Friday, December 07, 2007

Did You Ever Wonder... ?

Did you ever wonder about things?

Throughout our lives, we involve ourselves in various topics of conversation, we take a multitude of things for granted, we assume more than we can imagine and we presume to know about things which we are totally ignorant about and it never occurs to us that we are like this!

Now I am not being judgmental here as I am one of these people. Now if you "know everything" then maybe you can be of some help to me... maybe to all of us others for that matter.

The other day, I asked Google what a Wonder Question was and in about 0.04 seconds (Wow!) it led me to 9,420,000 instances on the Net where I could possibly answer my question.

So... What is a wonder question? Good question!

A Wonder Question is simply a question that starts with "I wonder.... ." Wow! How deep and philosophical!!

Now, when you think about it, there are many things in life that we take for granted and yet very few of those things do we really understand. Take the following question for example... "Why is ocean water salty?" Heck if I know! What about this one... "Why do bottles have different shapes?" Or.... "Why is the engine of an automobile usually up front?"

There are no doubt millions of things we take for granted that we understand and therefore just as many Wonder Questions and if we really didn't have a life, we could take the time to find the answers to a few thousand of them in a lifetime... not much more than that though, I imagine!

So.... How much do you know??

Below are a few questions that I have... Anybody know the answers to them?

1. Was the “apple” in the Garden of Eden really an apple?
2. Why do bottles have different shapes?
3. What makes popcorn pop?
4. What are dog days?
5. Why is ocean water salty?
6. Why does an aircraft carrier float and a penny sink?
7. Can a person get warts from handling a toad?
8. Why are dried grapes called raisins?
9. Why were some of the early bridges in America covered?
10. What is the Coriolis force?

So… only answer these questions if you have the time or have no life. If you are anything like me I imagine I won’t be hearing back from you anywhere in the near future!

8 comments:

Janice Thomson said...

Gosh what seems like simple little questions are really quite profound Dave. I'm going to have to do a little researching here...

none said...

The simplest one is the popcorn.

There is a tiny drop of water at the heart of the kernel when heated to boiling there is no place for the steam to go so the kernel pops and turns itself inside out.

josie2shoes said...

Well, I only know a bit about two of these without looking them up, one being popcorn - just as hammer explained, and the other being "Dog Days" which were named by the Romans after Sirius which was also called the "Dog Star". If I remember right, sacrificing dogs comes into play somewhere!

Anonymous said...

Hello Dave, thank you for your comment on my site. Nice questions - some answers pop up.
It surely was an apple, every son of Adam has a part of it in his throat.
I guess the shape of bottles depends on their contents and their physical qualities like pressure, weight, density and so on. And it is aesthetical and historical too. The shape of the franconian wine-bottles is historically depending on the way of manufacturing.
I have no idea why popcorn pops, nor can I explain what coriolis force is or why the ocean is salty.
DOg days are the hottest days in summer, as josie two shoes explains, in the roman calendar the Great dog came up in summer (July to August I guess).
If you make from the penny a sheet and form something like a tin it will swim, heureka.
As far as I know one gets no warts from toad. But I am not toad-handling ... Toad-slime was an ingredient for medicin.
Raisin is just the old-french version of the latin word racemus for a part of the berry. From some point on it meant all wine-berries dried in the sun.
I have no idea why in america covered bridges were built. We have very few here in Germany, I saw only one in a small and remote valley. Maybe there are still some in France or England. Sorry, but that is something I will have to look for.

Lone Grey Squirrel said...

Having collected enough nuts for winter, I have been sitting around pondering your questions.
1. It was the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil....doesn't sound like an apple to me!
2. Sometimes the glassblower is drunk?
3. What "hammer" already said.
4. no idea. Guess josie is right.
5.All the fresh water flowing into the sea actually carries dissolved minerals and is then concentrated by evaporation so it becomes saltier.
6.One has a higher volume to weight ratio and is therefore buoyant.
7. Need to try this one out.
8. Because the English language is diabolical.
9.So that it could be used even during winter - protection from snow.
10. huh?

I guess this proves that I have no life.

geewits said...

I knew some of the answers but didn't want you to think I didn't have a life. But those huge metal ships? That truly boggles the mind. Same with airplanes. Every time I fly, I spend half the time thinking, "This is just crazy!"

heiresschild said...

good questions Dave. the Bible never said apple; it states "the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil," and people just assume that the fruit is an apple. however, the Bible also talks about the "fruit of the Spirit" being love, joy, peace, patience, etc., so i think the fruit in the garden had something to do with opposites to love, joy, peace, patience, etc. nothing to eat here, at least not naturally anyway.

somehow, i missed this post and the one after this until just now.

David Kim said...

I would Google all these questions. Since the coming of the internet, I never study anything anymore. I just look the answers up on Google and find out what I need to in a few seconds.