A WALK INSIDE  SEA TO PRAY LORD SHIVA

nature has got its own secret

A Temple to Shiva in The Middle of The Sea

At Koliyak, a village at the Bhavnagar district in the Gujarat state of India, people reach out to the Shiva temple about 1.5 kilometers into the sea. In this historic place, Pandavas, the heroic brothers worshipped the lingas that are symbolic of Lord Shiva after the fierce battle in which they killed their evil cousins as narrated in the epic Mahabharat.

Think of a temple in the weirdest of places. Under the sea. But then, the Hindus have built their temples over the hills and mountains, inside the caves, at the sea shore, near the water falls…where ever nature reveals itself in all its grandeur and pristine beauty. The temple I am talking about is Nishkalank Mahadev’s temple (Nishkalank – blemish-less or sinless; Mahadev – Lord Shiva), and it is under water during high tides in the sea and emerges during low tides to reveal itself majestically, promising its devotees to wash away all sins. As it did for the Pandavas in the epic Mahabharata, when they wanted to atone for the sin of killing their brethren, even though they were all evil incarnated.

Nishkalank Mahadev temple; Source: Panoramio 

Another view of the temeThe temple is located in the Bhavnagar district of Gujarat state in India. From the beach along the Arabian Sea, you’d have to traverse 1.5 km into the interior. There are the five Shiva lingas that the five Pandava brothers worshipped, along with Shiva’s vehicle Nandi, or the Bull. Many people come here  to dissolve ashes of their departed kith and kin. The day after the New Moon day, the sea recedes to the maximum, and hundreds of people including children walk the distance and worship the idols. The New Moon day that comes in August and corresponds to the Hindu calendar month of Bhadra is of special importance, and people throng here in large numbers.

The scene before and during the low tide

The people have to wait sometimes for the sea to recede, a time they spend in singing devotional songs or relaxing in wooden ‘charpoys’ or bedsteads.

Once the sea starts receding, the trek begins.

Once they reach the large rampart square, they wash their feet in a small pond called Pandava pond, and proceed to the main shrine.

The Pandava pond

The worship

This temple can be reached between 9.00 am to 12.00 pm on the day next to the new moon night. The visitors should leave the place before the sea begins to rise again.

Travel Tips

Koliyak is located around 30 kms from Bhavnagar and there are local transportation available to temple from Bhavnagar railway station.

You can visit the temple on all the days, though you will have to wait for the sea to recede and it becomes accessible for a few hours only. High and low tide occur every day , and the times and amplitude of the tides at the coast are influenced by the alignment of the Sun and Moon and by the shape of the coastline. During full moon and new moon when the earth, sun and the moon are in line, both the high and the low tides are at their maximum levels. That is why it is advisable to visit the temple during these times. The sea recession is maximum during August-September.

Interesting inventions

10 recent inventions, none of which is likely to get much attention this week. But that doesn’t make them any less inspired.

1) All we are saying, is give bats a chance: 

One of the raps on wind turbines is that they kill thousands of birds and bats every year. But an 89-year-old retired engineer in California named Raymond Green has taken it upon himself to create a device that may lead to a solution. His invention, which he calls “Catching Wind Power,” is basically a large drum in which all the movable parts, including the killer blades, are contained. That would make them considerably less dangerous for flying creatures, and also, Green claims, quieter than what’s out there now.

2) Forgetting something?:

  hospitals are a bacterial war zone where one of the key weapons of the good guys is frequent hand-washing. But research suggests that health care workers wash their hands half as often as they should. Now an Israeli company named Hyginex is producing wristbands that wirelessly remind those wearing them that to scrub down. Sensors in soap dispensers track the movements of doctors and nurses, and if they approach a patient without washing their hands, their wristbands light up and vibrate.

3) The roads less traveled: 

Yes, there are apps out there that alert you to backups and accidents, but a group of German students has ratcheted traffic apps up a notch. Their Greenway app, now being tested by drivers in Munich, uses algorithms to predict where and how traffic will flow and gives its users directions to “traffic-optimized” routes. It also closely monitors the alternate routes and scales back its recommendations if they’re getting crowded. Greenway’s creators claim their directions, on average, get drivers to their destinations twice as fast as on their usual routes.

4) Say good-bye to helmet hair:

 

It’s still Fashion Week in New York, so allow me to introduce the Hovding bike helmet. It’s the brainstorm of two Swedish women who have managed to do the seemingly impossible–merge fashion and bike safety. Their helmet actually looks like a collar, but if it senses impact, it inflates like an airbag around the rider’s head.

5) Go ahead, walk all over me:

 Scientists at the University of Manchester in the UK have developed a smart carpet. That’s right, a smart carpet. The rug’s backing contains optical fibers that distort when they’re stepped on and send a signal to a computer. That’s impressive, but to what end? First, it can, in the case of elderly person, determine if someone has fallen. It can also serve as an intruder alert if it detects unfamiliar footsteps near a window. Its inventors think it even has potential as a physical therapy aid able to predict mobility problems if it notices changes in a person’s walk.

