本当のほほえみと偽りのほほえみ
The smile may no longer be an effective way to mask one’s true feelings.
Some psychologists have claimed that true smailes and false smailes use different muscles.
For example, in the true smile, the muscles surrounding the eyes tighten, while the cheek muscles pull the corners of the lips upward.
On the other hand, in the false smile, the muscles between the eyebrows move slightly, while the muscles around the mouth pull the corners of the lips downward.
If the psychologists’ claim is proven to be true, perhaps people will worry less about what they say and more about which muscles to use when they smile.
「熱い」か「辛い」か
When English-speaking people talk about “hot” food, are they saying the food is spicy like curry, or are they talking about its temperature, as in “hot” coffee?
These two different meanings of “hot” may seen confusing to Japanese students, but as a matter of fact, the word is the right one for describing the way the body responds to spice and heat.
A simple explanation would go something like this: when we eat or drink, the same nerves in the mouth react both to spicy chemicals in the food and to a rise in temperature.
The English expression, therefore, reflects this fact about the human body.
紳士服と婦人服でボタンが違う理由
Western clothes have buttons on the right for men.
This is convenient because the majority of men are right-handed.
It is easier for them to user the right hand when buttoning up.
Why, then, do women’s clothes have buttons on the left, even thought most women are also right-handed?
Is this a kind of discrimination?
In fact, there is a reason why women’s buttons are on that side.
In the past, buttons were quite expensive and only very rich people could afford them.
Women in such wealthy families had servants who dressed them.
Therefore, to make it easier for the servants, buttons were put on the left.
紫色のもと
The color purple has often been regarded as a symbol of wealth and power, but the dye used to produce it did not have an elegant beginning.
An ancient people living along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea first discovered how to make the dye from Murex snails, small sea animals with hard shells.
Unlike other snails, Murex snails give off a strong-smelling liquid that changes color when it comes into contact with air and light.
From this liquid the people produced the purple dye.
If we visit the places where the dye was produced, we might still be able to see the shells of Murex snails.
Let us hope we cannot smell them.
*Murex snails…「アクキガイ」
酸素の発見
In August of 1771, Joseph Priestley put a small branch of mint into a transparent closed space with a candle that burned out the air until it soon went out.
After 27 days, he lit the extinguished candle again and it burned perfectly well in the air that previously would not support it.
So Priestley proved that plants somehow change the composition of the air.
In another celebrated experiment from 1772, Priestley kept a mouse in a jar of air until it collapsed.
He found that a mouse kept with a plant would survive.
These kinds of observations led Priestley to offer an interesting theory that plants restore to the air whatever breathing animals and burning candles remove – what was later coined by Lavoisier “oxygen.”
