Daniel Dan

7 minutes ago, OldChemE said:

It depends a lot on what you know and how much you are in the habit of using what you know.  People who have a solid grounding in math and science often apply their knowledge without ever consciously thinking "now I will do science."  When I go to clean the bathroom and look at the available cleaning products my wife has accumulated I find myself considering the ingredients and their possible chemical interactions.  10 years ago a tall pine in our back yard died and looked like it would fall, but I was just packing for a vacation.  So I quickly used the similar triangles method to estimate how tall it was and decided that if it did fall it would be just short enough not to touch our glass back door.  Sure enough we got back from the trip and it was down, and the tip was three feet from the door.  It's just a automatic sort of thought process for people who are accustomed to applying math and science.

Nice example, thanks!

22 hours ago, VenusPrincess said:

Yesterday I ordered some pasta and it came with a salad and garlic bread. I finished the pasta and salad, but I was too full to eat the garlic bread so I just set it down on the floor next to my couch. It was later at night and I had the lights off so that I could watch my TV show so it was too dark to see anything besides the TV, but while watching my TV show I began to hear a crinkling sound to my right. At first I ignored it, but after a couple minutes the crinkling was undeniable and I was curious about what it could possibly be. I got up and turned on the lights and I saw hundreds of ants on top of the paper bag that held the garlic bread. I put on latex gloves and got a garbage bag, and then quickly picked up the paper bag and dropped it inside the garbage bag. I then got a can of raid and sprayed the whole area around where the paper bag was to kill the remaining ants that were running around. I disposed of the garbage bag immediately outside of my apartment. I was surprised that the ants could make enough noise that I could hear them. How loud are ants in terms of decibels, and how many have to be walking around to make their movement perceptible?

I had exactly the same experience, so yes, they can make a pretty loud sounds when they eat

They got strong jaws:

Hi everyone,

Don't get me wrong, I know that science is very important and that it helps us a lot in our life, but my question is how Scientific Knowledge can help to the average man who is not a scientist? For example a simple worker in a factory, or a cashier in the supermarket, why should they learn biology, chemistry, physics, astronomy, cosmology and other scientific fields? What practical use do they have with this knowledge at home? Or at work? Why do they need it?

(I'm talking about popular science level knowledge)