6) Got juice?: 

If you drive a lot and need to keep your iPad charged, do I have a gadget for you. It’s a device that turns your standard car cup holder into a charging station, allowing you to juice up your tablet and your smartphone at the same time.

7) You’ve been drinking. I can see it in your nose:

 Two Greek computer scientists say that by using algorithms and thermal imaging, they’ve devised a way to spot inebriated people in public.Their method, in which they combine an infrared image with algorithms related to what happens to blood vessels in a person’s nose when they have too much to drink, would allow police to identify a drunk on more info than that they’re acting like one.

8) Flashlights are so over: 

You can have the biggest, shiniest belt buckle ever and it won’t help you much on a walk in the dark. But the Walker’s Path Illuminating Belt is custom-made for such occasions. It’s a hands-free LED safety light that wraps around your waist and can be adjusted to serve as either a wide-angle floodlight or a narrowly-focused spotlight.

9) Why shouldn’t bikes have growth spurts?:

 It’s one thing for your kids to grow out of their clothes and shoes, but you move into a whole other price range when they keep getting too big for their bikes. The Spanish bicycle designer Orbea has taken on the challenge, creating a bike that grows with a kid, appropriately called the Grow bike. The crossbar, stem and seats all can be lengthened, and since other components also are designed to last longer, Grow bikes, says Orbea, need to be replaced every five to seven years instead of every two to three.

10) Video bonus: Sugar kills:

 

As much practice as we get, most of us just aren’t very good at knocking flies out of the air. But soon BugASalt could change all that–when flies comes buzzin’, it’s just the weapon for the job. It’s a toy gun that acts like a shotgun firing just enough salt to bring down a fly

sex in space interesting fact

In September of 1992 astronauts Jan Davis and Mark Lee became the first married couple to leave the planet together. But NASA didn’t originally plan on it happening that way.


Illustration by L. Sterne Stevens in the March 1956 issue of Sexology magazine (source: Novak Archive)

NASA had an unwritten rule that married astronauts couldn’t be sent into space together. Davis and Lee had been assigned to the mission in 1989 but were later married in January 1991. After the agency learned of their marriage, NASA took two months to review the situation and believed that both were too important to the mission (the second flight of Space Shuttle Endeavour) for either of them to be removed. The couple had no children and NASA explained that if they had, they most certainly wouldn’t have flown together.

June 26, 1992 Wisconsin State Journal

Their flight was a minor public relations scandal because of an obvious question that reporters of the time were not shy about asking: would they be having sex in space? The answer from the astronauts and NASA was an unequivocal “no”.

Outside of science fiction, the topic of sex in space has received surprisingly scant attention. But it was science fiction that inspired Dr. Robert S. Richardson to write an article in the March 1956 issue of Sexology: The Magazine of  Sex Science, wherein he describes his vision of what sexual relations might look like when space travel is a reality. This was a year and a half before the launch of Sputnik, so the Space Age wasn’t even firing on all thrusters yet. But Dr. Richardson opens his article by discussing his frustration with the fact that sex is never addressed in any of the sci-fi shows on TV. Given the reputation of 1950s broadcasting as a sexless environment — where married couples on programs like I Love Lucy had to sleep in separate beds, and wouldn’t even say the word “pregnant” — Richardson’s surprise comes across as a bit disingenuous. Nonetheless, Richardson makes his case for what he believes the future of sex in space might look like.

From the introduction to the 1956 article:

Recent announcements by the United States and Soviet Governments that they are planning space satellites and space rockets have stimulated universal interest in the problems of space travel. Space voyages to Mars will take a long time, and settlements on the distant plants will be lonely. While much has been written about the various scientific aspects of space travel, this is the first article which deals with the important medical problem: How will the natural sexual needs of early space travelers be met so as to provide a modicum of mental health for the space pioneers?

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Dr. Richardson’s views on women in space aren’t the most enlightened. He writes under the assumption that only men will be astronauts and that these men will have certain carnal needs to be met during long missions in space. Many of Richardson’s ideas about space, and especially Mars, clearly come from the Collier’s series of articles on space travel from 1952 to 1954. Interestingly, Richardson becomes fixated on Mars throughout the article, ignoring the moon — a place humans wouldn’t even sink their boots until a full 13 years after his article was published.

Richardson compares the establishment of an inevitable Martian base to the experience of military men in remote regions of the Arctic. But unlike relatively short tours in Greenland of a year or less, he acknowledges that a trip to Mars would be an adventure of three years or more.

But can healthy young men work efficiently and harmoniously for long without women ?

Reactions to this question vary widely. There are some who think it outrageous that sex should enter into the question at all. Just forget about the women. Keep busy and you won’t need to worry.

Others recognize sex as a disturbing factor, but feel it is not too serious. In the old days, sailors made long voyages without women and still managed to perform their duties and bring the ship into port. They admit there was sexual over-indulgence soon after the sailors got on shore, but that was only to be expected. The remark heard most often is that the men turn to homosexualism and auto-eroticism during extended voyages.

