Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, September 25, 1995 TAG: 9509260011
SECTION: NEWSFUN PAGE: NF-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: NANCY GLEINER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
But we'd have nothing to wonder about, no questions to ask about how things work or why they are the way they are.
Some people think kids are mostly interested in TV, sports and other kids. They'd be surprised if they read the answers you sent in to our question on what you're wondering about.
So many of you asked about space and the planets that we'll address those questions in a later edition
You were also really curious about nature, how things work and the human body. Emily Fleischhauer from Glen Cove Elementary in Roanoke wanted to know why snowflakes have six sides. Guess what, Emily? Not all of them do.
When we see drawings of snowflakes, they always have six sides, but that's not how they occur in nature. Snowflakes are made up of groups of ice crystals, which can have many shapes, such as columns, needles or six-sided figures.
The crystal's shape is affected by temperature and moisture in the air. After the crystals combine to form a flake, the shape can still change. Wind can break it apart, more crystals can be added, and the way a snowflake spins can change its shape.
One thing that is true is that, like people, no two snowflakes are alike.
Ellen Smart of Garden City Elementary in Roanoke wanted to know how telephones work.
When you pick up the receiver or handset of a phone, a signal goes out to the telephone office. The first three numbers you press tell the computer there where to send your call. A second office picks up all the numbers and sends an electric current that rings the bell in the phone of the person you're calling.
A fax machine photographs a page with words or images on it, one line at a time. It's called scanning. The images scanned from the page are turned into electronic impulses that travel across telephone wires. On the other end, the fax receiver has paper and a printer. The electronic waves are turned back into picture information and the machine reads it and prints it. William Hensley from Spiller Primary in Wytheville was curious about that.
A lot of you had questions about the human body. Did you ever wonder why you can't tickle yourself? For tickling to work, it has to be unpredictable. When you tickle yourself, your brain already knows it's going to happen and your body doesn't react the same way.
Even when someone yells, ``Let's tickle Mike,'' you haven't sent the message to your brain that lets it know where and the exact moment you're going to be tickled.
Your heart beats 60 to 80 times every minute. If you're exercising really hard, it might go up to 200 beats a minute. At the average rate of 70 beats per minute, your heart would beat 100,800 times in just one day. Wow! The heart is the hardest-working muscle in your body and never gets to take a rest, even when you do.
Did you ever notice that your veins are blue and your blood is red, even though veins are some of the roadways that carry blood around your body? Blood that has lots of oxygen in it is red, and not everyone's blood is exactly the same color. Blood that has carbon dioxide in it, which we breathe in along with oxygen and is traveling along picking up waste in the body, is bluish. Once the blood travels to the lungs, where oxygen is added, the blood returns to red.
If you really want to impress your friends with your knowledge, practice pronouncing the longest word in the English language - pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis. The definition of this 45-letter word is a disease of the lungs caused by inhaling silica dust. We always knew doctors liked to use big words!
And talking about words, did you ever wonder how our tongue helps us talk?
Messages come down from the brain through nerves that control the larynx and tongue. The lungs provide air, and this air is vibrated by the vocal cords at the back of your mouth. This vibrated air wouldn't sound very much like words if there weren't some control over it.
The tongue helps us form consonants of the alphabet. You can make these sounds by pushing your tongue against your teeth or the roof of your mouth or lips.
We'll never be at a loss for words! Experts say there are around 450,000 of them in the English language, and more are added every year. People who gather information for dictionaries have to keep updating them. Even ``yo'' is now an OK word to use when you're playing Scrabble.
Think we knew the answers to all of your questions? No way. We got some information from cyberspace (such as America Online) and also went to our local library. It's a great place to satisfy your curiosity, no matter where your imagination takes you.
by CNB