Radio Solutions Questions from 4BC

Today we had a great question from Xanthe.

She asked why do smellies (farts) smell worse in the shower?

There are actually a few reasons for this and they all add together to make those smellies smellier.

• the shower cubicle is a small enclosed space with not a lot of air circulating through


• you are naked so none of the smell gets absorbed in clothing


• water vapour easily attaches to methane molecules (smellies) making the smell more readily attach to the nostril lining, and


• the warm vapours will cause any crusted mucus in your nose to soften and disengage, providing more surface area within the sinuses to absorb the smell.

So there you have it, those smellies really are smellier in the shower!

Radio Solutions Questions from 4BC

Here are some more interesting questions from last week.

On Monday a young man from Gregory Terrace asked about a rubbish tip in Mexico that can be seen from outer space.

There is a rubbish dump in mexico (see picture) which is eight miles long and one mile wide and is home to hundreds of foragers called pepenadores (garbage people). These people live work and play there and they even have a church built on the rubbish. However, it is not visible from space.

One of the biggest rubbish dumps in the world was the rubbish dump of New York known as the Fresh Kills Rubbish Dump located on Staten Island. The dump is now closed but not before it had accumulated over 100 years worth of rubbish. A lot of the rubble from 9/11 was dumped there and unfortunately it has become the last resting ground for many of the victims whose bodies were not recovered. Families of these people have been fighting for years to have the rubbish searched for remains. The rubbish dump area is the size of Wales and 30 metres high and could be seen from space. It is now being turned into parkland (3 times the size of central park) with a memorial for the 9/11 victims.

The world's largest rubbish dump isn't a conventional rubbish dump like those mentioned above, but it is a soup of plastic floating in the Pacific Ocean. It stretches from Hawaii to Japan and the plastic debris is held in place by swirling ocean currents. This plastic soup sea is twice the size of the USA. Gross!!

On Friday Emily asked us about the very first vacuum cleaner. She wanted to know if it was so big it had to be pulled by horses, just how big exactly was it?

Nice question! This vacuum cleaner, invented by Hubert Cecil Booth in 1901 was so large that it's vacuum, pump and motor were housed in a horse drawn cart from which a 100 foot hose was extended and snaked into the house. See picture to the right. It was the size of a horse drawn milk float and took 4-6 people to operate it. See a picture of a milk float below.

The reason it was so large is because many homes at that time were not wired for electricity and the machine had a coal or oil powered generator which had to travel with it. As you can imagine it would have been very loud. Thankfully with the progression of electricity into homes, smaller vacuum cleaners were invented.

Queen Victoria used to have her carpets cleaned with one of these machines and the upper class would invite their friends over for vacuum parties. Amazing the things they did before tupperware!

Radio Solutions Questions from 4BC

We had a great question last week, a young listener was wondering whether Prince Leonard of Hutt was still around and if his country still existed?

The answer is yes! In fact the Principality of Hutt River is still going strong having just given out their 2008 Honours Awards.

If you haven't heard of Prince Leonard and the Principality of Hutt River keep reading because you are in for a treat. His previous name was Leonard George Casley and he was embroiled in a long running dispute with the Government of Westerna Australia over "draconian" wheat quotas in 1969. Casley and his associates resorted to a British Law (the Treason Act 1495) which allowed them to secede and declare their independence from the Commonwealth of Australia.

On the 21st April 1970 to principality of Hutt River was founded. Leonard Casley became "His Royal Highness Prince Leonard I".

They have a great website which can be found at http://www.principality-hutt-river.com/ and it is really interesting to have a look around.

Radio Solutions Questions from 4BC

Last week we had some interesting questions about the habits of our animals!

Where do birds sleep at night?

Birds tend to sleep in the same areas they inhabit during the day. They usually find a safe place and if possible they huddle together with other birds. Water birds will often sleep whilst floating on water or standing on one leg on the edge of a pond and other birds will find shelter in trees with thick foliage.

Some birds can even sleep whilst flying ... true! Birds can sleep with one eye open and this is called unihemispheric sleep and it means that half the brain is asleep and the other half is awake. This gives them the ability to watch for enemies and still catch up on sleep – and this is what allows them to fly whilst sleeping.

For those birds who do stop and rest to sleep, they fluff up their feathers to provide insulation and turn their head and rest it on their back. This gives their neck muscles a rest.

Have you ever wondered why birds don’t fall off their perch when sleeping? It is because of a special muscle around their knee joint. When they squat down and slightly bend their leg, this muscle pulls the claw muscles tight and helps them clasp around the perch. A bird cannot move his foot until he has straightened his legs.


Ashley from Belmont State School asked how he could tell whether his baby grey cockatiels are boys or girls?

The sex of normal grey cockatiels can be easily determined once the adult plumage is through at about 6 months. Unfortunately other than having expensive blood/dna tests done by a bird vet it is impossible to tell the sex of a cockatiel before this time.

However, once the adult feathers are through, depending on the colour variety the male usually has a brighter yellow face, whereas the female only has traces of yellow around the beak eyes and forehead. The male's tail feathers will be a solid grey color with no striping, but the female's will remain striped and they will have yellow spots on the underside of their flight feathers. See the picture here thanks to http://www.birdhealth.com.au/


Lilly asked, why do frogs croak more when it is raining?

In most frog species it is only the males who croak and they mostly croak to attract female frogs for mating and to warn other males away from their territory. Many tree frog species let out a “rain call” when rain is coming to advertise the fact they are there ready and waiting and that the weather conditions are perfect for mating – lots of water for egg laying and nice moist conditions outside the pond. Very romantic!

