The Amazing Stuff

 Construction of the water link was started as early as in the 1930s but due to the World War 2 and subsequent division of Germany the work remained suspended till 1997. The aqueduct was finally completed and opened to the public in 2003.



























References:
Wikipedia
How Stuff Works
Wired/WiredScience
Rumormillnews

The Anechoic Chamber in the US is the world's quietest room where sound doesn't bounce off the walls the way it does in a regular room.But while the room promises to provide complete silence, it can't guarantee visitors will be at peace once inside.

The room is located in Orfield Laboratories in Minneapolis.

A typical quiet room you sleep in at night measures about 30 decibels. A normal conversation is about 60 decibels. This room has been measured at -9 decibels, the Minnesota Public Radio reported.

Orfield Labs uses the room to test products, including switches that go on car dashboards and the sound an LED display makes on a cell phone to make sure they're not too loud.

To get into the Anechoic Chamber, which holds a Guinness World Record, you go through two bank vault-like doors. The floor in the room is mesh like a trampoline so there's nothing on the floor for the sound to bounce off of. The walls are lined with sound-proofing wedges that are a meter long so they absorb the sound.

"When you sit in any rooms a person normally sits in, you hear the sound and all its reflections," said Steven Orfield, president of Orfield Labs.

"When you go into an Anechoic Chamber, there are zero reflections. So if you listen to me talk and hear my voice, you're hearing my voice exactly. And if I turn around and talk, the only thing you'll hear is the sound bending around my head," the Minnesota radio quoted him as saying.

Source

Here’s what you need
Let’s get to the fun stuff. In order to make a Naked Egg you will need the following items:

• Vinegar (at least 16 ounces)
• A couple of glasses or cups
• Raw eggs

The process is really very simple. Carefully place the egg in a cup and fill the cup with vinegar so that the egg is completely covered. Don’t worry if the egg floats a bit. Just get enough vinegar in the cup to mostly cover the egg.

An egg soaking in vinegar with part of it's shell dissolved.
Now the hard part – you will have to wait as the acetic acid in the vinegar begins to react with the calcium in the egg shell. In just a short while, you should see some bubbles appearing on the outside of the egg. These are bubbles of carbon dioxide gas from the reaction. It can take 12-24 hours before a good portion of the shell is removed. A good sign of progress is a white frothy scummy layer on the top of the surface of the vinegar.

After a day of soaking you can carefully remove the egg from the vinegar. I would suggest pouring the liquid into another cup and catching the egg in your hand. Using a spoon to fish the egg out might seem like a good idea, but I’ve seen a few eggs break or get damaged when using a spoon to remove them.
At this point you may be able to literally rub the shell off the egg with your fingers. It will rub off as a white powdery substance. Give it try, just be very careful, you don’t want to break the egg, it’s getting more fragile as the shell is slowly dissolved. Depending on your particular egg, you may already have a naked egg. However, I would suggest you fill a cup with fresh vinegar and soak the egg for at least one more day.

After two days of soaking you should have a pretty cool Naked Egg. Notice that the egg is a bit bigger than when you first started. This is because some of the vinegar (and some of the  water in the vinegar) has moved through the membranes to the inside of the egg. The membranes are semi-permeable and allow water to move through them. This is called osmosis.


Not Recommended !

 I would NOT recommend eating a naked egg prepared this way. Keep in mind you created your egg by soaking a raw egg in vinegar sitting at room temperature for a few days. That is not how to treat eggs you are going to eat! Even if you stored the egg in the refrigerator, I still would not recommend eating the raw egg.







A big thank you to one of our visitors who grabbed a great photo of what happens when you soak a naked egg in corn syrup for a few days. I might call it a “dehydrated naked egg.” And side-by-side is a brilliant red naked egg soaked in red food coloring.

Clean dirt and grime regularly off you’re numerical keypads otherwise it’s only a matter of time before a thief finds their way.

To see the fair market value for an item you want to purchase, run an advanced search on eBay checking only ‘completed listings’.

