Mind It!

Here are the Top 5 things that you probably didn’t know about Google.

1. Google was originally called BackRub
   Like many other booming internet companies, Google has an interesting upbringing, one that is marked by a lowly beginning. Google began as a research project in January 1996 by cofounder Larry Page, a 24-year-old Ph.D. student at Standford University. Page was soon joined by 23-year-old Sergey Brin, another Ph.D. student, forming a duo that seemed destined for failure.

   According to Google’s own corporate information, Brin and Page argued about every single topic they discussed. This incessant arguing, however, may have been what spurred the duo to rethink web-searching and develop a novel strategy that ranked websites according to the number of backlinks (i.e., according to the number of web pages that linked back to a web page being searched), and not based on the number of times a specific search term appeared on a given web page, as was the norm. (more…)

The following concerns a question in a physics degree exam at the University of Copenhagen:

“Describe how to determine the height of a skyscraper with a barometer.”

One student replied: “You tie a long piece of string to the neck of the barometer, then lower the barometer from the roof of the skyscraper to the ground. The length of the string plus the length of the barometer will equal the height of the building.”

This highly original answer so incensed the examiner that the student was failed. The student appealed on the grounds that his answer was indisputably correct, and the university appointed an independent arbiter to decide the case. The arbiter judged that the answer was indeed correct, but did not display any noticeable knowledge of physics. To resolve the problem it was decided to call the student in and allow him six minutes in which to provide a verbal answer, which showed at least a minimal familiarity the basic principles of physics.

For five minutes the student sat in silence, forehead creased in thought. The arbiter reminded him that time was running out, to which the student replied that he had several extremely relevant answers, but couldn’t make up his mind which to use. On being advised to hurry up the student replied as follows:

“Firstly, you could take the barometer up to the roof of the skyscraper, drop it over the edge, and measure the time it takes to reach the ground. The height of the building can then be worked out from the formula H = 0.5g x t2. But bad luck on the barometer.”

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Human Body – Some Interesting Facts

• Approximately 75% of human poop is made of water.
• Your eyes are always the same size from birth but your nose and ears never stop growing.
• It takes the food seven seconds to get from your mouth to your stomach.
• The average human dream lasts 2-3 seconds.
• Your brain is more active during the night than the day.
• One human hair can support 3kg.
• Human thighbones are stronger than concrete.
• The tooth is the only part of the human body that can’t repair itself.
• An average human loses about 200 head hairs per day.
• It is impossible to lick your elbow.
• Your body requires 1000-1500 calories per day just to simply survive (breathing, sleeping, eating).
• Every day an adult body produces 300 billion new cells.
• Scientists say the higher your I.Q. the more you dream.
• You use 200 muscles to take one step.
• Muscle cells live as long as you do while skin cells live less than 24 hours.
• A full bladder is roughly the size of a soft ball.
• Your brain operates on the same amount of power that would light a 10-watt light bulb.
• There are 5 million hair follicles on an average adult.
• The acid in your stomach is strong enough to dissolve razorblades.
• The human brain cell can hold 5 times as much information as the Encyclopedia Brittanica.
• The white part of your fingernail is called the Lunula.
• There is enough iron in a human being to make one small nail.
• A shank is the part of the sole between the heel and the ball of the foot.
• The talus is the second largest bone in the foot.
• The attachment of human muscles to skin is what causes dimples.
• A 13 year old child found a tooth growing out of his foot in 1977.
• Your thumb is the same length of your nose.
• A woman’s heart beats faster than a man’s.
• Dogs and Humans are the only animals with prostates.
• It only takes 7lbs of of pressure to rip off your ears.