Daily Science+

Have you wondered why all singers has their new single album sung nicely, yet when they stand on stage, sometimes it's just like scratching a mask off their face, might not be a really pleasant experience for both singers and the audience.

But why? Why is there differences between recorded song and its live version? Well, since the year 1997, when the time "auto-tune" techniques are invented, every single pitch that doesn't match on its right place, can be adjust anyway.

Nowadays even common sounds can be auto-tuned into a song. Some people might even think of giving a package of sound pieces, and others can remix those sound pieces into a beautiful song, and it's the actual idea of the origin of Hatsune Miku.

However, the pitch that has been auto-tuned well never sound as real as the original vocal. Therefore, if you really cares about how the singer sings, you should never choose a song that has been auto-tuned.

You probably have seen the picture on the left hand side, which an endless staircase is created, once in your life time. This famous pattern is done by Maurits Cornelis Escher, and it's also seen in the movie Inception, when the characters walk on the endless staircase, then suddenly they found out this kind of structure is actually a paradox.

Well, back to the artist Escher.

Escher is an artist from the Netherlands. The time of Escher is also the time of chaotic and unstable Europe. People will always be captured by his mysterious image of visual illusion, and oftentimes getting fascinated with his pieces of artworks.

Have you encountered a situation that no matter how hard you try, there's still tons of typos slip away from your eyes? According to the scientist, it might be a really common situation, that there's even scientific proof for it.

When people write something, the brain is trying to express some kind of meaning, and this kind of action is viewed as an "high-class" function of our brain. Our brain tend to focus on meaning instead of wording, so we might have spelling errors because of this kind of ignorance.

Yet when we double check our own writing, we might not find out more typos as we thought. The reason why we can't find out more, is that we're too familiar with the article we wrote, and simultaneously, our brain focus on meaning more. Therefore, our brain "correct" the wording for us. This doesn't literally means we wrote things correctly, in fact, it means that our brain fix everything right in our brain, and accidentally cheat us that the wording of our article is correct.

Can you believe that this poached egg is actually done by microwaves? Many people might heard the elderly said that eggs can't be put into microwaves, yet it turns out the theory needs a little bit adjustment.

First, I poured an egg into a bowl, and sent it into microwaves right away, and heat the egg for 30secs. I took the bowl out, but there's still 30% off the egg hasn't been cooked, so I put it back into the microwave for 10secs, then the poached egg is done. Taste... quite common, I can't even say it's delicious. XD

...Hold on a second, if you didn't poked any hole on the egg, before sending the egg into the microwave, there might be a tragic explosion happen right in your kitchen.

The reason why poking hole is so important, is that the egg is covered by membrane(膜). If you heat the egg with microwaves without poking holes, the water inside will thrill against the membrane, and might cause serious explosion.

But there's still one small question remain. When the microwave is heating, I could still hear some cracking sounds.

Quantum Mechanic is one of the most important discovery since the end of 19th century. It's about a way for scientists to view our physical world not in a macroscopic scale, but in a microscopic scope. Throughout years of discussion, experiment and argument, mystery about quantum mechanic seems to remain.

"Double slits" is probably the most famous experiment of quantum mechanic. In this experiement, it shows that the tiny electron behaves not only like a tiny marble, but also like a wave, and this result turns out to be astonishing and confusing for scientists in 1920s, but even until now, no one can actually come up with an explanation.

From then on, the classic physics traditions since Newton can never reclaim that they've discovered all the possible physic phenomenon. Quantum mechanic had already proved that the world we live is far beyond our imagination.

Watch the Video first, then read the article.

When I was still studying in senior high, my mathematics teacher told us a love story about the French mathematician René Descartes and a Swedish Princess Kristina.

By the year 1648, when the princess is 18, Descartes was appointed to be the teacher of the young princess. Descartes taught her Cartesian coordinates system(直角坐標系), and soon they fell in love with each other. The King was furious when he learnt that his daughter was in love, and he expelled Descartes out from Sweden.

On one hand, Descartes soon felt into a serious illness, the Black Death, and could hardly recover since then. During his illness, he wrote 12 letters to Kristina, but there was no reply. Descartes died after he wrote the 13th letter to Kristina.

On the other hand, the King intercepted the letters from Descartes, and never gave them to Princess Kristina. Yet the King found the 13th letter, which only the math equation "r=a(1-sinΘ)" was written, difficult to understand. Therefore, he finally gave this letter to Kristina, hoping the letter might cheer her up a bit. At last, Princess Kristina solve the maze, and found out that Descartes was actually confessing his true heart to her.

Isn't this story beautiful? Yet we have to remember this in mind: story is often only a romantic fantasy.

In the Swedish history, by the year 1648 was the Swedish Kingdom ruled by Drottning Kristina (Queen Kristina). Though Descartes actually visited Sweden by the time, he discuss philosophy instead of mathematics. In February, 1650, Descartes contracted pneumonia(肺炎) in Sweden, and died after ten days.

Resources: Baidu Baike (百度百科)

>>The video is a speed up version of the whole process of lunar eclipse on Oct.8 .

The most exciting news for astronomy fans in Taiwan this year, might be the lunar eclipse on Oct.8, and it's the first chance for people in Taiwan to observe the lunar full eclipse since Dec.10, 2011. People can see the eclipse with naked eyes, or take photos with common photography equipment.

The reason why lunar eclipse happens, is because the moon is passing through the Earth umbra (本影). At the very beginning, the shadow will start to darken the moon gradually. And then, when the time comes, the shadow started to "cover" parts of the moon, and turn its colour to dark-red. Some might wonder why the moon doesn't vanish anyway? Since the "lunar full eclipse" means that "it's covered by Earth umbra", it doesn't means that there's no light for the moon to reflect, therefore we can still observe the moon itself.

And why is the colour "dark-red"? Actually, according to astronomers, since the moon can't reflect the sunlight directly during the lunar eclipse, the earth atmosphere will scatter the long wavelength
 light, such as blue light away, and refract the short wavelength light, such as red lights onto the moon. In addition, if the earth atmosphere is clean and clear, the colour will appeared to be brighter red; on the contrary, it will appear to be dark red, if the earth atmosphere contains more ashes and dust.

The next lunar full eclipse will be at 2015.4.4, but if people in Taiwan wish to see it without traveling far away from home, will have to wait until 2018.1.31 to see its next visit to Taiwan!

Resource: Wikipedia, 網路天文館, 中央氣象局天文訊息