Report Text Message SPAM to your carrier by forwarding the messages to 7726 (S-P-A-M)

Re-heat pizza on the stove, not microwave

Capture fruit flies in your kitchen by taping a cone inside a cup filled with a banana slice and vinegar

Store your basement stuff on pallets to avoid water damage

 The position of a freeway’s exit sign often indicates whether the exit will be on the left or right

Take a picture of business cards. You will lose them, quit telling yourself otherwise

How to tell if jalapenos are hot or not 

Use bottle caps as your laptop’s “cooling pad”

Don’t waste money on “find my car” apps. Drop a pin as soon as you park. Instant waypoint

Peanut butter is a favorite breakfast and snack for many Americans, and not only for them. The food paste, made primarily from ground roasted peanuts, with or without added oil, was first used by the Pre-Columbian peoples of Mexico, who used it as a base for various "moles", meaning sauces.


Now, a team of scientists presented the most recent and spectacular use of peanut butter ever. They have proven it's possible to turn the common peanut butter into the most expensive gems in the world, diamonds.


The experts at the Centre for Science and Extreme Conditions at Edinburgh University have been able to simulate the conditions it takes to make a diamond - which is no easy feat. The pressure must be maintained at 45 to 60 kilobars (nearly 1 million pounds per square inch) and the heat between 1,600 to 2,370 degrees Fahrenheit. Turning peanut butter into diamonds is done by pushing the peanut butter between the tips of two diamonds. Since a diamond is the hardest substance on Earth, it has the ability to create the intense pressure need to allow the carbon bonds in the peanut butter to break down and reform as a diamond.


However, diamonds made from peanut butter are generally very small. The largest produced to date are no bigger than sesame seeds. Also, unlike diamonds formed naturally, these synthetic diamonds capture nitrogen from the air, giving them a greenish or yellowish hue. One look at these peanut butter diamonds, and it would be clear they are not quite the real thing.


Sources:
news.softpedia
indiana public media
news.bbc.co.uk
wiki.answers

Expiration Dates Refer to Quality, Not Safety


Generally, you'll see three types of expiration dates on your food, and they all mean slightly different things. However, contrary to popular belief, they refer to the quality of the food, not the safety. Here's what each one means:

• Sell By:This date tells the store how long to keep the item on their shelves. If it reaches the date before its sold, the store will pull it from the shelves. It represents the last day the food is at its peak quality of freshness, taste, and consistency. It will still be safe to eat after the Sell By date (how long? See the section below).
• Best If Used By: Again, this merely refers to when the quality of the item starts to go downhill. Generally, you may notice a difference in taste or consistency after that date, but it will still be safe to eat. For example, sour cream may become a bit more sour, or peanut butter may start to experience some harmless oil separation in the bottle.
•  Use By: Yep, you guessed it—this is pretty much the same as "Best Used By". The Use By date is when the product loses its peak quality. It's still safe to eat for a little while.

There are other kinds of dates floating around, like the "Born on" date of beer (three months after which it can start to taste funky), "Guaranteed Fresh" on baked goods (after which they'll likely be stale, but okay to eat), and more. The most important takeaway is that this almost always refers to freshness and quality, not safety.




So When Does Food Actually Go Bad?


While you can use most of the foods past their printed date, the USDA recommendsthat you eat food before its "Use By" or "Best If Used By" date to be on the safe side. For foods with a "Sell By" date, you have a pretty set amount of time before the food goes bad. Milk will usually go bad about a week after the Sell By date, while eggs are okay for 3 to 5 weeks. See the table to the right for the USDA's recommendations, or head to their product dating page for even more foods.


Remember that this all assumes you've properly stored these items—if you've left a perishable item out on the counter for two hours, it may not be safe to eat anymore, so you should disregard the date and throw it away.


Lastly, don't discount the ever-reliable smell test. Not sure if the milk and eggs have gone bad, or if a product is still okay a day or two after the "Use By" date? Give it a whiff and if it smells okay, it's probably okay. And if you aren't sure you'll be able to eat something before its expiration date, you can always freeze it before that date hits to make it last longer.


Reference:
USDA

The first iPhone was actually dreamed up in 1983.Naturally, this wasn’t anything like the rectangular cell phone we know today. It was a land line phone with, instead of a touch screen, a built in stylus controlled interface. 



