Today I Learned

[Drakkith]

Before you laugh and write things like "I could have told you", I bet you wouldn't had expected to be goulash in that category either!

I've had spaghetti "explode" and coat the inside of my microwave with sauce. The key to cooking in a microwave is to have a microwave with an inverter and to use it at a lower power when heating most foods.

 

[fresh_42]

I've had spaghetti "explode" and coat the inside of my microwave with sauce. The key to cooking in a microwave is to have a microwave with an inverter and to use it at a lower power when heating most foods.

Yes, but the problem wasn't the sauce, I had the plate covered, it was the beef which was torn into parts and lifted the cover.

 

[Drakkith]

Yes, but the problem wasn't the sauce, I had the plate covered, it was the beef which was torn into parts and lifted the cover.

Chicken commonly does that to me.

 

[lekh2003]

I've had particularly smooth microwave experiences. What do you guys do that dangers it up?

 

[Drakkith]

I've had particularly smooth microwave experiences. What do you guys do that dangers it up?

No idea.

 

[lekh2003]

No idea.

Oh, but I did forget to mention the time my sister put a chocolate with metal wrapping in the microwave. We heard sparks followed by smoke and my sister ran out of the kitchen screaming.

 

[Borg]

TIL that things can explode in a microwave.

Before you laugh and write things like "I could have told you", I bet you wouldn't had expected to be goulash in that category either!

I've seen it with various types of food. Beans can really explode if you cook them too long.
I knew someone who put a hot dog on a plastic plate for 10 minutes in a microwave. It didn't explode but it really shriveled up and welded to the plate.

 

[Tom.G]

We usually keep a jar of peanut butter in the refrigerator so it doesn't separate. Occasionally the peanut butter will get too thick to spread, in which case a 10 second zap in the microwave is applied. Now the jars have a paper and foil laminate seal which gets removed upon opening. Occassionally a small scrap of the the seal will stick on the rim of the jar. Well, {thin metal foil} + {microwave oven} = {impressively bright plasma cloud} + {LOUD buzzing sound from oven}.

No further tests are planned.

 

[jim hardy]

Never try to hard boil an egg...

 

[DrGreg]

Today I learned that Barry Manilow's hit record "I Write the Songs" was not written by Barry Manilow.

 

[Jonathan Scott]

Yesterday I learned that if making a snowman seems like too much effort, you can just put a small snowball on a big one and call it a snow BB-8.

We had 4 inches of snow Thursday. That's the most we've had here since at least 1992 and possibly longer. As we rarely get more than a dusting of snow here in the south of England, the authorities don't consider it financially worth while to provide much in the way of gritting and snow-clearing, so that really brought everything to a halt. Any road with a slight gradient (lengthways or sideways) became impassable. Hundreds of people were stuck overnight on blocked main roads and in trains (using the third rail electric system) where ice on the rails was causing them to lose power. Fortunately it's all melting rapidly now.

 

[OmCheeto]

TIL that Steven King wrote the book which was the basis for the movie "The Shawshank Redemption".

 

[Borg]

TIL (actually yesterday) a way to leave a message if you know that your plane is going to crash.

A secret 9/11 note from beyond the grave

I was describing the plot of my book, asking whether there’s any way a person could leave a hidden message inside his body before he died.

The room went silent. The mortician told me that if you’re on a plane that’s going down, if you handwrite a note and eat it, the human stomach has enough liquids to protect the note from burning.

“The ultimate message in a bottle,” the mortician said. “And it really happened.”

“What’re you talking about?” I asked. “When?”

“9/11.”

Right there, the story came out. On 9/11, the victims of the Pentagon attack were brought to Dover. When the morticians worked on one of the bodies, they found a note inside. Apparently, as the plane was going down, one of the victims on Flight 77 actually ate a note, which was found by a Dover mortician.

And, speaking of messages - Oldest message in a bottle found on Australian beach.

An Australian woman has found the world's oldest known message in a bottle nearly 132 years after it was thrown into the sea

 

[dlgoff]

And, speaking of messages - Oldest message in a bottle found on Australian beach.

Really amazing. Here's a picture of the bottle and message compliments of Smithsonian.

 

[Bystander]

Here's a picture of the bottle and message compliments of Smithsonian.

An early ocean currents survey?

 

[CWatters]

Today I (and a few others) learned the personal mobile phone number of a BBC Radio 1 presenter after he gave it out live on air as some sort of dare. It immediately started ringing so much he couldn't get to the screen to put it into airplane mode and shut it up. Despite thousands of people calling him one of the first few calls he answered was a wrong number.

 

[mfb]

This Deutsche Seewarte doesn't exist any more, but the successor to its successor still exists, and it is still in Hamburg: "Bundesamt für Seeschifffahrt und Hydrographie"

I don't think they need the bottle for ocean current surveys today.

 

[fresh_42]

I don't think they need the bottle for ocean current surveys today.

Nope. The problem had been successfully tackled in 1992.

 

[NascentOxygen]

And, speaking of messages - Oldest message in a bottle found on Australian beach.

The message in the bottle was found in dunes behind the beach, so it's not as though it was washed up only last week.

It's only a couple of weeks since news that a letter posted during WW1 was finally delivered. No one knows why delivery took so long, or if someone does know they're keeping quiet about it.

 

[CWatters]

Today I learned that Knotty Ash is a real place. RIP Ken Dodd...

 

[Drakkith]

Today I learned about the existence of Chlorine Trifluoride, an extremely reactive compound that can burn through sand, asbestos, and even concrete. A report describing an incident where a container of the substance cracked, leaking chlorine trifluoride onto the concrete floor, where it subsequently burned through 30 cm of concrete and then nearly a meter of gravel, said, "The concrete was on fire."

 

[david2]

Today I learned that humans are carrying more microbes in and on their bodies then there are cells.

In fact 10 times more...

 

[Bystander]

Today I learned that humans are carrying more microbes in and on their bodies then there are cells.

In fact 10 times more...

Source?

 

[fresh_42]

Source?

Oh, you can pick them up almost everywhere in the environment.

 

[Bystander]

Oh, you can pick them up almost everywhere in the environment.

And, presumably, these microbes are not massless?

 

[david2]

Oh, you can pick them up almost everywhere in the environment.

lol

Source?

There was a microbiologist on a dutch news webite who said that. He did not say that there were ten times more. That I read after a quick google search.

But Wiki says the folowing:

Humans are colonized by many microorganisms; the traditional estimate is that the average human body is inhabited by ten times as many non-human cells as human cells, but more recent estimates have lowered that ratio to 3:1 or even to approximately the same number.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_microbiota

Still a lot imho.

 

[Bystander]

Still a lot imho.

A new excuse for the over weight? And anti-biotics a new fad diet?

 

[david2]

A new excuse for the over weight? And anti-biotics a new fad diet?

nope! :)

...their total mass is about 0.2 kg.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4991899/

 

[CWatters]

So if a man weighs 80kg and the microbes weigh 0.2 then these microbes must be a lot smaller and lighter than human cells.

 

[nsaspook]

Today I learned about the existence of Chlorine Trifluoride, an extremely reactive compound that can burn through sand, asbestos, and even concrete. A report describing an incident where a container of the substance cracked, leaking chlorine trifluoride onto the concrete floor, where it subsequently burned through 30 cm of concrete and then nearly a meter of gravel, said, "The concrete was on fire."

Nasty stuff. We used it to clean semiconductor process chambers. When we decommissioned the machine even the electric cables were scrapped because of possible contamination issues.