All the stupid questions I never asked
As a child, I always had a lot of questions, but as I grew older, for whatever reason, I stopped asking these questions. It seemed like a part of my curiosity had disappeared, I was no longer trying to understand how the world worked, I simply relied on facts to get me through school, not the knowledge, the life behind the fact.
For years, it seemed like this curiosity was waning, but for some reason, it seems to be returning. I am unsure what’s changed, but it made me think. Made me think on all the things I never really learned, either because I have yet to ask, or because I failed to understand the knowledge behind the fact.
So recently, I decided to start questioning the oddities of life again. To my luck, I have made notes of the random questions that pop up during the days. It’s fun actually keeping track of the weird questions asked during the days. This is basically a homage to our childhood questions, a way to remind ourselves to ask the stupid questions, and when children ask a question, try to answer them, or together seek out to understand this subject.
Question 1: Why Is the Sky Blue?
A thing I have asked myself often, on those warm summer days; why is the sky blue? Turns out the answer is all based on sunlight.
The mesmerizing blue of the sky is a result of a phenomenon known as Rayleigh scattering. When sunlight, which is a spectrum of different colours, enters our atmosphere, it’s the blue light with its shorter wavelengths that scatter the most. As this sunlight travels through the sky, it encounters countless tiny particles like dust, molecules, and droplets of water.
These particles act like a cosmic kaleidoscope(remember those tubes filled with mirrors you could look into as a child?), scattering the blue light in all directions. So, when we gaze upward, we’re seeing the result of this captivating interplay of light and atmosphere.
Question 2: Why Do We Dream?
As late as yesterday, I was involved in a dialogue of the meaning of dreams. Dreams still fascinate me, and I have always wondered, why do we dream? Is there a purpose to them?
Dreams are still an area of active research, but one prevailing theory suggests that they play a role in memory consolidation and emotional regulation. During REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep, when most vivid dreams occur, the brain is highly active, processing experiences and emotions from the day. Dreams may help us adapt to changing circumstances and process complex information.
Question 3: How Does Echo Work?
Remeber when you stood in a cave, or in a valley, and you yell out, and your voice is booming back and forth? Echoes still make me yell out, trying to understand how they work.
Echoes are produced when sound waves reflect off surfaces and return to our ears. This happens due to the speed of sound, which is roughly 343 meters per second in air at room temperature. We hear the original sound and the reflected sound, creating the sensation of an echo.
So bat’s using echo are basically screaming at something, measuring how quick it returns, and then know the distance and what kind of object it is. Maybe not all screaming is bad?
Question 4: Why Do We Yawn?
Yawning is weird. You are sitting in the couch, watching that movie you have waited for. Suddenly, a huge yawn creeps onto you, you can feel your jaw extend, you take in a lot of air, close your eyes, stretch your back, and suddenly you feel tired? But why do we yawn? It is a subject that is still being researched, but there are a few theories.
Yawning has several potential functions, including cooling the brain and increasing alertness. It is suggested that yawning helps cool the brain, as the rush of air when we yawn lowers the temperature. Yawning also occurs when we’re transitioning between different states of alertness, which may help increase our focus.
But what about the social yawn? that overarching feeling, that you have to yawn when someone else yawns? The theory is that it is linked to showing empathy for other, and the closer we feel to a person, the more likely we are to yawn when they yawn.
Question 5: How Do Planes Stay in the Sky?
Planes are marvellous, and they evoke wonder every time they take off. Between you and the air, is only a few centimeters. Even in bad weather, planes zip across the world. It seems like magic, that these heavy, yet thin machines, stay in the sky. But all it takes, is science, human ingenuity and a lot of tries to perfect.
The shape of the airplane wings is designed so that air will move faster over the top of the wing. When air speeds up, the pressure/weight of the air decreases. So, the pressure on the top of the wing is less than the pressure on the bottom of the wing. The difference in pressure creates a force on the wing that lifts the wing up into the air. The engines provide the necessary thrust to overcome gravity and drag. This combination of lift and thrust allows planes to remain in flight.
Question 6: Why Do We Laugh?
Laughing is odd. It seems like something all of us were born with the ability to laugh. We can rarely control when we really laugh, some of us laugh weird, loud, some try to hide their laugh. But is there even a point to laughing, or is it just a quirk of evolution?
Laughter is a complex social behaviour. We are more likely to laugh when we are with other people, than when we are alone. Studies have shown that laughter releases endorphins, serotonin and dopamine, these are our body’s natural feel-good chemicals, promoting an overall sense of well-being and temporarily relieving pain. In this way, laughter serves as a mechanism to alleviate stress and elevate mood.
One of laughing primary roles is to facilitate social bonding. When we laugh with others, it strengthens connections, builds trust, and signals that we mean no harm. Laughing with other people creates a sense of safety and fosters closer ties to the people you laugh with.
Furthermore, laughter has cognitive benefits, boosting creativity, problem-solving skills, and enhancing memory. When we laugh, it stimulates the brain, leading to clearer thinking and an enriched cognitive experience.
