A few riddles for you to help me to figure out!!!

First Riddle:

Who makes it, has no need of it.
Who buys it, has no use for it.
Who uses it can neither see nor feel it.
What is it?

 

Second Riddle:

A basket contains 5 apples. Do you know how to divide them among 5 kids so that each one has an apple and one apple stays in the basket?

 

Third Riddle:

There are a few trees in a garden. On one of them, a pear tree, there are pears (quite logical). But after a strong wind blew, there were neither pears on the tree nor on the ground.
How come?

Fourth Riddle:
 

A poor farmer went to the market to sell some peas and lentils. However, as he had only one sack and didn't want to mix peas and lentils, he poured in the peas first, tied the sack in the middle, and then filled the top portion of the sack with the lentils. At the market a rich innkeeper happened by with his own sack. He wanted to buy the peas, but he did not want the lentils.
Pouring the seed anywhere else but the sacks is considered soiling. Trading sacks is not allowed. The farmer can't cut a hole in his sack.
How would you transfer the peas to the innkeeper's sack, which he wants to keep, without soiling the produce?

Insulin, What's that about??

Insulin is used for the treatment of a disease called diabetes. When a person has this disease, some fault in their body chemistry keeps it from using starches and sugars to make energy. A large gland called the pancreas makes a substance called insulin that the body needs to use starches and sugars. The body of a person with diabetes either does not make enough insulin or does not use its insulin. If this disease goes untreated, the person suffers from extreme thirst, loses weight, feels weak, and may eventually become unconscious and die. 

However, these things need not happen to a person with diabetes now that insulin is manufactured. The diabetic patient can take it by daily injection and a regular diet; they can lead a normal life. Doctors had known for some time that a person suffering from diabetes could not make use of the sugars in their body. The problem was how to provide diabetics with insulin. Scientist thought they knew the answer: give a diabetic insulin taken from the pancreas of a healthy animal. But no one had been able to extract insulin. This was the achievement of Frederick Grant Banting, a Canadian doctor and scientist who was born in 1891 near Alliston, Ontario. He was teaching in London, Ontario, and one evening while preparing a lecture on the pancreas, he suddenly realized how he might extract insulin; He went to the University of Toronto and asked Professor John Macleod, director of a large laboratory, for help. 
 Macleod agreed to let him use the laboratory for a few weeks. In May 1921, with the help of Charles Best, a young graduate student, he set to work. They worked day and night, and within several weeks obtained the first insulin from the pancreas of a dog. By January 1922, after many tests, they were able to give insulin to a diabetic, a young boy near death. He showed immediate improvement too. An important step forward in medical history had been made.

Let's take a walk through my mom's garden and see what we find!!!!

I was a bit bored one day and decided to take a walk through my mom's garden, Here are some of the plants and flowers that i saw and thought that i should share with you guys. Now I'm not sure of the names of each as yet but as soon as i find them i will edit the post and add them in. Enjoy!!!

RECIPE OF THE WEEK - CHICKEN HONEY NUT STIR FRY

INGREDIENTS 

o    1 pound(s) chicken breast, cut into strips

o    2 large carrots

o    2 stalk(s) celery

o    3/4 cup(s) Grace Orange Juice

o    1/3 cup(s) honey

o    3 tablespoon(s) soy sauce

o    1 tablespoon(s) cornstarch

o    1/4 ounce(s) ginger, crushed

o    2 tablespoon(s) Grace Vegetable Oil

o    1/2 cup(s) cashew nuts, optional

INSTRUCTIONS

Cut chicken breasts into strips and set aside.

Cut carrot and celery diagonally.

Combine Grace Orange Juice, honey, soy sauce, cornstarch and ginger and mix well.

Heat 1 Tablespoon Grace Vegetable Oil in a large skillet over medium heat.

Add carrots and celery and stir fry for about 1 minute, remove from skillet and set aside.

Heat remaining Grace Vegetable Oil and stir fry pieces of chicken for 5 minutes.

Return vegetables to skillet add sauce mixture and chopped nuts and stir until sauce thickens.

Allow to simmer for about two minutes. 

TO SERVE: Serve with plain rice and a vegetable salad

How and Why Do We Wake Up?

Everybody has strange experiences with sleep. Sometimes we want to sleep very much and we just cant seem to. We stay awake or wake up early, and sometimes we feel we could sleep for hours and hours more when the alarm clock goes off. What wakes us up is something that scientists still can’t explain fully. 

There are two theories about it, and lets take a look at both of them. One theory says that sleep and fatigue are pretty much the same. The nerve cells become tired because their reserve of energy is used up faster than it can be replenished. Nerve cells can also become tired because waste materials accumulate faster than they can be eliminated. When we go about thinking and seeing and feeling and carrying on mental activities of all sorts, we use up energy. So the brain and other nerve center need a rest. Sleep clears away our tiredness, and when we wake up we are rested and able to function again.