Today's Radio Solution from 4BC

6 February 2008

Today we had a question from Melissa Wu, Australia's youngest National Diving Champion, who is fitting in her school work around her gruelling 6 hour per day training schedule. Melissa had a tricky question in relation to her school work.

She wanted to know if Dopamine makes Parkinson's disease more active or less active?

Parkinson's Disease occurs when there is a lack of Dopamine in a specific part of the brain. It happens when there is a destruction of brain cells in the substantia nigra region which is the area responsible for many types of muscular movement. The substantia nigra controls muscular movements by releasing a neurotransmiter called dopamine which is needed to carry nerve messages from one brain cell to another resulting in smooth controlled movements. Without Dopamine the brain has abnormal firing patterns causing the jerky uncontrolled movements of Parkinsons.

There is also evidence that a lack of Dopamine is present in people with ADD. It seems that Dopamine's main role is to slow things down and keep things calm and controlled.

Today's Radio Solution from 4BC

4 February 2008

Ross from Cannon Hill had a great question for us today on 4BC about Helium Gas.

Why does your vioce sound higher when you have inhaled helium gas?

When we talk, sound is produced by passing air over our vocal cords (flaps of tissue in our throats) causing them to vibrate thus producing soundwaves. The speed at which the sound waves are generated is what determines the pitch. Normally, we breathe air which is a mixture of gases containing mainly nitrogen and some oxygen and is heavier than helium. Sound waves through air moves at a fairly constant 350 metres per second.

Helium is less dense than the air we normally breathe and this means that sound waves travel through it much faster than usual (around 900 metres per second). This means that if you increase the speed of the sound waves, the frequency also has to go up and this means that our voices sound much higher than usual.

Therefore the faster the sound waves produced the higher the pitch. There are a lot of videos on You Tube of people inhaling helium which are quite funny. Remember though - whilst inhaling helium from a balloon won't necessarily kill you, it can make you dizzy and you could fall and hurt yourself. As well ... NEVER EVER ... inhale helium from the cannister as this can kill you due to the pressure behind the helium.

1 February 2008

Morgan had a great question today about the weight of earth.

Does Earth get heavier with the increasing population and infrastructure associate with it?

It does get heavier. Every year, many tons of microdebris from space land on earth, approximately 40,000 tonnes, but it's really miniscule amount compared to the size of the earth and will never throw the earth off its axis.

Increasing population doesn't really change the weight of the earth – as people die new babies are born (which weigh significantly less than the people who die) as well when people die their bodies are cremated or decompose with equates to very little weight. Admittedly the population today is much more than that of hundreds of years ago, however the extra people balance out the shortfall below.

In regards to infrastructure the materials used to build are already here on earth just in different forms – so it’s really stuff that is already here just being moved around. This tends to reduce because events like fires destroy vegetation and buildings reducing it to nothing.

Today's Radio Solution from 4BC

31 January 2008

Kelsey asked us a great question today about cloud seeding. It produced a fairly long answer though - hope you enjoy it!

How does cloud seeding work and how do they actually know when it has worked?

First we need to know how rain starts. It starts as tiny droplets of water suspended in clouds. Then the droplets clump together into bigger drops (or freeze together into bigger crystals). Once the drops or crystals are big and heavy enough, they fall out of the sky. The frozen drops can melt on the way down, becoming rain, or they can fall to the ground as snow or hail.

Cloud seeding aims to jump-start this process by helping droplets to clump or freeze together when they otherwise wouldn't. To do this they usually sprinkle silver iodide from above by plane. Silver iodide (AgI) is a chemical compound that can be used in photography, as an antiseptic in medicine and for rainmaking and cloud seeding. Pictured is a Cessna Plane with cloud seeding equipment fixed to it.

To get the best from cloud seeding, weather forecasting techniques are used to detect suitable clouds in the location and target area as it is only effective in a limited number of weather conditions. A cloud must be deep enough and of a suitable temperature (between -10 and -12 degrees) and the wind must also be below a certain speed – mountainous areas seem to be the best. The silver iodide, which has a cyrstalline structure similar to that of ice, speeds up the freezing

In some places they use dry ice or propane as the gas expansion cools the air to such an extent that ice crystals can form spontaneously from the vapour phase and unlike silver iodide, the clouds don’t need ice crystals in them already.

It is difficult to measure just how much rain would have occurred had the cloud not been "seeded". The cloud did have rain in it and whether or not the seeding produced more rain is really not known. It may speed up the rain process though. However, there is credible scientific evidence for the effectiveness of winter cloud seeding over mountains (to produce snow) than there is for seeding warm-season cumuliform (convective) clouds.

The most successful seeding in Australia has been carried out in Tasmania around the Hydro Water scheme area. The perfect cloud which has been seeded should take 30 minutes to precipitate.

There have been concerns about the long term environmental effects of using silver iodide crystals and the rain containing this chemical can be absorbed by animals, plants and collect in catchment areas. The effects of this are still being debated. Not everyone is for cloud seeding as some scientists believe manipulating the natural pattern may impact on eco systems reliant on a certain amount of rain. Farmers downwind of cloud seeding events sometimes believe their rain is being stolen by seeded clouds.

In Beijing they fire silver iodide rockets into the sky where rain is desired. They plan to use cloud seeding before the Olympic Games to help clear air pollution.