Tuulikki Laakkonen, 8
If things happen in life that cannot be digested during the day, conflicting and unpleasant emotional contents can be transferred to night sleep. Especially exciting experiences, such as watching scary movies or playing wild video games, can also cause nightmares.
Mental health problems, such as depression or anxiety disorders, can increase nightmares. So are some medications and lifestyle factors, such as an unreasonable workload or excessive alcohol consumption.
Nightmares can also be related to an individual’s developmental stage. Children can often have nightmares without, for example, a mental health disorder. In this case, the bad dreams are most likely due to the fact that the child’s ability to perceive and understand his environment and to regulate his emotional life develops gradually.
The developing mind is therefore not able to internalize all the observations during waking hours. Harmless experiences in themselves can seem threatening and turn into scary dreams, which can be fueled by the child’s rich imagination.
You should tell a safe adult about your nightmares, and if necessary, healthcare professionals, such as psychologists, can also help.
Tiina Paunio
professor of psychiatry and chief physician
University of Helsinki, THL and Hus
Plants sense things too, but in different ways than humans. For example, smells are important to them.
What would life be like if I were a plant?
Matti Ahva, 5
With animals, plants and other organisms had a common initial form just under four billion years ago, after which plants and animals adapted to life in completely different ways. Animals evolved into mobile ones, and plants into much more stationary ones. However, most plants grow throughout their life.
Plants lack actual eyes, ears, brains and lungs, but they are capable of many things quite similar to us. It can be said that plants smell, taste, see, feel, hear and remember in a way. However, it happens in completely different ways than with us humans.
Plants’ senses are scattered throughout their being and not separate like ours. For example, plants do not have two eyes, but are able to sense the color, quantity and direction of light along leaves, roots and even wood.
In some respects, plants can be said to be clearly superior to humans. Humans see only a limited part of the light spectrum, i.e. the spectrum. Plants can also sense ultraviolet and infrared colors.
Plants communicate with the help of scents, which they have an endless number of different ones. With those substances, they attract and repel other organisms or ask for and give help.
As plants, we would be very attached to nature and sensitive to our environment. We would also be connected to other plants in completely different ways. It could feel like being a tight-knit part of a huge community. However, plants probably don’t have an actual emotional life, because they don’t have the brain needed to feel emotional states.
Blue Pippi
professor, botanist
The weight and shape of the toy would contribute to how long Squishmallow would take to travel to the ground.
If you drop a Squishmallow from the border between the sky and space, how long does it take for it to hit the ground?
Lilja Valtti, 7
Falling the speed of the object is practically affected by two forces: the gravitational force of the earth and the friction created by the atmosphere, i.e. air resistance.
In terms of the earth’s gravitational force, the mass of the falling body, i.e. the weight, is essential. Calculating air resistance is not easy, because it is affected by many things: the shape of the object, the cross-sectional area brought by the thickness and diameter, and the falling position, as well as the air density, which changes strongly depending on the height of the fall.
The relationship between air resistance and the speed of a falling object is also a tricky puzzle. However, the rate of fall can be estimated.
For example, the weight of the Squishmallow dinosaur is 160 grams and the cross-sectional area when it falls in a vertical position is 0.02 square meters. It’s the smallest of the Squishmallow toys. The air resistance coefficient, which depends on its shape, is of the same order as that of a spherical object.
A height of 100 kilometers is usually considered the limit of space. Dropped from there, the dinosaur stuffed toy would hit the earth’s surface after about 22 minutes. The largest Squishmallow toys would fall a couple of minutes faster. If the Earth had no air resistance at all, a Squishmallow dinosaur would reach the ground in only about two and a half minutes.
If the toy fell in a wide position and contained a lot of protrusions, the fall would slow down a bit.
Tom Kuusela
University researcher in physics
University of Turku
In the videos of the social media service Tiktok, there may be claims that are not true.
Why do you see things online that are not true?
Pearl Kivikkokangas, 9
In the Internet anyone can post any text, images or videos. No one usually supervises or checks whether the published thing is true, because no one owns the internet, but it is open to everyone.
There are different services on the Internet, such as Tiktok or Instagram, but they are mostly not very eager to monitor whether the content shared on them is true or not.
Some people or even states also deliberately publish things that are not true. They pursue their own interest by publishing false information. Also in advertisements or contests, things can be promised that are not true. A company or other entity may try to benefit from it.
Sometimes it’s also hard to tell what’s true and what’s not. For example, there is not necessarily certain information about the best treatment for a certain disease, in which case more incorrect beliefs may be spread online than researched information. Artificial intelligence also makes it difficult to distinguish between real and false information, because artificial intelligence can easily produce credible-looking information, which is not always true.
We internet users have to be careful, and you shouldn’t believe everything right away. A good rule of thumb is that if something is too good to be true, it usually isn’t.
Janne Matikainen
university lecturer in communication
university of Helsinki
Send the question, the questioner’s full name and age to [email protected]. The column is provided by Touko Kauppinen.
#Science #questions #kids #bad #dreams