Six STEM Tweets

Six tweets that celebrate engineering and all things STEM.

I scroll so you don’t have to.

Hi friends - hope you all enjoyed the Halloween special issue. All regular and special issues are online at https://sixstemtweets.beehiiv.com/ 

A very happy Diwali to all those who celebrate!

And if you don’t learn something new and interesting when you read this, it’s my fault. Let me know how I can fix it.

#1 🤯 

The history of human experimentation with food is fascinating. Think of the first person to eat mushrooms. Or snails.

And this?!? Using frogs to preserve milk? Who thought of this? And how many frog species did they try before they got to the right one? The mind boggles! 😮 

How does it work, you ask?

“The skin of brown frogs, Rana temporaria, releases a unique secretion packed with potent antibacterial and anti-fungal peptides, making it a natural defence mechanism against both bacteria and fungi”

More details: https://www.academia.edu/87779686/Composition_and_Antimicrobial_Activity_of_the_Skin_Peptidome_of_Russian_Brown_Frog_Rana_temporaria

#2 🤯 

How cool is this!

#3 🤯 

Look around you. If you know anyone who’s 24 or younger, there’s always been someone in the ISS since they were born! 🤩 

There are cathedrals everywhere for those with the eyes to see them especially in space

#4 🤯 

And 0 looks like a portal too! 🤔 

#5 🤯 

I love the “airports of light” metaphor!

What a perfect way describe the landing spots for these massive undersea cables and the data they carry.

#6 🤯 

🤣 😂 

Daylight Saving is such a funny concept - esp to folks who grew up in the tropics & didn’t need to change the clocks.

Clocks in the most of the US went back an hour on Sat night. Some EU countries did that last week. NZ and Australia did that a few weeks earlier - on different days

Try explaining that to someone and you quickly realize the absurdity

This is issue #49. Here’s some fun facts about 49:

• The atomic number of indium - a silvery-white post-transition metal and one of the softest elements. It was discovered in 1863 and named for the indigo blue line in its spectrum.

• The code for international direct dial phone calls to Germany

• The sum of the digits of the square of 49 (2401) is the square root of 49.

• 49 is the first square where the digits are squares. In this case, 4 and 9 are squares.

• During the Manhattan Project, plutonium was also often referred to simply as "49". Number 4 was for the last digit in 94 (atomic number of plutonium) and 9 for the last digit in Pu-239, the weapon-grade fissile isotope used in nuclear bombs.

• Roughly 2,030 kilometers (1,260 mi)  of the Canada–United States border follows the 49th parallel

That’s it for this issue.

Hit ‘reply’ to tell me what you think.

And hit ‘forward’ to share with your friends and family.

Let’s all celebrate science and engineering and curiosity.

Best wishes,

Harshal