None of these answers meets the problem squarely. They either side-step the issue or suggest some degrading compromise solution.

Richardson’s solution to the problem of loneliness for astronaut men sailing towards Mars is rather offensive, proposing that women tag along as sex objects with a mission to serve the crew (and take dictation when necessary).

In our expedition to Mars, let our healthy young males take along some healthy young females to serve as their sexual partners. (Of course it would also help if they could operate a radio transmitter and take dictation.) These women would accompany them quite openly for this purpose. There would be no secrecy about this. There would be nothing dishonorable about their assignment. They would be women of the kind we ordinarily speak of as “nice girls.”

“But then they wouldn’t be nice girls any more!” people will object.

Judged by the arbitrary standards of our present social reference system, they certainly would not. But in our new social reference system they would be nice girls. Or rather, the girls would be the same, but our way of thinking about them would be different.

It is possible that ultimately the most important result of space travel will be not what we discover upon the planets, but rather the changes that our widening outlook will effect upon our way of thinking. Will men and women bold enough to venture into space feel that they are still bound by often artificial and outmoded conventions of behavior prevalent upon a planet fifty million miles behind them ? May not men and women upon another world develop a social reference system — shocking as judged by us on earth today — but entirely “moral” according to extra-terrestrial standards?

This last bit of speculation — of proposing that on other planets people may develop their own set of cultural and moral standards by which to judge sexual activity — would certainly be an interesting discussion to have, if it weren’t predicated on the notion that women would necessarily be secretaries and sex objects acting at the pleasure of the all-male astronaut crew.

As far as we know, no one has yet had sex in space. But when they inevitably do, I suspect neither party will need to supplement their astronautic duties by taking dictation.

Weird Facts about Humans

Weird Facts about Humans

While sitting at your desk make clockwise circles with your right foot. (go ahead no one will see you) While doing this, draw the number “6″ in the air with your right hand.
Your foot will change direction – that is a fact. Pretty interesting, huh? Keep on reading..


1. People with higher number of moles tend to live longer than people with lesser number of moles.

3. When filming summer scenes in winter, actors suck on ice cubes just before the camera rolls - it cools their mouths so their breath doesn’t condense in the cold air.

4. Thinking about your muscles can make you stronger.

5. Grapefruit scent will make middle aged women appear six years younger to men. The perception is not reciprocal and the grapefruit scent on men has no effect on women’s perception.

6. The world’s youngest parents were 8 and 9 and lived in China in 1910.

7. The colder the room you sleep in, the better the chances are that you’ll have a bad dream.

8. There are more people alive today than have ever died.

9. Women’s hair is about half the diameter of men’s hair

10. Women blink twice as many times as men do.

11. The average person who stops smoking requires one hour less sleep a night.

12. Laughing lowers levels of stress hormones and strengthens the immune system. Six-year-olds laugh an average of 300 times a day. Adults only laugh 15 to 100 times a day.

13. Intelligent people have more zinc and copper in their hair.

14. The human heart creates enough pressure while pumping to squirt blood 30 feet!

15. The brain operates on the same amount of power as 10-watt light bulb. The cartoon image of a light bulb over your head when a great thought occurs isn’t too far off the mark. Your brain generates as much energy as a small light bulb even when you’re sleeping.

16. The brain is much more active at night than during the day.

17. The brain itself cannot feel pain. While the brain might be the pain center when you cut your finger or burn yourself, the brain itself does not have pain receptors and cannot feel pain.

18. The fastest growing nail is on the middle finger. And the nail on the middle finger of your dominant hand will grow the fastest of all. Why is not entirely known, but nail growth is related to the length of the finger, with the longest fingers growing nails the fastest and shortest the slowest.

19. The lifespan of a human hair is 3 to 7 years on average.

20. Human hair is virtually indestructible. Aside from it’s flammability, human hair decays at such a slow rate that it is practically non-disintegrative. Hair cannot be destroyed by cold, change of climate, water, or other natural forces and it is resistant to many kinds of acids and corrosive chemicals.

21. The acid in your stomach is strong enough to dissolve razorblades. Hydrochloric acid, the type found in your stomach, is not only good at dissolving the pizza you had for dinner but can also eat through many types of metal.

22. The surface area of a human lung is equal to a tennis court.

23. Sneezes regularly exceed 100 mph.

24. Approximately 75% of human waste is made of water.

25. The average person expels flatulence 14 times each day. Even if you’d like to think you’re too dignified to pass gas, the reality is that almost everyone will at least a few times a day.

26. Earwax production is necessary for good ear health. While many people find earwax to be disgusting, it’s actually a very important part of your ear’s defense system. It protects the delicate inner ear from bacteria, fungus, dirt and even insects. It also cleans and lubricates the ear canal.

27. Babies are always born with blue eyes. The melanin in a newborn’s eyes often needs time after birth to be fully deposited or to be darkened by exposure to ultraviolet light, later revealing the baby’s true eye color.

