Group items tagged

The ocean is salty for several reasons, one of which is the groundwater from rain which trickles down into the ocean and picks up salt from the earth along its way! But this same water trickles down into lakes… so why aren't lakes salty?

The reason lake water usually isn't salty (or at least it's less salty than ocean water) is because the salty groundwater not only runs into the lakes, but also back out of it! Unlike the huge, vast ocean which already covers most of the Earth and therefore can't open up to any larger body of water, most lakes have outlets from which water leaves. This means that the salty groundwater has a chance to filter out and escape! (In the ocean, it has nowhere e

lse to go!)

The ocean is also salty from rainwater that falls onto rocks or land, picks up some salt in the earth, and then trickles down into the ocean! There are also some places in the ocean floor where salty gases and minerals from within the Earth get released into the ocean!  

Dolphins are cetacean mammals closely related to whales and porpoises. There are almost forty species of dolphin in 17 genera. They vary in size from 1.2 m (4 ft) and 40 kg (90 lb) (Maui's dolphin), up to 9.5 m (30 ft) and 10 tonnes (9.8 long tons; 11 short tons) (the orca or killer whale).

come in many different shapes and sizes. They can be as small as four feet (1 1/4 meters) long weighing just 100 pounds (45 kilograms), or as large as 30 feet (nine meters) long weighing up to 11,000 pounds (950 kilograms). All dolphins, including even the largest, can move quickly through the water, using paddle-shaped forelimbs called flippers to steer, dorsal fins on their backs to stay balanced, and powerful tail fins called flukes to move forward. Their torpedo-shaped bodies flow smoothly in the water, so they don't make many waves. They use their flippers to make sharp turns and sudden stops. All dolphins have blowholes on the tops of their heads. These mammals breathe through their blowholes. They have to go to the surface of the water to breathe. Each dolphin has just one blowhole.

Nevertheless, the search for life on Mars continues, in part because it shows signs of having been wetter in the past. Water is necessary for all known forms of life. It is possible that microscopic life once existed on Mars. Today the surface is too cold and the air is too thin for liquid water to exist there for long. It is also bombarded with ultraviolet radiation from the Sun, which is very harmful to living things.

Jacques Cartier was born on December 31, 1491, in Saint-Malo, Brittany, France, and was sent by King Francis I to the New World in search of riches and a new route to Asia in 1534.

River allowed France to lay claim to lands that would become Canada. He died in Saint-Malo in 1557.

Jacques Cartier reportedly explored the Americas, particularly Brazil, before making three major North American voyages.

Marco Polo was a Venetian, but where he was actually born is not known with complete certainty. He was born in either the city of Venice or the city of Korcula, Croatia. In Polo’s day, the city was called Curzola, Venetian Dalmatia. Regardless of where he was born though, Marco was raised in Venice, and was Venetian by culture. Marco came from a family of explorers and traders, but it was his name that has become so famous because he took the time to write about all of his adventures.

His father, Nicolo, and his uncle, Maffio, moved around Eastern Europe searching for a place to safely do business trading Eastern goods to the West. Eventually, in 1264, Nicolo and Maffio were sent by Ilkhan Hulagu of Bukhara (one of the minor Khans of the Mongolian Empire) on a mission to visit his brother Kublai, the Great Khan. After traveling for two years, they finally reached Khanbaliq (modern-day Beijing). The Polos were sent back from the Khan with a Mongolian ambassador, Koeketei. The Khan wanted them to carry a message to the Pope, asking for a team of Westerners to come and teach Western culture and Christianity to those under his rule. They were unable to immediately fulfill this request because there was a three-year gap, from 1268 to 1271, during which there was no Pope to whom to carry this message. After Pope Gregory X was selected in 1271, the Polos left on their second journey.

1. Tears help us see. Starting with the most basic function of tears, they enable us to see. Literally. Tears not only lubricate our eyeballs and eyelids, they also prevent dehydration of our various mucous membranes. No lubrication, no eyesight. Writes Bergman: “Without tears, life would be drastically different for humans–in the short run enormously uncomfortable, and in the long run eyesight would be blocked out altogether.”

2. Tears kill bacteria. No need for Clorox wipes. We’ve got tears! Our own antibacterial and antiviral agent working for us, fighting off all the germs we pick up on community computers, shopping carts, public sinks, and all those places the nasty little guys make their homes and procreate. Tears contain lysozyme, a fluid that the germ-a-phobic dreams about in her sleep, because it can kill 90 to 95 percent of all bacteria in just five to 10 minutes! Which translates, I’m guessing, to three months’ worth of colds and stomach viruses.

3. Tears remove toxins. Biochemist William Frey, who has been researching tears for as long as I’ve been searching for sanity, found in one