Tag: moon

Posted in Science & Nature

Grasshopper Mouse

Posted on by Jinavie

Grasshopper mice are a species of New World mice found in deserts throughout North America. They are small-to-medium sized, growing up to 13cm in size and weighing around 40-50g.

Despite their cute appearances, they are carnivorous, ferocious hunters. They feast on various insects, but are also known to hunt other mice.

Grasshopper mice have interesting adaptations that make them seem more like a miniature wolf or mongoose rather than a mouse. For example, they stalk their prey like a cat before pouncing. They hunt highly venomous insects such as scorpions and centipedes because they have evolved to convert the deadly toxins of a scorpion sting into harmless chemicals.

An interesting feature of the grasshopper mouse is that they often howl like a wolf to ward off competitors and to communicate with each other. It has been nicknamed the werewolf mouse because they are known to howl in the night with their heads thrown back, communicating over the vast desert with a high-pitched howl.

Posted in Science & Nature

Hammer And Feather

Posted on by Jinavie

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.

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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.

Posted in History & Literature

Week

Posted on by Jinavie

In Genesis from the Old Testament of the Bible, it is said that God created the world in six days and rested on the seventh. But the system of a seven-day week can be found in many other cultures and religions. The origin of the seven-day week system is ancient Babylonia. The Babylonians believed that every seventh day was one of misfortune, with 7 having the significance that it is the largest single-digit prime number and the number of heavenly bodies known at the time (sun, moon, five planets). This was passed on to the Jewish people who made the seventh day the Sabbath. This was then adopted by Catholics in Rome and in 325AD, it was officially decided at the Concilium Nicaenum (official council that was held to vote for the official religion of Rome) that every week would be seven days long.

There is also a reason for assigning a heavenly body to each day (Monday = Moon, Tuesday = Mars, Wednesday = Mercury, Thursday = Jupiter, Friday = Venus, Saturday = Saturn, Sunday = Sun). At first, the order of the days was the same as the order of heavenly bodies by their distance from the Earth: “Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury, Moon”. This was then cross-referenced with the astrological 24-hour system of planetary hours, resulting in a new order of “Saturn, Sun, Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus”. Because of this, the week started on Saturday in ancient times. It was only during Roman times when the week was changed to start on the Sunday, with Sunday becoming an official day of rest.

The Romans named the days after the heavenly body assigned to that day. For example, “Sunday” obviously comes from “Sun”, with the same applying to Monday and Saturday. This system is used in Korea and China, where each day is labelled according to the assigned planet. For example, Thursday is 목요일(mok yo il) in Korean, where 목 means wood, with 목성(mok sung) meaning Jupiter.

In English, the names of each day are mixed. Some are based on planets like the Korean system (Saturday, Sunday, Monday), while others inherit their name from the Germanic people. The Germanic people assigned one of their gods (from Norse mythology) to each day (except Sunday and Monday, which are related to the Sun and the Moon, while Saturday had a completely different name). Tuesday stands for “Tyr’s day”, Wednesday stands for “Wodan’s(or Odin’s) day”, Thursday stands for “Thor’s day” and Friday stands for “Frigg’s day”.

Interestingly, the Norse god assigned to each day correlates with the Greek/Roman god assigned to it. For example, Thursday is “Thor’s day” and also “the day of Jupiter”. Jupiter is the Roman king of gods (same as Zeus from Greek mythology) who uses lightning, while Thor is the Norse god of thunder.

Not every country calls each day a meaningful name. In China, Monday is simply 星期一(xing qi yi), or “first star period”, with each day after that being one number higher (Sunday is specially called 星期日(xing qi ri), where the number is replaced by the character for “Sun”). Although China used the same system as Korea and Japan based on 음양오행설(eum yang oh hang sul, system of Five Elements and Yin Yang), the days were renamed with the simplification of the language.

Posted in History & Literature

Elements: Yin And Yang

Posted on by Jinavie

Yin-yang is a frame of thinking that can be considered a fundamental basis of Eastern philosophy. In ancient Far East Asia, people categorised everything of nature as yin or yang, including natural phenomenon such as human physiology. Yang(陽) is a masculine element, yin(陰) is a feminine element and the two represent the countless symmetries found in nature. Just as there is a sky for the earth, a sun for the moon, a man for a woman and strength for softness, every phenomena in human societies and the universe can be identified in relative terms. The concept of reducing these to a plus and a minus to explain natural events is the concept of yin and yang.

