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SALT LAKE CITY — Dr. Seuss said, "Sometimes the questions are complicated and the answers are simple." I'm not sure what he said after that, but it probably rhymed with simple. "If you get stressed out, you might get a pimple." I don't know, I'm just speculating.
Regardless, that great philosophical Dr. Seuss we all grew up reading had a point. And here are five questions that boggle the mind with the simplest answers possible.
Why is yawning contagious?— Melanie K.
When someone mentions lice, you probably instinctively scratch your head. And when someone in close proximity yawns, you probably yawn. Spontaneous yawning occurs in every known vertebrate, and even in unborn babies within the womb. Contagious yawning seems to be an empathetic reaction that most humans (and even chimpanzees and domestic dogs) have towards one another.
Social yawning has received a lot of attention within the last few years, and surprisingly in correlation with the study of autism. A team of psychologists and neuroscience specialists at the University of Connecticut published a study in 2010 in the journal, Child Development, that studied susceptibility of contagious yawning in 120 children, one to six years old. They found an increase in contagious yawning among four year olds compared to younger children. But when 28 children with autism spectrum disorder were studied, they showed less susceptibility to social yawning. Children with more severe forms of autism showed no contagious yawning at all.
The primary author of the study, Molly Helt, said, "This lends support to the idea that the social mind develops over time through a process of mimicry and feedback." And it implies that contagious yawning is a response to social and emotional cues around us in an attempt to feel like we are part of the pack.
Why does the smoke alarm battery always die at night?
It's been said that there are no guarantees in life. I disagree. Children will always get sick the day before a family vacation. Kiosk salesmen will always be annoying. And the smoke alarm battery will most often die in the middle of the night, waking your entire household and driving your dogs crazy.
Some people believe that the drop in temperature at night will induce battery failure if the battery is already low, because battery performance is affected by lower temperatures. State Fire Marshal Coy D. Porter suggests that there's a more probable cause for the annoying wake-up call. "Often people don't notice the occasional beep during the day because of the proximity of the detector to the functional rooms in the house. Once they go to the bedroom areas, they then notice the chirping of a low battery."
But try not to silence that annoying sound with a baseball bat. Disabling the alarm and neglecting to replace the batteries can leave your household without the protection it needs. "Unfortunately, statistics from the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) do show that when smoke alarms fail to operate, it is usually because batteries are missing, disconnected or dead," Porter said. "People are more likely to remove or disconnect batteries because of nuisance activations."
It's a good idea to change the batteries when you change your clocks to and from daylight savings time.
Why is it only your fingers and toes that look like prunes after being in water for long periods of time?
Having prune-like fingers and toes after being emerged for a while in water is one of the amazing ways our body adapts to its environment. Evolutionary biologists believe that the grooves in wrinkled fingers and toes allowed our ancestors to grab wet objects easier and have better footing on slippery surfaces.
Most scientists believe this is caused by dead keratin cells on our phalanges swelling up when they absorb water. The thick skin on the bottoms of your hands and feet have much more keratin cells than the skin on the rest of your body, which is why you see most of the wrinkling there.
I'd like to know why we don't gain the same amount of weight that we eat? If I weigh myself right before I eat 3 pounds of food, then weigh myself after, why don't I gain 3 pounds? — Doug
"Yes, for the moment immediately after ingestion you would weigh an additional three pounds. But the weight gain would be transitory," said Eldon Wayne Askew, Ph.D. Most bathroom scales are incorrect though, and may not pick up on the weight gain.
But luckily the body doesn't hold on to every calorie we intake. "Immediately the body would, via metabolism, start losing the weight by CO2 production, insensible water loss through the lungs and sweating, excretion of water from the food and its metabolism in urine and excretion of indigestible material via the feces," explained Askew. "Some weight retention might occur hours later if the energy extracted from the food was not used for exercise and other bodily processes."
What does OK stand for?
Believe it or not, there's one man considered to be the nation's leading expert on the origins of the word OK. Allan Metcalf, a professor of English at MacMurray College in Jacksonville, Ill., has even written six different books on this popular acronym.
He believes that OK originated from a joke in a Boston newspaper in 1839. O.k. was used as an abbreviation for "all correct." The joke being that neither "all" nor "correct" begins with those initials. Not exactly a knee-slapper, but the abbreviation caught on when Martin VanBuren ran for president. Like all good politicians, he needed a catchy slogan. Van Buren was from Kinderhook, N.Y., and adopted the nickname "Old Kinderhook" and the campaign slogan "Old Kinderhook is OK!" Catchy, no?
But even back in the 1840s there was political mud slinging and OK became even more popular because of it. Opponents of president Andrew Jackson spread a rumor that he was a horrible speller and would sign off on important documents with "OK" because he believed that to be the proper acronym for "oll korrect," or "all correct." Apparently attacking another politician's grammar was the worst they could come up with back then.
Since that time, OK has become one of the most commonly used words in the English language.
What other questions have you always wanted answered? Ask them in the comments or send an email and we might get your question in our next article.
Nicole Pollard currently resides in Canyon Country, Calif.
