Is your lack of sleep slowly killing you? Many of us have experienced the effects of sleep deprivation: feeling tired and cranky, or finding it hard to concentrate. Sleep is more important for our brains than you may realise. Although it may appear you’re “switching off” when you fall asleep, the brain is far from…
Month: August 2018
How do hormones work?
What are hormones, and what do hormones do? Over our lifetimes, our bodies undergo a series of extraordinary metamorphoses: we grow, experience puberty, and many of us reproduce. Behind the scenes, the endocrine system works constantly to orchestrate these changes. Hormones are messengers that are released mainly by glands, and they travel in the bloodstream…
What is the coldest thing in the world?
The coldest material in the world isn’t in Antarctica. They are not at the top of Mount Everest or buried in a glacier. They are in physics labs. Clouds of gases held just a fraction of degree above absolute zero. That’s 395 million times colder than your refrigerator, 100 million times colder than liquid nitrogen,…
Smart Squids
Squids get less publicity than octopuses, but they are really weird as well. The sea creatures have developed so many strategies for evading predators in the sea that we must marvel at how undersea life is totally different from the way land animals go through life. There are about 500 species of squid, and they…
What is hibernation?
Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to stay in bed on the really cold days of winter? Some animals do! Hibernation is when animals become inactive during colder times of the year in order to conserve energy. They will reduce their body temperature, breathing rate, and heart rate. They do this because in winter…
How Do Volcanoes Erupt?
To understand how a volcano erupts, we’ll first need to take a look at the structure of the Earth. Earth has different layers which include the inner and outer core, the mantle and the crust. We’ll focus on the mantle and crust as this is where all the volcanic action takes place. The crust is…