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30/12/2021
What is the White Cream Cricketers put on their Face?
The white cream you’ll often see cricketers wear on their face is Zinc oxide. Zinc oxide is a ‘physical sunscreen’, often referred to as a ‘reflector’ that sits on top of the skin. It forms a strong protective layer that helps to reflect the sun’s harmful UVA & UVB rays away from the body. Your everyday sunscreens are ‘chemical sunscreens’, or ‘absorbers’. These soak into the body and allow UVA & UVB rays to pe*****te the top layer of the skin before they are dealt with below the surface. Cricketers use Zinc oxide because they can be exposed to direct sunlight for up to 6 hours during a game! This much exposure can be very harmful, and applying a reflective physical sun screen like Zinc oxide to sensitive areas is the best way to limit damage to your skin.
Why Do We Snore?
In simple terms, we snore when our body is not able to move air freely through the nose and throat, while we are asleep. In terms of anatomy, snoring is a result of a partially closed upper airway or the upper respiratory tract, that includes the nose and throat. Excessive relaxation of the neck muscles is the leading reason for snoring. This is because the upper airway partly closes and becomes too narrow, and it causes very little air to pass through to the lungs.
Being overweight is one of the foremost causes for snoring. If your Body Mass Index(BMI) is on the higher side, you are more prone to snoring. Smoking and consuming alcohol disturb the muscles of the throat and upper airway, thereby causing breathing problems, and ultimately snoring.
Body structure and physical attributes of individuals are a significant cause for snoring. This means men are more likely to snore than women, as they have narrower air passages. Once your body starts to age, the throat becomes narrower. This causes the muscle tone in throat to lessen, and this leads to snoring.
Changes in climate and pollution often the prime reason for a blocked nose or congestion, due to cold or allergy. This in turn, makes breathing a cumbersome job, which creates a vacuum in the throat, thus giving way to snoring.
28/12/2021
What would happen if we covered the Sahara Desert with solar panels?
The Sahara Desert is one of the most exposed places on Earth to the sun’s rays. So, the idea is that if we could gather all that energy, we could power the world. In reality, we would harvest so much more energy than we could ever possibly need. According to Forbes, solar panels covering a surface of around 335km2 would actually be enough to power the world, this would cover just 1.2% of the Sahara Desert.
Outside of electricity generation, this could have several consequences. First, the light colour of the Saharan sand serves the purpose of reflecting the sun’s light and heat back into the air. By covering this, we would be ensuring that more sunlight is absorbed, thus prompting a rise in ground temperature. Warmer air then rises to higher altitudes and condenses as clouds that will then fall as rain, completely transforming the desert as we know it.
The planet works based on a series of well-balanced systems, and this could completely upset the apple cart. The Amazon Rainforest, for example, is reliant on the mineral-rich sands blown from the Sahara for nutrients. Without these, the Amazon will not receive enough nutrients to survive, and its downfall could be accelerated. Furthermore, the increased heat in the desert won’t end there. It will be transported worldwide through weather systems, resulting in less rainfall for the Amazon and more unstable weather in regions such as North America or Asia.
We don’t need 100% of the Sahara to be covered in solar panels. Even 20%, which is the amount that would kickstart these impacts, is not needed. Instead, a series of smaller solar farms covering 1.2% of the surface should be enough to generate enough electricity without having such extreme impacts on the environment.
Why We Put Salt on Everything We Eat?
Salted food slowly became more common since it was always around and ready to eat, and eventually salted foods became so common that their taste was not just accepted, but expected. And why not? Salt makes food taste good.
Whatever you’re eating (hopefully) was or came from something that was alive at some point in time. Living things, so long as they come from this Earth, are largely made of water, which dilutes the taste of anything that you eat. It’s been proposed that adding salt to food enhances other flavours by trying down water molecules. Basically, salt might stop water molecules from diluting all the other flavors in your food.
So it’s the way that salt brings out other flavors that makes salty foods so satisfying, and it’s probably why your craving-fueled daydreams don’t have you downing salt straight from the shaker.
Besides concentrating other flavours in food, salt also decreases the bitterness that you’ll naturally find in foods. We’re surrounded by salt every meal of the day, so it’s easy to dismiss it as mundane, but between building early civilizations and boosting the flavors of our food, it’s safe to say that the salt shaker has earned its place at your table.
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