28. Every human spent about half an hour as a single cell.

29. After eating too much, your hearing is less sharp.

30. Women are born better smellers than men and remain better smellers over life.

31. Your nose can remember 50,000 different scents.

32. Nails and hair do not continue to grow after we die. They do appear longer when we die, however, as the skin dehydrates and pulls back from the nail beds and scalp.

33. By the age of 60, most people will have lost about half their taste buds. Perhaps you shouldn’t trust your grandma’s cooking as much as you do.

34. Your eyes are always the same size from birth but your nose and ears never stop growing.

35. By 60 years of age, 60-percent of men and 40-percent of women will snore.

36. Monday is the day of the week when the risk of heart attack is greatest. A ten year study in Scotland found that 20% more people die of heart attacks on Mondays than any other day of the week. Researchers theorize that it’s a combination of too much fun over the weekend with the stress of going back to work that causes the increase.

37. Provided there is water, the average human could survive a month to two months without food depending on their body fat and other factors.

38. Over 90% of diseases are caused or complicated by stress.

39. A human head remains conscious for about 15 to 20 seconds after it is been decapitated. While it might be gross to think about, the blood in the head may be enough to keep someone alive and conscious for a few seconds after the head has been separated from the body, though reports as to the accuracy of this are widely varying.

40. Babies are born with 300 bones, but by adulthood the number is reduced to 206.

41. We are about 1 cm taller in the morning than in the evening.

42. It takes twice as long to lose new muscle if you stop working out than it did to gain it. Lazy people out there shouldn’t use this as motivation to not work out, however. It’s relatively easy to build new muscle tissue and get your muscles in shape, so if anything, this fact should be motivation to get off the couch and get moving.

43. Tears and mucus contain an enzyme (lysozyme) that breaks down the cell wall of many bacteria.

44. It is not possible to tickle yourself. Even the most ticklish among us do not have the ability to tickle ourselves.

45. The width of your armspan stretched out is the length of your whole body. While not exact down to the last millimeter, your armspan is a pretty good estimator of your height.

46. Humans are the only animals to produce emotional tears.

47. Women burn fat more slowly than men, by a rate of about 50 calories a day. Most men have a much easier time burning fat than women. Women, because of their reproductive role, generally require a higher basic body fat proportion than men, and as a result their bodies don’t get rid of excess fat at the same rate as men.

48. Koalas and primates are the only animals with unique fingerprints. Humans, apes and koalas are unique in the animal kingdom due to the tiny prints on the fingers of their hands.

49. One human hair can support 3.5 ounces. That’s about the weight of two full size candy bars, and with hundreds of thousands of hairs on the human head, makes the tale of Rapunzel much more plausible.

50. Cna yuo raed tihs? I cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno’t mtaetr in waht oerdr the ltteres in a wrod are, the olny iproamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whotuit a pboerlm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Azanmig huh? yaeh and I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt! if you can raed tihs forwrad it

+ 51. It cost 7 million dollars to build the Titanic and 200 million to make a film about it

facts about

 technology

When you think about technology you might think about NASA, computers, the internet, energy, electronic gadgets or even automobiles but technology has been around long before these inventions. The Gutenberg printing press is one such example. The gutenberg printing press appeared in the 15^th century. It revolutionized the world and it’s a great example of world changing technology. Another technology we take for granted today is the invention of the wheel, thats right ‘the wheel’ as in a circular rotating wheel. The wheel has changed life for all human beings by just making life easier and most technologies, tools and most products including some types of pottery just couldn’t exist without it.

From medicines to tools, technology not only will usually help to improve peoples lives but strongly contributes to the economy and stability of nations around the world. There are instances when certain technologies could devalue a society.

Even various ape species, sea life and birds discover new technologies which help to make life better and may pass down the new technology they’ve learned to the next generation.

If you know any interesting facts about technology you’d like to see here feel free to submit them along with your email, if we use them we’ll be sure to thank you. We can’t use copy n paste information from another site, the facts have to be in your own words.

Below are some more interesting facts about technology.

