I watched a HK-made science TV show for kids featuring this question...
If you spilled water on your floor, you put a piece of cloth or paper towel on it, why does the water gets absorbed?
This is the same concept explaining how sponge able to hold water, just how does it work?
Yikes I am stumped. I am a college graduate and I can't explain this.
The phenomenon is called capillary action.
I don't remember seeing that formula in my college physics class. Of course, the formula is not shown to the elementary school audience watching the show.
This also explains how plants draw water from the earth.
Watching science education shows can be a humbling experience. There are many many scientific phenomenons that I can't explain!
3 comments:
That's something I just learned in my Biology 101 class. You probably want to look at the $H_2 O$ molecule and why it's polar.
Another phenomenon I was interested in a while back was why mercury is a liquid. It turns out to be very interesting (even though I don't quite understand the explaination).
Childhood experience: yikes the text book has a 2 page span of a big cockroach! Forever freaked out by biology (even today). High school students need to cut up frogs and stuff too, also freaks me out. Somehow I got by without ever taking biology.
Your textbook is horrible.
I am still freaked out by those pages; it's just our nature: anyone would be freaked out by a 2-page large roach photo!!!
I am also freaked out by frogs if I don't have latex gloves. Somehow I am ok when I have gloves on. I still need to see whether i'm freaked out by a human corpse. Hope not!
Post a Comment