Tag: science
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How Australia’s Hillier Lake gets its pink color
Lake Hillier, on Middle Island off the south coast of Western Australia, is an iconic lake celebrated for its vivid pink color. Nestled in the pristine wilderness of the Recherche Archipelago, algae and bacteria interact with the saline water to cause the lake’s distinctive pink shade. More specifically, scientists postulate that the lake’s solid bubblegum…
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There are different types of tears
Did you know that we shed different types of tears based on our emotions? Far from simple expressions of sadness or joy, tears are a complex and multifaceted phenomenon. Each tear type is composed of unique chemicals — mainly salt, water, and lysozyme — that give them their variable structure. Three Types of Tears There…
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The Wave in Vermilion Cliffs National Monument
The Wave is a sandstone rock formation located in North Coyote Buttes of the Vermilion Cliffs National Monument on the Arizona and Utah borders. The swirling stone waves combine water and wind eroded sandstone dunes, calcified vertically and horizontally, and fossilized over 190 million years. The rich red-vermilion rocks get their colors from iron oxide pigments. Only…
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Mount Bromo Crater, East Java Indonesia
Mount Bromo is an active volcano located in the Tengger mountain range of East Java, Indonesia. It is also one of the most visited tourist attractions in the rugged Indonesian province. The views from atop the mountain are extraordinary, as one can see well into the crater and the beautiful countryside surrounding it. There’s also…
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Santiago Ramon y Cajal: The father of neuroscience was also an amazing artist
More than a hundred years ago, the father of modern neuroscience, Santiago Ramón y Cajal demonstrated that information is the output of messy internal wiring provided by the brain’s chemical synchronicity. Cajal was an artist trapped in a laboratory. He used his trained skills as an artist to draw masterful sketches of the brain. In…
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Iceland’s dark and tall scree Vestrahorn mountains
The ever-so-beautiful Vestrahorn mountain in southeast Iceland is a sight to behold. Nicknamed “Batman Mountain” for its dark and ominous appearance – it looks like the iconic Bat-signal from afar — the 1,490-foot tall scree mountain looks down at the flat black sand of Stokksnes Beach below. Vestrahorn is composed of gabbro and granophyre rocks,…
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Watch styrofoam dancing to sound waves in a Kundt’s tube
Put your hands in the air and wave them like you just don’t care. What looks like a dubstep rave of little ghost people is actually styrofoam dancing to sound waves in a massive plexiglass pipe known as a Kundt’s tube. In 1866 German physicist August Kundt constructed the experimental acoustical apparatus to measure the speed of sound in…
