Unenlightening Right Answer Game

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Some animals know by the length of the day. As the days grow shorter they prepare to hibernate. Other animals fall asleep for the winter when it gets cold out. Sometimes, those animals don't need to hibernate at all because the weather is so mild.

Why is the earth round?
 
Gravity.

(I always thought animals knew it was time to hibernate when they felt sleepy).

Why do laser printers cost more than inkjets?
 
In actuality an Inkjet may cost you more in the long run. Have you noticed that the cheaper the printer the more expensive the cost of refills? Sometimes it's cheaper to buy a whole new printer. I found this little tidbit of information:

According to Lyra Research of Newton, Mass., the cartridge replacement market is now worth $21 billion annually. HP, for example, makes over $10 billion a year from ink cartridge sales, and Lexmark earns over $2 billion from ink supplies, more than half its total revenue.

Why do some lizards change color?
 
they want to know what's going on in the world.

why don't humans have tails?
 
We do, they are just speriorly short

how do babies happen?
 
sperm and egg meet, the DNA from each cell is combined to form a complete genome and is replicated & expressed billions of times over until eventually, a baby is born.

why don't people drive buses everywhere instead of cars?
 
From Wikipedia
The Middle English word diaper originally referred to the type of cloth rather than its use; "diaper" was the term for a pattern of small repeated geometric shapes, and later came to describe a white cotton or linen fabric with this pattern.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaper#cite_note-2 The first cloth diapers consisted of a special type of soft tissue sheet, cut into geometric shapes. This type of pattern was called diapering and eventually gave its name to the cloth used to make diapers and then to the diaper itself, traced back to 1590s England.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaper#cite_note-3 This usage stuck in the United States and Canada, but in Britain the word "nappy" took its place. Most sources believe nappy is a diminutive form of the word napkin

Why is Pi called Pi?
 
The scattering of light makes it look blue. The sky is actually clear.

Who invented the fan?
 
[FONT=Verdana,Arial,Helvetica][SIZE=-1]Neurologists are, as of yet, are unaware of exactly how we process raw sound data once it enters the cerebral cortex in the brain.

How are emotions processed?
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How does the mind translate sound waves?
Like a telephone, the ear translates sound waves into electrical impulses. What we perceive as sound starts out as vibration, which spreads in waves, usually though the air. To get to the brain the waves must be transformed into electrical impulses, and this happens in the ear. The ear has three main parts, the outer, middle, and inner ear, and they work in sequence to interpret sound. The ear is also the organ of balance, and helps us orient ourseves in the physical world.



The outer ear collects sound. It is shaped to gather up sound waves and channel them into the ear canal. The pinna or auricle, the visible ear, is designed so that the noises coming from in front of a person are perceived as louder. Almost everyone's ears stick out a little in back to scoop in sounds from in front. This naturally makes a listener turn toward what he is trying to hear, and makes someone in a conversation turn toward the people she is talking with. The folds in the outer ear are designed to bounce the sound around in such a way that the brain receives clues about the quality of the noise. Because vertebrates have two ears, they can tell which side the sound is coming from. The ear on the side towards the noise sends a louder signal to the brain, and from this difference, the brain can instantly calculate distance and direction.
From the pinna the sound wave is sent down the ear canal. It reaches the eardrum next, the entrance to the middle ear. The eardrum, also called the tympanum, is a diaphragm, a tightly stretched piece of specialized skin, and it vibrates in time to the sound waves that hit it. It vibrates faster for high sounds and slower for low sounds. The vibrations get bigger as the sound wave coming in is louder and slower for softer sounds. This changes the mechanical motion of the sound wave into a vibration.
The middle ear amplifies the sound. There's a small bone that touches the inner side of the eardrum. It's called the malleus, or hammer, because of its shape. It transfers the vibration from the eardrum on into the middle ear, by vibrating in time with the diaphragm. It transfers the sound to the anvil, the next bone along, and from there the vibration goes to the stirrup bone. The muscle surrounding these bones is generally slack, letting them vibrate, but can tighten up in a noisy situation, to slow he motion of the bones, damp the vibration and protect the ear. As the vibration goes through the small bones of the middle ear, it is amplified, in the same
way that water pressure is amplified in a smaller diameter hose because the same push is applied over a smaller area. The hammer (malleus), anvil (incus) and stirrup (stapes), collectively called the ossicles, are the smallest bones in the body.
Next, the inner ear transforms the sound. The end of the stirrup bone connects to the inner ear, at an oval window in the cochlea. The spiral-shaped cochlea is called the organ of hearing, because it is here that the sound we perceive is actually created. Up to this point, sound has been a wave and then a vibration, and it traveled through air and bone. In the liquid-filled cochlea, it will be transformed into electricity. When the tiny stirrup bone presses rhythmically on the oval window of the cochlea, the liquid inside this coiled chamber moves. The cochlea is indeed curled in a spiral, but the tube forming the spiral is a tapered cone-shaped passage. If the cochlea were uncoiled, it would appear to be a long tapered cone, filled with fluid and divided by a membrane set with rows of hair cells. When the fluid in the cochlea moves, it moves the membrane. The membrane's motion moves the hair cells set along it. The shape of the cochlea, its long taper, guides the vibration of the membrane so that it moves hair cells, or groups of hair cells, at a point and to a degree corresponding to the sound's pitch, volume, and timbre. The activation of the cells is in a pattern analogous to the sound wave they receive. Their motion sends signals to bundles of nerves at the root of each cell. These nerves send electrical impulses (by trading ions) to the spiral ganglia, and from there to the auditory portion of the eighth cranial nerve, which goes to the brain. The brain interprets these impulses (that's another story), and we hear.


why does a boat float?
 
Gravity and relative density issues.

How many fonts should I have on my computer?
 
The reason Saturn has rings made up of mostly ice and rock is because it has a stronger gravitational pull than other planets. This is because Saturn is so big. This gravitational pull causes things to become attracted to Saturn and orbit it in a ring-like pattern. Scientists don't why or how the "stuff" that orbits Saturn got to be so close to it in the first place. Sometimes this phenomenon is explained by a comet or one of Saturn's moons crashing into it. The pieces of the crash then began orbiting it. Saturn is very far away so we don't know exactly how many rings it has but it's probably a few hundred.



What is the explanation behind Halloween?
 
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