extremely popular colour that is widely used in art, fashion, architecture etcetera. However, the one field that blue has not yet been able to set foot in is food. Researches show that the colour blue drastically decreases a person’s appetite as it is associated with poison in the natural world.
One of the (many) defining features of a “great wine” is the aging of the wine. The complex chemical reactions between the wine’s sugars, acids and tannins can produce a much deeper, sophisticated aroma and taste that stays in the mouth for longer. For example, the tanninsbreak down to give a softer mouthfeel. Acids and alcohols combine in the wine to form esters – chemical compounds that produce very unique smells. This also reduces the perceived acidic taste of the wine, making it less sour. The longer the wine has aged, the more of these chemical reactions occurs and the wine typically improves in quality.
Of course, the problem with wine of excellent quality is the price and the time required to age the wine. Is there any way to artificially “age” wine? The solution lies in something that sounds like science fiction: irradiating the wine.
If you expose a bottle of wine to radiation (about 500 rads) for an hour, it can greatly improve its maturity. In a simple experiment, blind-tasted sommeliers could not believe that the two glasses of wine – one before irradiation and one after – were exactly the same. In fact, they valued the irradiated wine at almost five times the market price of the original bottle. The reason for this is that radiation accelerates the esterification process of the acids in the wine, producing a much deeper and smoother taste.
There are also other experiments that have shown that magnetism, ultra-sonic waves and high-voltage electricity can all be used to artificially age wine.
Let’s imagine that you are walking outside, when rain clouds catch you by surprise and suddenly pour down on you. Assuming that you have no umbrella or anything to cover yourself with, is it best to run back home or walk back? Or to elaborate, should you walk and spend more time in the rain, or should you run, which means you will run into rain sideways?
There are two ways you can get wet in the rain: it will either fall on top of your head, or you will run into it from the side. The amount of rain that falls on your head is constant whether you are walking or raining, as the entire field you are travelling through is full of raindrops. Therefore, one would naturally think that running would not add much benefit as you run into more rain by moving faster, as you essentially hit a wall of raindrops.
But this is not true. No matter how fast you travel, the amount of rain you hit sideways is constant. The only variable that affects the amount of rain you hit sideways is the distance you travel. This is because the amount of raindrops in the space between you and your destination is constant.
Summarising this, the wetness from rain you receive is:
(wetness falling on your head per second x time spent in rain) + (wetness you run into per meter x distance travelled).
Since you cannot really change how far you are from your destination, the best way to minimise getting wet is to run as fast as you can to minimise the time you spend in the rain.
Then again, this is only the most practical option to keep you dry. If you are feeling particularly romantic or blue, then feel free to stroll through the rain, savouring the cold drops on your face (or wallow in the sadness that is your life).
One of the most well-known philosophical questions is what came first: the chicken or the egg? A chicken is born from an egg, and an egg is birthed by a chicken. This means that the cause and effect are intertwined in a never-ending cycle. This kind of problem is known as circular cause and consequence or circular reference.
In some ways, this question is extremely easy to answer. In biology, many different creatures lay eggs to give birth to their young, but there are no examples of a chicken being born without an egg being involved. The chicken is most likely a product of a lineage of evolving species that ultimately resulted in the genetic makeup of a chicken. That “proto-chicken” would have laid an egg, which had enough mutations in its genome to be sufficiently different from the proto-chicken to be called a “chicken”. Therefore, the egg must have come before the chicken. Even if we use the strict rule of defining “egg” by as a “chicken egg”, the egg that birthed the first chicken contained the original genetic makeup for chickens; ergo the chicken egg came before the chicken.
Science and philosophy aside, a completely unrelated point about chickens and eggs is that there is a Japanese dish called oyakodon, which is made with chicken and egg over a bowl of rice and vegetables. The name comes from the Japanese for parent (“oya”, 親) and child (“ko”, 子), giving away the cruel nature of the relationship between the main ingredients in the dish.
What would happen if you dropped a 1kg ball and a 10kg ball at the same time from a high building? Most people would think that the 10kg ball would obviously fall faster and thus hit the ground faster, but the truth is they would fall at exactly the same time. The reason for this is that the force that accelerates a falling object is gravity, which on Earth is constant at 9.81ms-2. This means that no matter how heavy the object is, they will always accelerate by 9.81 metres per second per second. This was hypothesised by Galileo Galilei, who came up with the thought experiment of dropping two balls of different mass from the Leaning Tower of Pisa (there is debate as to whether he actually performed the experiment). The theory was later solidified by a certain Isaac Newton, who devised the laws of universal gravitation and the three laws of motion.
However, if the two balls were dropped from an extremely high place, they may land at different times as mass affects the terminal velocity – when the force of gravity equals the force of drag caused by air resistance, leading to a constant velocity. A heavier object will keep accelerating to a greater velocity than a lighter object, which would have reached terminal velocity before the heavier object.
One place where this will not happen is in a vacuum where there is no drag force. To prove that the hypothesis that two objects of different masses will fall at the same time in the absence of air resistance, Commander David Scott of the Apollo 15 moon mission took a hammer and a feather with him. Once he landed on the moon, he dropped the hammer and feather in front of a live camera, showing that the two landed at exactly the same time. He thus proved that Galileo’s conclusion from two hundred years ago was in fact correct.
What is the best or easiest way to protect yourself from an alligator attack? Obvious answers aside (such as avoiding them), it is to use something like an elastic band or a rope to tie their snout shut. Alligators have the strongest bite in the natural world – clocking in at about 2125 pounds of force (about 966kg). The sheer force of the bite is enough to crush the victim and kill them instantly. Even if the victim survives, there is a serious risk of being left with a permanent disability or die from an infected wound.
Although the force of the bite is incredible thanks to its extremely strong jaw muscles, alligators do not have nearly enough the same strength when opening their jaws. This means that a simple elastic band is enough to keep their jaws shut, leaving the alligator helpless and giving you a chance to run before its friends come to find you.
