Hank Green explains the many possibilities behind why dogs eat grass.
Why do dogs eat grass? A look at your pup’s wild relatives may give you a sense of what dogs’ diets are really like.
Tag: Science
What Causes Garlic Breath?
This video explains why you get garlic breath, and how to get rid of it.
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Garlic is good for your body, great for your taste buds, but terrible for your breath. This episode looks at the plant beloved by chefs and feared by vampires. Once again we teamed up with the Compound Interest blog to break down the chemistry of garlic, and how to beat the bad breath it causes.
There are four main volatile organic compounds that contribute to garlic breath. None of them are actually present until garlic is crushed or chopped. These compounds also contain sulfur, which can penetrate bacteria cell membranes, making garlic an antibacterial assassin.
Where Does The Smell Of Rain Come From?
It’s Okay to Be Smart, host Joe Hanson explains where the pleasant smell of rain comes from.
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Most people can detect the distinctive fresh, earthy aroma of an approaching rain storm, but now scientists have worked out why.
Researchers using high speed cameras have found that drops of water release clouds of tiny particles when they hit surfaces like soil and leaves.
Their study showed that a raindrop hitting an uneven surface, they trap bubbles of air that shoot upwards and burst from the top of the water droplet like fizz in a champagne glass.
These tiny bubbles carry minute amounts of aromatic particles of oil and dust from the surface that can then be blown for miles by gusts of wind ahead of rain storms.
This, the scientists say, explains why it is possible to smell a rain storm long before it arrives, even when it has been dry for several days.
The effect, known as Petrichor, is often most pronounced during the summer, accompanying the first rain after a long dry smell when more dust and oils have accumulated on plants and on the ground.
The new research, which was conducted by scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, found that different types of rainfall could alter the smell.
The scientists found that light showers and moderate seemed to trigger more aerosols compared with heavy rain that might accompany thunder storms.
They also found that the type of soil could also influence how many aerosols were released and was particularly pronounced on clay or sandy soil.
Dr Youngsoo Joung, one of the scientists at MIT’s department of engineering who conducted the research, said the findings could also help to explain how some soil-based bacteria can spread disease.
He said: ‘Until now, people didn’t know that aerosols could be generated from raindrops on soil.
‘When moderate or light rain hits sandy or clay soils, you can observe lots of aerosols, because sandy clay has medium wetting properties.
‘Heavy rain (which has a high) impact speed, means there’s not enough time to make bubbles inside the droplet.
Cooking Frozen Steaks
Conventional wisdom holds that frozen steaks should be thawed before cooking, but what if steaks can be cooked straight from the freezer.
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Perhaps you’ve been taught to take your steaks out of the freezer and let them thaw overnight in the fridge before cooking. This is wrong, according to Cook’s Illustrated Senior Editor Dan Souza. In a side-by-side experiment for America’s Test Kitchen, Souza finds that frozen meat takes a bit longer to cook than the thawed variety. But, the quality of the finished product is so much better. In the video below, Souza demonstrates how to properly freeze the meat and later prepare it straight from the freezer. It’s not the same as cooking with fresh beef, mind you, but it’s quite possiby the next best thing.
Why Are We Ticklish?
SciShow series Quick Questions host Hank Green explains the science behind why humans are ticklish. Green also explains that the concept of tickling actually breaks down into two parts, knismesis and gargalesis, and suggests tickling may be a form of self-defense training.
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What’s up with ticklishness? And are other animals ticklish, too? Quick Questions has the answers!
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