Why Does It Happen?

Why is there no school on Saturday and Sunday? Why is it that our parents (sometimes) don't need to work on weekends? Weeks are arbitrary, made by people not set by nature, so why do we take it to our liking to relax on these days if it would make businesses work slower? The Birth Of The Weekend The rise of the weekends came from the Industrial Revolution. Farmers that had previously been working in the fields, began moving to cities to work in factories. The workers were unhappy about the 7-day workweek that organized labour strikes began rising up. Tensions were high and sometimes violence was involved. People wanted days off the schedule because it was a Christian tradition to worship on Sundays. During the late 1800s, there was a large amount of Jewish immigrants that wanted their traditional Jewish day of the week Saturday, off as well.  Mondays Used To Be Part Of The Weekend This was apparent in the late 1800s mid-1900s in England. Workers and emplo...

All big-name retailers, supermarkets, restaurants and even shops in video games have been doing this. Prices ending in 99¢ account for more than 60% of all sales. The pricing is so natural that sometimes we forget about it all together. But what is the point in it if sales tax brings the price over and up to a dollar anyway? It turns out that this psychological marketing strategy is one of the most clever schemes ever created. This crafty pricing system has been around for more than a century. There are multiple reasons why prices work this way. The left-digit effect suggests that buyers read left to right, seeing the first or second digit the fastest and disregarding the rest. The customer automatically assumes the price, not seeing the cents, making the item look cheaper than it already is. The 99-95¢ or a dollar amount ending in 9 ($49) gives the customer the feeling that an item is on sale or is of high quality. As it turns out people are less inclined to buy items that...

The blue hue of the sky is the first thing you see when you gaze out into a clear day. People have been asking the question "why is the sky blue?" since the beginning of humankind. Although this question is not the most advanced scientific question of today, it is something interesting to think about. The colours of the spectrum are made up of white light. Light travels in straight lines unless it is interrupted. (separated, scattered, reflected, refracted) Different colours of the spectrum have different wavelengths, red, having the least amount of frequency and long wavelengths to violet, high frequency and short wavelengths. Particles in the atmosphere like dirt scatter light upon contact. Blue light has short wavelengths, allowing it to interact with more particles. For example, when a beam of sunlight hits a dirt particle in the air, blue light separates from white and will scatter around the atmosphere. Why isn't the sky violet? Violet has a frequency ev...

If you own a dog, or not, chances are that you've heard that you shouldn't feed your dog chocolate because it's poisonous to them. Chocolate has the potential to kill a dog! How could chocolate, a harmless treat, be able to kill a dog? How much chocolate is considered deadly? What should you do if your dog unknowingly consumes chocolate? Chocolate contains a chemical compound called theobromine. Theobromine is originally found in cocoa beans. Unlike humans, dogs take a much longer time to metabolize chocolate, allowing it to build up toxic levels. Theobromine stays in a dog's bloodstream for up to 20 hours. Small amounts of chocolate lead to vomiting. When a dog has eaten a large amount of chocolate, it interferes with the body's normal functions. The overdose will lead to hyperactivity, this includes abnormal heartbeat, muscle tremors, internal bleeding and seizures. 100-200 mg of the chemical per kg of body weight is enough to poison a dog. Your dog should never...

     The summer of relaxation and carefree living was abruptly ended with the beginning of school. The first week of school was pretty decent, in my opinion. On the first day, I got the chance to meet up with the classmates I worked with last year. I felt that the vibe of the assembly was much less exciting than the Grade 8 welcome assembly mostly because the Grade 9 assembly was just a slideshow of the school rules and other stuff that you are forbidden to do. The Grade 8 assembly, on the other hand, was an upbeat welcome in the gym.      The next few days consisted of putting forms and documents in order. Everybody got excited (and also fearful) when our homeroom teacher passed our class timetables out. I didn't get any classes that I could complain about. I received a few classes with the teacher that taught me last year, to name a few: science, French, and music. I also saw some teacher names that I never saw before. PE to me seemed really intimidatin...