The phone was designed for Apple by Hartmut Esslinger, an influential designer who helped make the Apple IIc computer (Apple’s first “portable” computer) and later founded Frogdesign. The 1983 iPhone certainly fits in with Esslinger’s other designs for Apple. It also foreshadows the touchscreens of both the iPhone and iPad.


This iPhone isn’t the only prototype of Apple that never saw the light of day. Apple had toyed around with the iPad design for years before its launch. What’s interesting is that the 1983 iPhone device resembles an iPad with a phone, but iPads still lack this conventional phone call technology despite everything else they do. Perhaps the iPad appliance will enter that direction in its next iteration. 

Byzantium fought for its very survival throughout its existence. Often, the empire faced enemies who were superior in military and economic might. Despite these odds, Byzantium always managed to survive. One of the main reasons for its survival was the secret weapon: Greek fire. Used skilfully by its leaders, Byzantium managed to come back repeatedly from the brink of disaster.




Greek fire was a sticky liquid flame used in land battles during sieges and naval battles. The soldiers would use a firing tube to spray the liquid that would engulf their target in flames. A loud noise that sounded like a roar and lots of smoke accompanied the discharge of Greek fire. To enhance the effect, the Byzantines installed figureheads of animals like lions on their ships. Thus in naval combat, it would seem as if the animals were spewing fire from their mouths. Unsuspecting and superstitious enemies would greatly fear the fire, as they had never seen such a spectacle before.



It is said to have been invented by a Syrian Engineer, one Callinicus, a refugee from Maalbek, in the seventh century (673 AD). The "liquid fire" was hurled on to the ships of their enemies from siphons and burst into flames on contact. As it was reputed to be inextinguishable and burned even on water, it caused panic and dread. Its introducation into warfare of its time was comparable in its demoralizing influence to the introducation of nuclear weapons in our time. Both Arab and Greek sources agree that it surpassed all incendiary weapons in destruction. The secret behind the Greek fire was handed down from one emperor to the next for centuries. Rumors about its composition include such chemicals as liquid petroleum, naphtha, burning pitch, sulphur, resin, quicklimeand bitumen, along with some other "secret ingredient". The exact composition, however, remains unknown.



References:
Gadget Lab
Neo Byzantium
Greece.org
Wikipedia

An illustration shows a Muslim and Christian playing chess in a tent, from King Alfonso X's 13th-century Libros del Ajedrez.

Water Supply
Pages from a 13th-century manuscript depict two water-raising machines designed by Al-Jazari. Water-raising machines are driven by a water turbine through geared shafts, which turn a sindi wheel carrying a long belt of buckets. Al-Jazari made a wooden animal and placed it on the rotating disc on the machine so people would not think the automatic machine was driven by "magic"; they thought it was driven by an animal, operating multiple gears with partial teeth to produce a sequence of motion in four scoops that took water from the river one scoop at a time. This design included the first known appearance of a camshaft, which controlled the mechanism.


Paper Making
A 17th-century manuscript shows the paper making process.


Surgery
Physician Serefeddin Sabuncuoglu from Amasya, Turkey, showed various surgical procedures in his 15th-century Cerrahiyyet'ul Haniyye.


Tents
A 16th-century miniature from the Hunernâme, by Mehmed Bursevî, shows the ascension to the throne of Sultan Selim I. The various uniforms classify ranks in the government. A senior officer is leaning to kiss the hem of the sultan's cloak. Kissing the hemi is an Ottoman tradition to demonstrate loyalty and obedience.


Obervatories

Astronomers study the moon and the stars in this Ottoman-style painting.

The Australian Road-Train are the longest trucks in the world.They have 3 or more trailers and are 53metres long,( 174 feet ) hauling 115 metric tons (253,531 pounds).Keep an eye open for the super Road-Train it has 7 trailers and hauls 190 metric tonnes.








World Record


The longest road train ever assembled was 1,018.2 m (3,340 ft) long and consisted of 79 trailers with a combined weight of 1,072.3 tonnes (2.364 million lb). It was pulled a distance of 8 km (4.9 miles) by a Kenworth C501T truck driven by Australia's Steven Matthews, near Kalgoorlie, WA, Australia, on October 19th, 2000 in an event known as 'Doug's Tug', after organiser Doug Gould.As seen in the Guinness book of world records.

References:
Powertrans
Road Train
Marleys Transport