• The highest a human has flown from the earth upward by balloon is approximately 128,097 feet which is over 23 miles (39 kilometers) above sea level and it was done by Felix Baumgartner of Austria. The balloon was 55 stories tall, helium filled and strung to a capsule that Felix sat in. Baumgartner was wearing a full body, high technology, oxygen supplied, fully pressurized and heated suit with helmet.
• Felix Baumgartner is the only human to break the sound barrier in a free fall surrounded by only a suit without the aid of any type of vessel protecting him while falling. Baumgartner’s world record free fall speed is recorded at 833.9 miles per hour at mach 1.24 and since he was traveling at a speed faster than the speed of sound he didn’t hear the sonic boom. The planning of this mission took over 5 years with a total of about 300 people including 70 engineers, scientists and physicians.
• Did you know that the awesome sounding crack of a bullwhip in the air is a supersonic boom? The crack of the whip occurs when the sound barrier is broken.
• Six astronauts have driven a lunar rover on the moon.
• If you’ve ever wondered how fast the earth orbits through space, we travel at an average of about 67,000 miles per hour every day and night on earth.
• The international space station is traveling at an astonishing 17,500 miles per hour.
• Is it true Windmills all over the world go counterclockwise but the ones in Ireland go clockwise. It is true and that’s a fact.
• It’s true, the match was invented after the cigarette lighter. Interesting and kinda strange!
• Using the U.S numeral system, if you started at the number one and spelled out each numeral in order like one, two, three, four etc. you’d be all the way to the number one thousand before your first encounter the letter “a”.
• The first emails could only be sent to someone using the same local host with two computers literally side by side. In late 1971 Raymond S Tomlinson sent the first useful email to a user separated from the same host by simply implementing a minor addition to the protocol that was being used and chose to use the @ sign in the email address which we still use today. When asked why he chose the @ sign, he said the @ sign just made sense.
• Thomas Edison nicknamed his first two sons Dot and Dash and maybe it had something to do with the unexplained tattoo of dots on his left forearm. I read that his tattoo of dots were shaped like the 5 dots or pips seen on dice. This is not an unusual tattoo to see on people who’ve been in prison and gang members. It can have various meanings, his reason for the tattoo is unexplained.
• Some of you are wondering who is Thomas Edison? He’s probably best known to many as the inventor of the light bulb, known then as electric lamps. What he actually did was took the already invented electric lamp and made improvements for a more durable, practical, commercial grade bulb. He then filed an improvement claim and sold the bulbs through Edison Electric Light Company.
• Who did Apple Inc replace Steve Jobs with? After the death of Steve Jobs on October 5th 2011, Apple Inc. appointed  Arther Levinson it’s non-executive chairman.
• Benjamin Franklin invented flippers for swimming in the year 1717 and was inducted into the international swimming hall of fame for the invention. They were originally wooden swim fins shaped like a lily pad and went on the hands. They were about 10 inches (250mm) long and 6 inches (150mm) wide and helped people to swim faster.
• Who was Benjamin Franklin? If your thinking he invented more than swimming flippers your correct. Benjamin Franklin was one of the founding fathers of the United States, inventor and much more, we could have a whole page just dedicated to him. A few of his most notable inventions were the Franklin Stove in the year 1742, bifocals invented sometime between 1764 – 1784 and the lightning rod in the year 1749. Yes, someone actually invented the lightning rod.
• You see barcodes on a lot of merchandise being sold these days but have you ever wondered what the very first item scanned and sold with a barcode was? it was a pack of Wrigley gum.
• The first photo camera took 8 hours to take a photo, during which you would need to remain still.
• At least 1300 inventions were patented by Thomas Edison during his entire lifetime.
• Automobile transmissions used whale oil up until 1973.
• At the time of writing this in August 2012, the world has only fourteen operating blimps.
• Watches and clocks are often times lubricated by jewelers with a pure silicone watch oil which can fetch a price of around $3,100 or more per gallon. It’s usually purchased in much smaller quantities.
• The first patent for the life boat goes back to 1845.
• The well known credit card company Mastercard was at first called Master Charge.
• The Apple II had a hard drive of only 5 megabytes when it was launched.
• A dentist is the inventor of the electric chair.
• The ball at the top of a flagpole has a name, the ball often times seen at the top of a flagpole is known as a truck.
• It may not sound very comfortable but Ancient Egyptians actually slept on hard pillows they called head rests made of stone pottery, wood and other uncomfortable materials.
• Th AAA Motor Club and travel organization was created initially so that it could warn traveling motorists about police speed traps around the country.
• The US uses more steel to create bottle caps than it does to make bodies for cars.
• The Kleenex tissue was initially a filter for gas masks.
• NASA stands for National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
• NASA’s main headquarters is located in Washington DC.
• Nasa’s space station Skylab launched off in 1973 and crashed on earth in July 1979 in western Australia. The town of Esperance fined NASA $400.00 for littering. The fine was never paid.
• We will be adding more interesting facts about technology, so check back soon.

facts about Solar energy

Solar energy has been gathered by people and used for all kinds of purposes for over 2000 years. It’s a renewable type of energy and only a small percent of us use it right now.

Solar is the main source of energy for all of earths life forms and it’s a clean one. If you use solar energy to create electric you’re doing your part to help the environment.

Although a small amount of pollution is created when the solar panels are manufactured, transported and installed, it’s nothing compared to the amounts of pollution created in processing and using fossil fuels and nuclear energy.

Solar energy can be used in many ways, from cooking food to heating or cooling houses, powering automobiles and aircraft and providing energy to buildings.