Some scientists believe that what really happens when we fall asleep is that one particular nervous center called the vasoconstrictor center becomes tired. This causes the blood vessels to cut off a certain supply of blood, and we go to sleep. When the center has its blood supply restored to normal we wake up. The other theory about sleep and waking up is quite different. According to this theory, we have a “wakefulness center” in the lower portion of the brain. Our mental activities and emotions during daily living stimulate the center. Now, if we cant shut off messages from the brain to this center we remain awake. When we finally do it, by sending no more messages we go to sleep.

Then suppose we get hungry while we’re asleep or feel cold or damp or experience some emotion such as fear. The wakefulness center is stimulated again and we wake up. But don’t forget that every adult person needs a significant amount of sleep. It depends on your age, your body, your work, and even your sleep habits. An adult really needs only enough sleep so that when they wake up they feel rested and well and can carry on their work during the day.

Something Doesn't Quite Add Up Here!!!!

Here's Another Brain Teaser!!!

This one is hard so I'm going to give you a hint this time!!

My Dad has a miniature Pyramid of Egypt. It is 5 inches in height. Dad was invited to display it at an exhibition. Dad felt it was too small and decided to build a scaled-up model of the Pyramid out of material whose density is (1 / 9) times the density of the material used for the miniature. He did a "back-of-the-envelope" calculation to check whether the model would be big enough.

If the mass (or weight) of the miniature and the scaled-up model are to be the same, how many inches in height will be the scaled-up Pyramid? Give your answer to two places of decimal.

Hint: If mass is to be the same, then density is inversely proportional to volume. 
Also, the volumes are directly proportional to the cubes of the heights for objects that are geometrically similar.

Time for a brain teaser!!!!!

A 31" x 31" square metal plate needs to be fixed by a carpenter on to a wooden board. The carpenter uses nails all along the edges of the square such that there are 32 nails on each side of the square. Each nail is at the same distance from the neighboring nails. How many nails does the carpenter use?

Hint: Consider a nail at the corner of each square.

Why Can't We See Colors in the Dark?

Light from the sun or from any very hot source is called white light. But, as Newton was the first to show, white light is really a mixture of light of all colors. When a beam of light is made to pass through a glass prism, we see all the colors of the rainbow   red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet. Each shade blends gradually into the next without a break. This spread of colors is called a spectrum. 

These colors are present in sunlight to begin with, but show up only after being spread out by refraction in the prism. Each color is refracted a slightly different amount, red least and violet most. This spreading out is called dispersion. Without dispersion, the mixture gives the appearance of white to the eyes. Color is determined by the wavelength of the light(like the distance between one crest and the next in a wave travelling on water). The shortest visible light waves are violet: the longest are red.

Most of the colors we see in our surroundings are not of a single wavelength, but are mixtures of many wavelengths. When white light falls on a object, some wavelengths are refracted, and the rest are absorbed by the material. A piece of red cloth, for example, absorbs almost all wavelengths except a certain range of red ones. These are the only ones that are reflected to your eyes, so you see the cloth as red. So color is a quality of light, it does not exist apart from light. All our color sensations are caused by light rays entering our eyes. All objects are seen by reflected light, and the colors that they show exist in the light and not in the object.

Should Left - Handedness Be Corrected?

If you're left - handed or know anyone who is, then you've noticed that a left - handed person has to make certain adjustments to get along in this world. For we live in a right - handed world.

With 96% of the people right-handed, its natural that everything from door knobs, locks, screwdrivers, motor cars, musical instruments, and machines to do such things as the button on our clothing are designed for right handed people. But somehow most left- handed people seem to get along quite well. And of course according to history there are cases of left-handed people who got along very well indeed! For example Leonardo da vinci and Michelangelo, two of the world's greatest geniuses, were left handed.

While some parents worry if their child is left-handed, most medical authorities believe it is wiser not to do anything about it. Being left - handed is not a defect in a person, so a child should not be scolded or punished, and no effort should be made to try to change him/her to a right handed person.
Now, what is it that makes most people right handed? For a long time it was believed that we are right - handed because of such things as training, custom, and the fact that most people are right handed. So a left handed person had something wrong with him/her because they could not do things the other way people did.

Today it is believed that most people are right - handed because the brains of most people function in a certain way. 1/2 of the brain dominates over the other half. The left half of the brain controls the function of the right side of the body and in most people the left half of the brain is dominant so the right half of their body is more skilled and better able to develop. Our right hand works better than our left hand. In left handed people, the brain develops in a reverse way. The right half of the brain is dominant, so the left half of the body works better. It works just as well, just as skilfully it just so happens to make them left handed. And that's just about it. Ain't nothing more about it!!!!!