Learn English - Science and Technology

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Colour is a powerful thing, and it often lies at the heart of our perception of the world. Colours help us identify specific objects and associate properties to them. Colours also help us interpret emotions and recognise real world threats. However, an interesting question is where did this sense of colour come from?

How we see in colour

It all starts with your eyes. Unlike many other living animals, human eyes are designed to interpret a wide range of light wavelengths which helps us identify colours. On a technical level, colours are simply different spectrums of wavelengths either travelling faster or slower towards our eyes and into our brain. We are good at it, but before you get big headed, we aren't the best at interpreting colours: Many animals have a colour perception ability that is far beyond our comprehension, for example, the Mantis Shrimp: Believe it or not the mantis shrimp has 4 times better colour vision than humans do.

April 21,

Rainbows

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You might have seen a rainbow, that arch of colours visible in the sky, but do you know what it is?

What is a rainbow?

A rainbow appears when sunlight and water meet. They are caused by the refraction and dispersion of the sun's light by rain or other water droplets in the atmosphere. Rainbows can be seen not just when it's raining but also on misty or foggy days, in the spray of a waterfall, and even in dew, basically they can appear whenever there are water droplets in the air and there is sunlight shining from behind at the right angle. It's called light refraction, and on a sunny day, with a hosepipe, you can even create your own rainbow in the garden.

May 6,

Life Without The Internet

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Twenty-five years ago the WWW was born. A quarter of a century.

Yet there are still times when this modern miracle simply doesn’t work. In the past week we’ve had access for only about 6 hours. 25 years ago, when it all first began this kind of connectivity would have seemed miraculous – now it is just annoying.

March 11,

Sat Navs

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A satellite navigation or sat nav system consists of a receiver and a system of satellites that, when combined with a computerized map, can pinpoint an individual or a vehicle's location to within 30 feet. Most sat navs use the United States NAVSTAR Global Positioning System (GPS), which is made up of around 30 US military satellites orbiting the earth. They constantly beam high frequency radio signals to earth. Each satellite contains an electronic clock, accurate to 1 second in 138 million years.

February 4,

Graphology

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Graphology is the study of handwriting in order to try to infer a person's character. It is a controversial subject and many people consider it a pseudoscience, but rightly or wrongly some companies still use it as part of their hiring strategy.

July 1,

Genetics

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Genetics is a discipline of biology, the word "genetics" comes from the Ancient Greek word for origin. It is the science of heredity. This includes the study of genes, and the inheritance of variation and traits of living organisms.[1][2][3]

In the laboratory, genetics can be studied by mating carefully selected organisms, and analysing their offspring. More informally, genetics is the study of how parents pass some of their characteristics to their children. It is an important part of biology, and gives the basic rules on which evolution acts.

Mendel genetis

The fact that living things inherit traits from their parents has been known since prehistoric times, and used to improve crop plants and animals through selective breeding. However, the modern science of genetics, which seeks to understand the process of inheritance, only began with the work of Gregor Mendel in the mid-nineteenth century.[4]

Although he did not know the physical basis for heredity, Mendel observed that organisms inherit traits via discrete units of inheritance, which are now called genes.