Below are some interesting facts about solar energy:

• One megawatt of energy can power 1000 average U.S homes for about one hour.
• In July 2012 the first ever intercontinental round trip of a solar powered plane completed it’s 4,000 mile project to raise public awareness that solar energy can be a reliable source of energy.
• In July 2012 the United States Bureau of Land Management announced that 285,000 acres across 6 of the nations states were prime areas for solar energy development and plans to move forward.
• The largest solar plant in the world can be found in the Mojave desert and can create approximately 354 megawatts and it covers a total of about 1,000 acres,with 9 solar thermal plants.
• Solar energy can only be produced during daylight to make electricity. That energy has to be used during the night but the production stops when the sun goes down.
• Solar panels which are also known as photovoltaic panels are made mostly from silicon.
• Researchers are working on a solar window film that could eventually be used on the windows of homes to reduce energy costs. Researchers say it could possibly even be sprayed on one day.
• Even though you have to invest more initially to buy the solar panels, with  solar panel costs dropping, you should now be able to save money.
• Robots that install solar panels around the clock and in all types of weather are current being developed and tested.
• Solar power history dates back to at least 700 BC, when the sun rays were used to create fire, with the help of magnifying glasses.
• Passive solar designs were used for the first time by Romans and Greeks. Their buildings were facing south, so the sun could light and heat the indoor areas.
• The year when the first solar panels were released was 1956. Two years later space programs began using them and they remained an important source of energy ever since. One example is the International Space Station, which uses solar energy.
• We’re working to grow the interesting facts about solar energy page so be sure to remember to come back.

INTERESTING facts 

about Recycling

The process of recycling involves reusing waste materials and making new products from them while trying to avoid wasting any materials which might be useful.

With recycling, fewer fresh materials are needed, less energy is used and our air and water pollution is reduced.

You’ve seen the recycle symbol on plastic containers a thousand times but did you ever notice a number inside the symbol? Look at the water bottle sitting next to you or in your fridge, look for the recycle symbol and notice what number is inside it, it’s probably a 1 or a 2. Below we tell you what the most common numbers mean, it’s simple but something we should all know including children.

Important! Be sure to read below, why to never reuse a #1 plastic water bottle to drink out of. A #1 water bottle is your typical store bought drinking water bottle.

Instead of tossing something recyclable into the trash, you should do your part to make sure it gets recycled. Often times there’s designated areas to drop off recyclables. If you have a garbage collector at your home or office, ask them if they have a special container for you to put your recyclables in.

Below are some interesting facts about recycling:

• Using an average 12 ounce soda or beer can, it takes about 33 empty aluminum cans to equal one pound.
• The average disposable diaper sold today could easily last well over one hundred years in a local landfill and the average baby will need at least 7500 diapers from birth until potty/toilet trained.
• Glass is 100% recyclable, it doesn’t lose quality, durability or purity during the recycling process.
• The international agency for research on cancer has said that styrene ( what styrofoam comes from – polystyrene  or polystyrene foam from the styrene monomer) is a probable carcinogen and the EPA says it’s a suspected toxin to some of the bodies organs. The National Toxicology Program has deemed it an anticipated human carcinogen. When you use a Styrofoam cup, remember they have a long lifespan in a landfill and are very unlikely to ever be recycled. Styrofoam is also known to be a choking hazard for a lot of animals.
• Have you heard of fog harvesting? There’s a net (sometimes referred to as a fog harvesting fence or fog harvesting tower) that with the help of wind can take fog and turn it into clean drinking water and they are improving peoples lives in some areas of the world where water is scarce.
