Jaakko Timonen, 7
We do not know for sure where the baby smell comes from.
It has been suggested that the smell is due to chemicals secreted by the baby's sweat glands in the sweat, or from the amniotic fluid in which the baby has bathed in the womb, or from the white paste that covers the baby's skin at birth (baby gloves).
However, there is a reason for the smell. A good scent helps parents fall in love with their child and increases their desire to take care of the baby.
Brain researchers have noticed that the smell of a baby seems to intoxicate the brains of people, especially mothers.
The parts of the brain that are related to pleasure and rewards react to the baby's scent. A bit like eating really good chocolate that you don't want to stop eating.
The world of smells is important for the relationship between the baby and the parents. A baby can recognize the smell of its own mother's milk immediately after birth, because the smell is the same as in amniotic fluid.
Almost immediately after the baby is born, the mother also learns to recognize the smell of her own baby. Parents also find the scent of their older children to be generally pleasant, although this decreases the older the child is.
Marjo Flykt
university lecturer
university of Helsinki
Spaghetti behaves strangely when you cut it.
When you cut a stick of spaghetti, why does it break into three pieces instead of two?
Pinja Heino, 10
Spaghetti stick splitting into three parts has been of interest to physicists for a long time. It was a rather difficult problem, because the explanation was not found until 2005.
The phenomenon is based on the stick breaking apart again after the first break.
When twisting a spaghetti stick, the greatest internal stress typically occurs in the middle of the stick. Although the stick looks uniform in thickness, in reality there are always thicker and thinner parts.
When the tension exceeds the breaking point of the stick, the stick breaks in the middle part at the point where the stick is weakest.
When the stick breaks, its free ends stretch quickly. This creates bending waves that propagate along the stick. Those bending waves are powerful and they create stresses in the stick, which usually cause half of the stick to break again.
The same phenomenon also applies to many other stick-like objects, such as the poles of pole vaulters, which break into at least three parts when broken.
Cutting spaghetti in half in a controlled manner is also possible. One way is to twist the stick lengthwise at least two thirds of a turn and then bend it slowly. This way, the stick is guaranteed to always break into two parts. However, in kitchen conditions this art is quite difficult.
Tom Kuusela
University researcher in physics
University of Turku
Ice reflects the Sun's radiation back into space.
Why does the melting of ice affect climate change?
Noah Bergman, 10
Climate is a sensitive and complex system. The melting of the ice therefore has many effects on the climate. Two of them are particularly notable.
First of all, the ice and especially the snow on top of it reflect the Sun's radiation back into space.
When the ice melts, open sea or land is revealed beneath it, which reflect radiation much worse. Therefore, more and more radiation is absorbed into the soil. This warms the climate.
Secondly, ice and especially snow insulate heat well.
The air temperature above the ice-covered sea can be -30 degrees Celsius or even colder, even though there is seawater under the ice with a temperature close to the freezing point (-1.8 degrees).
So the ice acts like a top coat and does not allow heat to escape from the sea into the air. Melting the ice, on the other hand, is equivalent to taking off the top coat.
As the climate warms, the seas remain open longer and longer in autumn. Thus, in late autumn and early winter, when the air is already cold, the sea releases heat into the atmosphere, which warms the climate even more.
Timo Vihma
research professor
weather Institute
Mars is a cold and harsh planet.
What would Martian water taste like?
Olavi Peltluhta, 13
Martian the conditions are harsh. The air is very thin and the temperature is mostly on the freezing side.
In those conditions, water can be either solid ice or water vapor. If water does spill onto the surface of Mars, it evaporates or freezes almost immediately.
Both the southern and northern polar ice caps of Mars have ice a few kilometers thick, or as much as Greenland at its best.
Water has also been detected under the surface of Mars at a clearly higher temperature and higher pressure. Despite the harsh conditions, water has also been detected on the surface. Stream-like phenomena have been found there.
The water rising from the ground to the surface was dirty and undrinkable. It could even be poisonous to humans. The dirt is caused by salts and other compounds in the soil.
However, there is no certainty as to what Martian water would taste like. There are no proper research results on the matter. Most likely the water would be salty due to the salts in the soil.
Maybe you could get tasteless and drinkable water from inside the polar ice caps of Mars instead.
Harry Lehto
docent of astronomy
University of Turku
Send the question, the questioner's full name and age to [email protected]. The column is edited by Touko Kauppinen and Juha Merimaa.
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