Monday, September 14, 2015

Do Animals have language ?

All animals communicate. But do they have language? Michele Bishop details the four specific qualities we associate with language and investigates whether or not certain animals utilize some or all of those qualities to communicate.


Wednesday, September 9, 2015

Wednesday, September 2, 2015

Riddle: Color of the bear

If you are sitting in a house with all windows facing south and there is a bear in the window, what is the color of the bear ?

Tuesday, September 1, 2015

Super heroes of metal world

The word "metal" means strength; but strength can be measured in different ways just like superheroes have different powers.

Malleability

Malleability is the ability of a metal to be hammered into thin sheets. Gold and silver are highly malleable. When a piece of hot iron is hammered it takes the shape of a sheet. The property is not seen in non-metals.

Silver is a transition metal. It has the highest electrical conductivity of any element and the highest thermal conductivity of any metal. The metal occurs naturally in its pure, free form, as an alloy with gold and other metals, and in minerals such as argentite and chlorargyrite. Most silver is produced as a byproduct of copper, gold, lead, and zinc refining. It has long been valued as a precious metal


Ductility/Tensile Strength
Ductility is a solid material's ability to deform when it is pulled from both ends; this is often characterized by the material's ability to be stretched into a wire. Again gold is one of the most ductile metals.
Gold - its a very soft and beautiful metal coveted for thousands of years chemical properties of gold.

Hardness
Hardness is a measure of how resistant solid matter is to various kinds of permanent shape change when a compressive force is applied.

Titanium is classified as a transitional metal. Titanium is the ninth most abundant element in Earth’s crust. It is almost always present in igneous rocks and their sediments. Pure titanium is a lustrous white metal. It is strong, light with low density, and has excellent corrosion resistance. Titanium is as strong as steel but 45 percent lighter. It is 60 percent heavier than aluminum, but twice as strong.

Toughness
The toughness of a material is the maximum amount of energy it can absorb before fracturing, which is different from the amount of force that can be applied.

Molybdenum is tough metal used in many types of power tools chemical properties of molybdenum.

Corrosion resistance
Corrosion is a process of gradual destruction of metal due to oxygen(process is called - oxidation). 
Zinc is a metallic chemical element. It is the 24th most abundant element in the Earth's crust and has five stable isotopes. Corrosion-resistant zinc plating of steel is the major application for zinc. Other applications are in batteries and alloys, such as brass

Shear strength
Shear strength represents how hard you can try to cut it without it breaking. When you cut a paper with scissors, the paper is failing in its shear strength.


iron is used to make an alloy called "steel" which has very high shear strength. 

Monday, August 31, 2015

How smart are dolphins?



The video below shows bottlenose dolphins' hunting strategy explained in the video above


Video 1 source : ed.ted.com

Wednesday, August 26, 2015

Saturday, August 22, 2015

Mouse eating cat

All of the 13 mice in the figure are doomed to be eaten by the cat. But the cat wants to eat them in a certain order. The cat eats one mouse and then counts around the circle in the direction in which the mice are looking. When it gets to 13 it eats the next mouse and starts counting again. Which mouse must the cat eat first so that the white mouse is eaten last?



Source: Fun with Maths and Physics by Perlman