• There’s a number inside the recycle symbol on most plastics, it’s usually on or near the bottom of every plastic container. If your drinking out of one right now it most likely has a 1 or 2 on it. Recycled #2 plastics are heavier plastics than #1 plastics. A #2 plastic would be a typical milk jug, some juice bottles and even detergent jugs. If it has a 1, which is what an average water bottle sold in the local grocery by the pack would most likely have on it. You may notice the #1 plastic is probably very clear and thinner than the #2 container. Different grades of plastics are recycled into different products.
• #1 plastics or (PET plastics) are often times recycled into products using fleece, jackets, carpet, backpacks, sleeping bags etc.
• #2 plastics can be recycled into heavier more durable products than #1 plastics like plastic crates, outdoor plastic furniture, play sets for children, toys, buckets, and even back into drinking and food grade containers and more.
• Plastics #2, #4 and #5 are the plastics that can be made safest for foods and drinking. Notice we didn’t mention #1, while #1 is considered safe enough by the FDA to drink the contents once, most health advocates agree that manufactures shouldn’t recycle the #1 plastic back into a drinking bottle again because of bacteria concerns.
• Back to #1 grade water bottles. Do not reuse #1 grade plastic bottles, think of the 1 as (one time use) because they are not manufactured for repeated use.Repeated use of a #1 plastic container for drinking or eating can release unwanted, unhealthy chemicals in your food and drink, washing it does not help, washing it does not make it safer and can actually release more  chemicals. I’m guilty, I’ve done it but not any more.
• The battery pack on some hybrid drive vehicles manufactured today like the Toyota Prius can contain a whopping 20+ pounds of a rare earth metal called lanthanum. 90-95% of the earths lanthanum has been coming from China for years. China has recently made claims that they will scale back mining and exporting it, those are the facts so In theory by the time the battery on your new Toyota Prius goes bad (probably 10+ years) it could be a valuable recyclable.
• Did you know food scraps can be recycled into an excellent compost for gardening? Breads, vegetables, fruit peels, coffee grounds and even eggshells are just a few of the ingredients that can be used to strengthen your soil’s fertility.
• We all use bottles and jars either directly or indirectly, Americans discard about 28 billion of them each year.
• Buenos Aires is home to about 3 million people which accumulate about 6 thousand tons of trash per day. It’s estimated that around 90% of their trash isn’t being recycled which is overloading their landfills and making garbage disposal a growing concern.
• The most used metal in the world today is iron.
• The second most used metal in the world today is aluminum followed by copper.
• The typical can made in America has about 25% recycled steel in it.
• Upcycling is when a material is recycled or transitioned into a more purposeful and valuable item than it was originally. For example, recycled bottles are used to make fleece which is used to make clothes.
• Some strange things I’ve seen upcycled into other things are: A teapot and pan upcycled into a cool lamp, wood coat hangers combined with a bicycle rim upcycled into a unique chandelier and thousands of prescription lenses used to make a dazzling and glimmering chandelier ball.
• What is Repurposing? Repurposing is when a tool or item is simply used for something other than what the manufacturer created it for. For example, people often use car tires to protect boats when docking.
• Statistics say that about 80% of everything which is thrown by Americans can be recycled. The reality is that less than 30% is being recycled. There is a lot of room for improvement.
• All the jars and glass bottles thrown away during one month by Americans could fill a huge skyscraper, the size of the Empire State Building. All these glass containers could be recycled instead.
• It’s estimated that millions of creatures from the sea have been killed by plastic garbage and bags which are thrown in the oceans.
• There is a huge patch of garbage on the ocean and that’s a fact. It’s called the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and is an enormous cesspool of various chemicals with a high reading of plastic pollutants. what we’re unclear on is it’s actual size which is now estimated to be larger than all of the United States.
• If a ton of paper is recycled, around 17 trees are saved, as well as two oil barrels, 4100 energy kilowatts, 60 pounds worth of pollution and over 3 cubic yards in the landfills. If you’ve read all of the interesting facts about recyclingto this point, you’re incredible!

