Learn One Thing A Day

Have you ever wondered what WiFi stands for? (via  buzzfeed.com ) Well, short answer... it stands for NOTHING. Nothing, really! Disappointed? Don't be. Back in the 1999 people from the IEEE committee needed a catchy name for the what later became "WiFi" and they found it: WiFi. From  scientificamerican.com " Way back in 1999 the fledgling wireless industry needed a marketing name for the new products that conformed to the technical specifications called 'IEEE 802.11'. 'IEEE 802.11' didn't have much of a ring to it, and the industry association wanted a catchy name. They came up with wi-fi, and that's what's been used ever since. "It didn’t hurt that the name rhymes with 'hi-fi,' which was short for 'high fidelity,' a term that, back in the day, referred to high-quality sound systems. Some people even say that wi-fi therefore stands for 'wireless fidelity,' but those who were involved in t...

Watching the latest episode of "The Big Bang Theory" (Season 8 Episode 21 The Communication Deterioration ), Sheldon mentions that "Spiders are not Insects". Honestly I didn't know that, but it's true! As Sheldon says (in his song!) spiders "have two body parts and four pairs of legs" while insects have three body parts and three pairs of legs. From the webpage of the Explorit Science Center of Davis Biologists classify animals and plants according to characteristics that they have in common. Organisms that move from place to place of their own accord and that do not manufacture their food from raw materials in their environment are classified as   animals . Organisms that cannot move from place to place of their own accord (but can be moved by forces of nature or by animals) and that can manufacture their own food from raw materials in their environment, are called   plants . Within the huge group called animals are many that have no backbon...

Today, thanks to Sheldon Cooper of " The Big Bang Theory " (episode 20 season 7 The Relationship Diremption ), I learned a very nice little story. As Sheldon says, the Persian poet Attar of Nishapur (c. 1145 - c. 1221) records the fable of a powerful king who asks an assembled group of wise men to create a ring that will make him happy when he is sad (and vice versa). After deliberation the sages hand him a simple ring with the words " This too will pass " etched on it, which has the desired effect. ( Picture : ring with the " this too shall pass " inscription is on sale on Amazon) Googling around, I learned that the story is actually narrated by other authors too, and its true origin remains uncertain. The sentence and in general the story of an "Eastern monarch" was included in a speech given on September 30, 1859, by Abraham Lincoln before the Wisconsin State Agricultural Society in Milwaukee : It is said an Eastern monar...

Today, in the last episode of " The Big Bang Theory " 7x19 "The Indecision Amalgamation", I learnt something really interesting. Just at the beginning of the episode, we see Sheldon in front of his computer and deciding to buy either an XBOX-ONE or a PlayStation 4 but being also in the compelling need to pee. Here is the dialog between Sheldon and Leonard: Sheldon :  Boy, do I have to urinate. Leonard :  If only there were a solution to that. Sheldon : Seriously. I feel like I've got a fish tank in my pelvis. Leonard : So go to the bathroom. Sheldon :I can't. Leonard : Why not? Sheldon : Because I'm trying to decide between getting an Xbox One or a PS4. Oh, "pee." Why'd I say that? Leonard : Forgive me for asking a stupid question, but why are you being stupid? Sheldon : I'm not being stupid. I'm employing the work of Dutch researcher, Mirjam Tuk, who found that people with full bladders make better decisions. ...

Following the post about the similar flags , I decided to write a new post about those flags being, somehow, special!  Special doesn't mean necessarly ugly, even if in some cases...  ok, just have a look and decide for yourself! Let's start with countries,  even though it is not that easy to define a Country ... Anyway... Bahrain & Qatar Other countries have the white and red in their flags (e.g. Monaco , Poland ), but Bahrain and Qatar have well distinct serrated lines on them. In the case of Bahrain, the line is made of five triangles representing the ISLAM's pillars .   Near Bahrain there is Qatar and it also has a serrated line, but composed by nine triangles instead of five. The nine-point serrated line indicates that Qatar is the 9th member of the "reconciled Emirates" of the Persian Gulf in the wake of concluding the Qatari-British treaty in 1916. White is the color of peace and the maroon colour symbolises the blood shed durin...

I haven't made a new post but it's like I did! I significantly updated the post about the flags of Haiti and Lichtenstein by adding other interesting examples of similar flags around the world! Have a look,  it's totally worth it!  Here is the link !  

According to wikipedia , the answer is about 1.25 cm/month (or 0.5 inch/month), however yesterday I found out a nicer way to express this speed :) Sheldon Cooper (The Big Bang Theory - Episode 5x18, link below) claims that is 4.6 yoctometers per femtosecond (so 1.2 cm per month or 0.47 inches per month). Interesting how you can use two very small scales (1 yoctometer = 10^-24 meter and 1 femtosecond = 10^-15 s) to express such an everyday-life-thing as the hair growth! On the scale of yoctometers, a proton is gigantic! Indeed a proton is 10^-15 meters so 1 billions of yoctometers! Femtoseconds are bit more close to our everyday common sense, for example the visible light waves oscillate on the femtosecond scale (for a wavelength of 580 nm the corresponding period is 1.93 fs). Concerning the length scales of the incredibly small and incredible big things, I recommend you these nice pages The Scale of the Universe The Scale of the Universe 2 PS By the way, here is the orig...

Today I watched a new episode (5x14 - The Beta Test Initiation ) of my beloved TV-series The Big Bang Theory and I learnt the following curious fact. Only in the1936 Olympics (!!!) people realized that Haiti and Lichtenstein shared just the same flag! After that, since 1937 a crown has been added to the Lichtenstein flag. Interesting, since 1807, the Haitian flag has always had - in the center - the National Coat of Arms (COA). It is formed (see below) by a palmette, two cannons, six Haitian flags, a drum,  the motto "L'UNION FAIT LA FORCE" (French for In union there is strength ) and other elements. With this COA the two flags would have been different also in 1936, but unfortunately, it wasn't part of the Haiti civil flag but only the military one, therefore the inconvenient during the Olympics! National Coat of Arms of Haiti The flag of Haiti The flag of Lichtenstein  Interestingly, the case of the flags of Haiti and Lichtenstein is not u...