Question 7: How Do Trees Grow?
Trees, the majestic guardians of our planet, from the big red oaks to the small saplings. Maybe you have a memory of a treehouse, or that tire swing strung up in a tree. But how they grow, is easy to overlook. The secret is rooted in biology and is part of why we can breathe as well. It all starts with the sun, which captures energy through photosynthesis.
They capture sunlight using chlorophyll in their leaves and use it to convert carbon dioxide and water into glucose and oxygen. This energy is then transformed into sugars that the tree uses for growth. A network of tubes and vessels, much like our circulatory system, transports water and nutrients from the roots to the leaves. The growth of the tree is all about the relentless pursuit of sunlight, as trees reach higher to outcompete their neighbours. The rings in a tree’s trunk, for example, represent years of growth.
Question 8: Why Is the Ocean Salty?
I come from a fishing village, a city where the ocean was part of my everyday life. As a child, I always wondered why I was told not to drink the water from the ocean, and when I did, it was so salty. I never got an answer as to why the ocean was salty, and simply let the question go.
The ocean’s salty character comes from a continuous process that involves water, minerals, and the natural world. Rainwater, which starts out as fresh water, falls from the sky and collects various dissolved minerals as it moves across the Earth’s surface. Rainwater being slightly acidic will erode rocks, and carry their minerals into rivers, which eventually flow into the ocean. Once in the ocean, the sun’s energy causes water to evaporate, leaving the salt and minerals behind.
Another source of salts in the ocean is hydrothermal fluids, which come from vents in the seafloor. Water from the ocean flows into the seafloor and is then heated by the magma running underneath. The heat sets off a series of chemical reactions. The water tends to lose oxygen, magnesium, and sulphates, and pick up metals such as iron, zinc, and copper from surrounding rocks. The heated water is released through vents in the seafloor, carrying the metals with it. Some ocean salts come from underwater volcanic eruptions, which directly release minerals into the ocean.
The ocean’s saltiness is a result of the continuous flow of minerals from rivers and the Earth’s crust into the sea. As water evaporates from the ocean’s surface, it leaves the salt behind, maintaining the ocean’s salinity. The balance between salt input and loss keeps the ocean’s saltiness relatively constant.
Interestingly, the ocean’s saltiness is not uniform everywhere. Near the equator, where there’s intense sunlight and high evaporation rates, the water can become even saltier. In contrast, near the poles, where melting ice contributes fresh water, the ocean tends to be less salty. This delicate balance of water and minerals creates the mesmerizing and diverse salty seas we find around the world, supporting a wide array of life forms that have adapted to this unique environment.
Question 9: How Do Birds Sing?
Birdsong can be one of the most beautiful things to hear. In the mornings as the world wakes up, you are greeted by a symphony of different noises. In the afternoon, just before the sun decent, the loud is heavy with their singing. But how is it possible for such small creatues, to make so many different and loud noises? From a parrot to a pigeon, they all make their own sounds, sometimes mimicking us and surrounding sounds.
It’s all thanks to a specialized vocal organ they possess, called the syrinx. This organ is located at the base of a bird’s trachea, part of the windpipe, near where the trachea splits into the bronchi, the tubes leading to the lungs. The syrinx is what allows birds to produce such a wide range of sounds, from delicate chirps to powerful melodies.
When a bird wants to sing, it pushes air from its lungs through the syrinx. The muscles around the syrinx can change the tension and shape of the surrounding membranes, which in turn modulates the sound produced. The variety of sounds that birds can create depends on the muscles’ control and the syrinx’s structure, and it’s one of the reasons birdsongs are so diverse and unique across different species.
Question 10: Why Is Snow White?
From our first question, why is the sky blue, we learned that colours work in a spectrum, and this goes the same way for snow. It’s not because each snowflake is inherently white, but rather the result of how snow interacts with light.
Snow is made up of tiny ice crystals. These ice crystals are transparent, meaning they have no natural colour. When sunlight or any light source enters these ice crystals, it gets scattered and refracted in all directions. This scattering of light occurs because the ice crystals have various facets and surfaces, causing the light to bounce off these surfaces at different angles. Think of the last time you stood in an area surrounded by glass. Colours get weird, all colours become more faded, like they blend more together.
What makes snow appear white is that all the different colours in the visible spectrum of light (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet) are scattered equally in all directions by the ice crystals. This scattering effectively blends all the colours together, resulting in a mixture of light that appears white to our eyes.
So really, there is nothing such as white snow, in reality snow is covered in every single colour of the spectrum, but we can only see them as white.
So, here’s to the questions, the curious thoughts, and the pursuit of knowledge. Let’s embrace our inner child and remember that asking the so-called “stupid” questions is often the gateway to the most extraordinary answers. Keep asking, keep exploring, and keep learning because in the world of questions, there’s no such thing as a bad one.
Now more than ever, we live in a world where we have to foster creativity, curiosity and hunger for science.