For example, consider a hill in the sunlight. The bright side is called the “yang place” and the opposite, dark side is called the “yin place”. Thus, light is yang, darkness is yin. That is not all. The air that is heated by sunlight becomes warm and rises, while cold air sinks because it is heavy. Yang symbolises heat, lightness and upward, active movement while yin symbolises cold, heaviness and downward, sluggish movement. But that does not mean that yin is bad and yang is good. The reason being, everything that counters each other in nature coexists and forms a balance. Also, as time passes, the sun will move from the east to the west, making the sunny place dark and the dark place sunny. Yin-yang is a law that shows the relativity of nature very well. It shows that everything is relative to each other even if they seem like opposites, forming a harmonious balance and cycle.

Balance forms harmony and nature always seeks harmony. For example, traditional Korean and Chinese medicine is based on the concept that the reason why diseases occur is because of the balance of yin and yang in the human body being broken. To restore the balance, acupuncture and herbal remedies are used, restoring good health. A broken harmony is due to one side being greater than the other as yin and yang form a zero-sum game. This means that as one side waxes, the other side wanes and vice versa, with the sum of the two being equal at all times. But this does not mean that yin and yang oppress and fight each other. Instead, the two rely on each other despite being opposites. In this world, there is no light without darkness. There is no forwards without backwards and no life without death. For instance, if there were only men (yang) in this world, the human race would be wiped out in one generation. But if yin and yang coexist to help each other and form a union, they give birth to a new generation. Nature always exists as a perfectly balanced coexistence of two polarities. When yin and yang form a balance they form something even greater than their sum, which is harmony.

1 + 1 = 3

(Image source: http://falynevarger.deviantart.com/art/Yin-Yang-Dragons-119779525)

Posted in Philosophy

The Truth Lies Within The Finger

Posted on by Jinavie

A wise man points at the moon, but the fool looks at the finger. (Chinese proverb)

The wise man explains that his finger is not important and what should be looked at is the moon, but the fool carefully listens to him and thinks that he is a very good speaker. (a modern adaptation of the proverb)

The wise man pleads the fool to look at the damn moon, but the fool is only afraid and does not look up. (a very modern adaptation of the proverb)

The wise man finally gives up talking about the moon and instead starts talking about his finger, which he thinks the fool will be more interested in. The fool then says to himself, that the wise man is someone who is able to explain his own stories to others in an easily understandable manner, and that he can talk about any subject – even a random thing such as a finger. (an even more modern adaptation of the proverb)

When the wise man dies, the fool asks himself: “So really, what was it the wise man tried to explain to us lifting his finger so high?” (the ultimate adaptation of the proverb)

(from Paradise by Bernard Werber)

Posted in History & Literature

Moon

Posted on by Jinavie

As most people know, the Moon is Earth’s only satellite (or “moon”), and it circles the Earth from a distance of 360000km. This giant rock was most likely formed from a gargantuan heavenly body colliding into the young Earth, displacing material from it. 
The Moon also has oceans, but they are flat, barren rockbeds. As it has a geography, we see a pattern on the lunar surface, which people interpret as the Moon rabbit, Man on the Moon, crab, beautiful woman and whatever else they see through the power of pareidolia.

The Moon, which forms the basis of yin and yang with the Sun, has had a significant impact in every civilisation. In the East, the lunar calendar is still used and many festivals are set to it (such as the Lantern Festival and Mid-Autumn Festival). In the West, the Moon has been associated with lunacy, so called the “lunar effect”. Some people (including Aristotle) believe that people act more crazy and criminal when a full moon is up (werewolves and the Cheshire Cat’s “crescent moon” grin are also linked to this symbolism).

As such, the Moon has always been an important part of human societies. Without it, there would be no tides, the lunar calendar would be useless, the night sky would be darker, werewolves would not terrorise the forests, and most importantly, Sailor Moon would not be able to stop criminals in the name of justice.