celeberation of 100th

 post in

 A REAL FOOT PRINT OF FACTS

Well, folks, I’ve reached a pretty neat milestone; this is my 100th post! I’ve been trying to think about what to write, as I consider the number 100 to be pretty symbolic, and I’m big on symbolism and celebrations. Posts 1-99 and 101-199 were and can be used for platforms for my various experiences, opinions and rants, so I thought I would do something different for this momentous occasion.  so I had to do some reading and research around the Net in order to dig up some interesting/cool facts. So, sit backand enjoy; I wish I could keep this post to 100 words, but that will never happen!

1. 100 pennies equals one dollar.
2. 100 years are a century.
3. 100 centimeters are one meter.
4. 100% means all your answers are correct.
5. A person who lives to be 100 is called a centenarian.
6. C is the Roman numeral for 100.  C comes from the word Latin word centrum.
7. An American football field is 100 yards long.
8. 10 ten dollar bills are 100 dollars.
9.  20 five dollar bills are 100 dollars.
10. 100 quarters equals 25 dollars
11. 100 years ago Theodore Roosevelt was our President.
12. The San Francisco earthquake happened 100 years ago.
13. 100 years ago SOS was adopted as the universal distress signal.
14. The 100 Years War started between England and France in 1336.
15. The Old Hundred Gold Mine is in Silverton, Colorado.
16. Winnie the Pooh lives in the Hundred Acre Woods.
17. The Hundred and One Dalmatians was written in 1961.
18. A hundred watt light bulb lasts for 750 hours.
19. The air from a sneeze has been clocked at more than 100 miles per hour.
20. Five square inches (the back of your hand) has 100 feet of blood vessels.
21. By the age of 66 most people will have shed 100 pounds of skin.
22. On average 100 people choke to death on ball-point pens each year.
23. Lightning can be seen up to 100 kilometers.
24. Squirrels can fall 100 feet without hurting themselves.
25. The place value system was developed in India in 100 BC.
26. There are 100 breeds of Cats.
27. Cats make 100 different sounds.
28. Some sharks can live to be 100.
29. In Canada 100 different languages are spoken.
30. In the U.S. there are 100 Senators, 2 from each of the 50 states.
31. 100 mile per hour winds is a Category 2 hurricane.
32. In the average person's life they will drink enough milk to fill 100 bathtubs.
33. Lobsters can live to be 100, and travel 100 miles each year.
34. More than 100 feral cats were once found living in Sleeping Beauty's castle at Disneyland.
35. One tablespoon of peanut butter has 100 calories.
36. A ladybug beetle can eat 100 aphids every two days.
37. A female mosquito can live up to 100 days.
38. Lightning strikes the earth 100 times every second.
39. Larry Lewis ran the 100-yard dash in 17.8 seconds in 1969, setting a new world's record for runners in the 100-years-or-older class. He was 101.
40. The electric Xebra Roadster can travel 100 miles per charge.
41. Sleeping Beauty slept 100 years.
42. The first person to win the Indianapolis 500 at a speed of over 100 MPH was Billy Arnold in 1930.
43. If you had 100 billion dollars, you could spend 3 million dollars a day, every day, for the next 100 years.
44. Water boils at 100 degrees centigrade.
45. In clear water, a submerged submarine can be spotted from the air at depths up to 100 feet.
46. About 100 people each year die from severe allergic reactions to bee stings.
47. Moose can eat over 100 pounds of plants each day.
48. In the last 98 years, more than 100 billion Crayola crayons have been made.
49. Parents buy enough crayons in a year to make a giant crayon 35 feet in diameter and 100 feet taller than the Statue of Liberty.
50. In February, 1996, the 100 billionth Crayola crayon was made by Fred Rogers of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood. It now resides in the Crayola Hall of Fame in Easton, Pa.
51. Starbucks buys over 100 million pounds of coffee each year.
52. It takes 100 hickory seeds to make one pound of shelled nuts.
53. The average hippo weighs 100 pounds at birth.
54. King salmon are the largest salmon in the Pacific Ocean. They can weigh over 100 pounds.
55. Eskimos have over 100 words for ice.
56. The body gives off the amount of heat equivalent to a 100-watt light bulb
57. There are 100 sweat glands in 1 square inch of skin.
58. As you focus on each word in this sentence, your eyes swing back and forth 100 times a second.
59. More than 100 live tarantulas were flown in for the filming of Indiana Jones, Raiders of the Lost Ark.
60. About 37 grams of salt can be dissolved in 100 grams of water
61. Camels and crocodiles can live to be 100 years old.
62. Rip Van Winkle slept 100 years.
63. The first Rolls Royce was made over a 100 years ago.
64. The Wright Brothers invented the first airplane over 100 years ago.
65. Elvis Presley has been on Billboards Hot 100 list more than any other singer.
66. One kilowatt-hour (kWh) equals the amount of electricity needed to burn a 100 watt light bulb for 10 hours.
67. A typical high power solar panel generates 100 Watts or electricity and measures about 2 feet by 4 feet
68. Hunters in the US kill over 100 million animals each year.
69. The longest car ever made is a limousine 100 feet long containing a swimming pool, and a king-sized water bed.
70. The most points ever scored in an NBA game were 100 by Wilt Chamberlain in 1962.
71. The 100th day of 2006 is April 10.
72. The tallest apartment building has 100 floors and is in Chicago, Illinois.
73. The world's fastest man is Tim Montgomery who ran 100 meters in 9.78 seconds.
74. The world record for hula hooping is 100 hula hoops at one time by a girl from Australia in 2005.
75. 100 written in the binary system is 1100100.  This is the number the computer uses for 100.
76. The standard prefix for 100 is hecto-.
77. The sum of the first 9 prime numbers is 100.
78. Number 100 on the Periodic Table of Elements is fermium, a rare radioactive earth metal.
79. There are 100 verses in the song 99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall.
80. Benjamin Franklin's picture is on the $100 dollar bill.
81. There are 100 letter tiles in a Scrabble game.
82. In India and Israel 100 is the phone number for the police.
83. The Hundred Dresses by Eleanor Estes is a Newbery Honor Book, 1944.
84. Hitty, Her First Hundred Years, by Rachel Fields won the Newbery Award in 1929.
85. An IQ of 100 is normal for an adult.
86. 100% means all of one something.
87. A "hundred" is a unit of measure of land, or the amount of land necessary for 100 people to live on.
88. The century plant, or agave, lives only 25 years, but blooms only "once in century."
89. A centennial is a 100 year anniversary.
90. Centenary is an adjective meaning 100.
91. A "$100 Hamburger" is a private airplane flight made just to go to a restaurant out of town.
92. The factors of 100 are 2, 4, 5, 10,
20, 25, and 50.
93. In the Dewey Decimal System of the library, books about philosophy & psychology will be found in the 100 section.
94. Today you will need $100 to buy what cost $80 in 1996, just ten years ago, or $4.80 in Gabriel Fahrenheit used his own body temperature (stated as 100 degrees) in calculations for the Fahrenheit thermometer.
95. Lava can flow out of a volcano at over 100 miles per hour.
96. The hottest day ever in Seattle, Washington, was 100° F., June 9, 1955,
97. Phoenix, Arizona, has more days over 100° F. than any other US city.
98. The longest number of days when Phoenix temperatures were over 100° F. happened in June and July of 1993, 76 days.
99. Mexico City is at 100 degrees west longitude.
100. Bangkok, Thailand is at 100 degrees east longitude.

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