Electricity can’t be stored, so when I turn on a light, the power station must immediately produce some extra electricity. How is this possible? From an engineering perspective, how are power stations designed to handle continually varying loads?
First of all, the electricity you use in your house doesn’t “Come from a power station”. It comes from a transformer located maybe 300 feet from your house….
Why is Hiroshima habitable now when the half life of uranium-235 is 700 million years?
“Half-life” means “half of the atoms have decayed after this time”. So a very long half-life means that the atoms rarely decay – meaning that it’s not actually…
Who gave North Korea nuclear weapons?
It wasn’t any single entity–North Korea built their nuclear program through determination and theft. They began research in the 1950s–The Soviets trained their scientists and built their first…
How close was Britain from losing WW2?
My grandfather was a ww2 vet; he told me that after we got crushed by Hitler he stumbled upon a photograph of british ladies clearing their destroyed homes…
Who lived in ancient Israel before the Jewish race began?
Much of what we know about ancient Israel’s earliest inhabitants comes from archaeological evidence. The land was raw and harsh. The people who lived there before the Jewish…
Why did Stalin choose to leave all his power to Khrushchev instead of appointing someone else before retiring?
Stalin failed to select Khrushchev as his successor after his death. Stalin refused to appoint any successor who would take over after him. Soon after Stalin’s passing in…
How close to the South Pole do people live?
OK – so the large building in the photo below is where most of the people who live and work at the South pole live. If you zoom…
Were the tanks sent to the Soviet Union under Lend-Lease returned after the war?
No, and here’s the deal: pretty much nothing sent through Lend-Lease came back, despite what the “lending” part might suggest. The Soviets got around 7,000 tanks, mostly M4…
What would the Sun look like from Pluto?
The Earth is 150 million kilometers from the Sun. Pluto is 6 billion kilometers away, that is, 40 times farther away. Therefore, the Sun would be seen as…
Has Voyager 2 seen anything new since it left the solar system?
Voyager 2 is one of the most amazing space probes ever launched by NASA. It was sent into space way back in 1977, and it’s still going strong…