Improve Your Communication Skills
Why do we get Hiccups?
Everybody gets hiccups (also sometimes spelt ‘hiccoughs’). Even when babies are still in the womb they hiccup, which can feel very odd to their mother! But why do we get them and how can you stop them?
What are Hiccups?
Hiccups are caused by the diaphragm (pronounced DYE-uh-fram). This is a large, dome-shaped muscle that sits at the bottom of your chest cavity, below your lungs. When we breathe in the diaphragm tightens, helping to pull air into the lungs, and when it relaxes it forces the air back out again. Sometimes the diaphragm becomes irritated and instead of tightening smoothly it does it in a jerky way, which makes air suddenly rush into your throat. This air is stopped when it hits the voice box and makes the opening between the vocal cords close very suddenly. This is what produces the sound of the hiccup.
POO-EE! Roman Toilet Seat Found Near Hadrian’s Wall
How would you like to root around in a 2000 year-old toilet?! The Romans created aqueducts, newspapers, and bound books… but did you know they helped create the toilets we have today?
Archaeologists at a Roman excavation site in Northumberland have recently uncovered a wooden toilet seat…that is 2000 years old! While it looks a bit more basic than the toilet seats we have today, it shows that they were very concerned with cleanliness.
The Roman wooden toilet seat. Not looking bad to say it’s 2000 years old! (Source.)
Why DO Kids Want to Play Minecraft?
Sitting back, ready for another interesting and rather aggressive night on COD (Call of Duty), I launch my dashboard to see the usual suspects all gathered playing the latest shoot ’em ups.
Except one. Looking again, I notice my 13-year-old brother Jimbob is playing a game I’ve never seen – MINECRAFT.
After much persuasion and explanation “COME ON BRO, BUY IT PLEASE, YOU BUILD STUFF”, I decide to purchase it, in order to support him in our mum’s campaign to play online more responsibly.
The game launches and all I see is blocks. Have I got the right game? Where are the graphics?
Wandering mindlessly around, past trees, rivers and spiders, until Harvey Jimbob asks me to come to his house. Here’s the strangest part: he built it.
SCIENCE NEWS – Discovery of An Underground Ocean
Earth’s Underground Ocean
In 1864 the French author, Jules Verne, published his novel “Journey To The Interior of the Earth”. In this book 3 men explore volcanic tunnels that lead miles beneath the Earth’s surface, and have a number of strange encounters along the way. One of these is the discovery of a massive ocean, deep underground. Now, 150 years later, it seems that Monsieur Verne’s imagination may have been more accurate than he knew.
An enormous reservoir of water, roughly 3 times bigger than all of the Earth’s oceans put together, has been detected 400 miles below the surface. The water is trapped inside a layer of blue rock called ringwoodite, in the layer of hot rock between the Earth’s core and its surface) that is known as the mantle.
A Fun Rainy Day Activity – A Schnitzeljagd
