The Origin of Everyday

Sunday

“Per curiam”, or “by the court as a whole” means a certain court decision is not signed by individual judges, such that it was unanimous (more or less) and typically shorter in length.

Monday

“A priori”, also a philosophical term, means “from what is before” and refers to conclusions derived from logical deduction and legal concepts, rather than empirical evidence and observation.

Tuesday

“Res ipsa loquitur” means “the thing speaks for itself” and is a principle that puts the presumption of negligence on the defendant by showing the accident or injury at issue does not normally happen without someone’s negligence.

Wednesday

“De novo” means “anew” and typically refers to a higher court reviewing the evidence and legal questions of a matter as if for the first time, without reference to a lower court’s conclusions.

Thursday

“In forma pauperis” means “in the form of a pauper” and permits a litigant to proceed without paying the usual court fees due to financial hardship.

Friday

“Certiorari” means “to be informed of / made certain” and is issued from a higher court to a lower one directing it to send the case materials for the higher court’s review. If a case is not granted this, the lower court’s decision stands.

Saturday

“In limine” means “at the threshold” and refers to a pre-trial motion seeking that certain evidence be ruled inadmissible at trial. The familiar yell of “objection” is the process for seeking the same result during trial.

Sunday

The first real battery was developed in 1800 by Alessandro Volta, for whom the volt is named. Made of stacked zinc and copper discs separated by brine-soaked fabric (“a salt in battery”, wakka wakka), he later demonstrated the “Voltaic pile” to Napoleon and was made a count. Other devices to store electric charge had been developed before, but were essentially capacitors that discharged quickly as a shock, as opposed to the battery’s steady current from its internal chemical reaction.

Monday

Benjamin Franklin coined the term “battery” when he connected several of the above-mentioned early capacitors, known as “Leyden jars”, to amplify the shock they discharged. They reminded him of a battery of cannons working in unison.

Tuesday

Since electricity is really just the flow of electrons, a battery is fundamentally the pairing of one material with a lot of available electrons with another having far fewer. When installed in a device and connected through a circuit, the electrons flow from one material to the other, providing power for the device along the way. When all available electrons have travelled from one electrode to the other, the battery is spent until recharged. Common battery types include lead acid, nickel cadmium, nickel metal hydride, and lithium ion, to name just a few.

Wednesday

Battery-powered electric cars are far older than you might expect. The first appeared in the 1830s, a quarter century before the invention of batteries which could be recharged rather than wholly replaced when spent. In the early 1900s, fleets of up to 600 battery-powered taxis were running in New York, Boston, and Baltimore, and automotive pioneers like Henry Ford, Ferdinand Porsche, and Ransom Eli Olds (of Oldsmobile) dabbled in electric cars. When US President William McKinley was shot in 1901, an electric ambulance took him to the hospital. However, in those more rural times, gasoline was more easily transported than bulky batteries, and the electricity to recharge them was more available in bigger cities, curbing the appeal of electric cars beyond city-only fleets.

Thursday

The useful electrochemical power in batteries often comes from corrosive and toxic chemicals as well as rare metals which should be recycled at the end of a battery’s life. Car batteries contain sulfuric acid, which can badly burn the skin and should be treated with extreme caution.

Friday

Batteries are at the heart of the Clarendon Dry Pile, “the world’s longest science experiment”, which involves early dry pile batteries set up in 1840 at Oxford University to ring two small bells with a suspended clapper hanging between them. The bells have been “ringing” continuously for 185 years on the same batteries – about 10 billion times – though the clapper’s movement is so minute that the ringing is nearly inaudible. The secret to this power cell’s longevity can only be studied when it stops, or else the “experiment” would cease.

Saturday

These days, thousands of individual batteries are often connected at a single site to store power generated with renewable energy, typically solar and wind. As of now, the biggest of these is in California, where 120,000 batteries connected to an enormous (46,000 acre) solar array store far more power than a typical coal power plant generates.

Sunday

Olives were one of the world’s first domesticated crops, starting at least 6,000 years ago. There are over 1,000 varieties of olives, but only about 140 are regularly grown for human consumption.

Monday

The ancient Greeks were nuts about olives, which had practical and religious importance. The tree grew well in the Mediterranean climate, and Athenians believed the olive tree was a gift from Athena, their patron goddess. Like today, the Greeks grew most of their olives for oil, which was beloved at home and a profitable export. Beyond eating, Greeks also used the oil for hair care, skin care, perfumes, medicine, lamp fuel, religious rituals, general lubricant and even animal feed. Victorious Olympians wore an olive branch crown and that branch extended also became a symbol of peace.

Tuesday

On average, olive trees live between 300-600 years, but a 4,000 year old tree grows on the island of Crete, still producing olives. “Plato’s Olive Tree” which was situated where Plato’s Academy once stood in Athens was estimated to be 2,400 years old when it was hit by a bus and uprooted in 1975.

Wednesday

Being a symbol of peace, olive branches appear on many flags, including that of the United Nations, seven countries, four US states, and various global government offices and departments. It also adorns many coats of arms and seals.

Thursday

Olives are a fruit, but don’t eat one straight off the tree. A chemical called oleuropein makes fresh, raw olives so bitter that they are essentially inedible. Before they can be eaten, they must be cured to neutralize that bitter compound, often with salt, brine, or lye.

Friday

Olive oil is healthy for several reasons. Though most of its calories come from fat, Oleic acid is a monounsaturated fatty acid, the “good” kind, which has antioxidant and cancer-fighting properties. Another olive oil component, polyphenols, also seem to fight cancer as well as cardiovascular and neurodegenerative diseases.

Saturday

With the great number of varieties out there, you might think green and black olives are wholly different breeds, but in fact they are just different levels of ripe. Green olives are young and often underripe olives, while darker olives like purple and black have been allowed to ripen on the tree before being picked, cured, and eaten.

We all know everything is made up of atoms, but what makes up atoms? A very condensed version:

Sunday

Neutrons are the atom’s well-known neutral particle, but they are further divisible. Like the proton, the neutron is a “composite” particle, made of even more “elementary” particles.

Monday

Protons are the atom’s positively charged particles, though they are also composite particles. Hydrogen, the lightest possible element, has just one proton and one electron.

Tuesday

The electron is usually portrayed as spinning around the atom’s nucleus, though the reality is a bit more complex. This elementary particle has a negative charge, and while the neutron and proton have about the same mass, the electron is only about 1/2000 the size.

Wednesday

The Standard Model of particle physics describes four classes of subatomic particles which make up larger composite particles. The first of these are quarks, which themselves form protons and neutrons. There are six types, or “flavors” of quarks: up, down, top, bottom, charm and strange.

Thursday

While the electron is the most famous lepton, there are six other types, the muon, tau, electron neutrino, muon neutrino, and tau neutrino. The electron is the smallest and most common of these, and other leptons often decay into electrons readily.

Friday

Gauge bosons are elementary particles known as “force carriers” and have four varieties, the photon, gluon, W and Z bosons.

Saturday

Finally is the Higgs boson, named for physicist Peter Higgs. This highly unstable particle is only observed in massive particle accelerators, and wasn’t seen until 40 years after first being theorized.

All facts this week: