Everyday Myths

Running water contains some minerals and impurities so it is not pure water. Those minerals and impurities give that characteristic flavor. But what is pure water? The water you drink from the bottle, the boiled water, the spring water, the river water? No, none of those is completely pure. If you drink pure water, something will happen to you and you will not like it. Yes, you’ll die.

Of course, if you only drink a glass of pure water, it won't kill you but you can't drink it regularly. The problem with pure water is that it is a hypotonic solution.

Water has a property called tonicity. This is the ability of some solutions to change the shape of a cell and alter the volume of water inside it. Hypertonic solutions gain water and hypotonic solutions lose water.

 

The cytoplasm in the cells of your body also has a certain tonicity. When exposed to hypotonic solutions, they gain water and inflate like balloons. Pure water is one of the most hypotonic solutions. So, if you drink enough, your cells will begin to absorb it drastically, which will cause an imbalance in your electrolytes. These behave like electrical conductors. If your electrolytes are bad, this also affects your brain functions. It can be severely damaged. It can lead you to a coma or even death. So don't go drinking pure water.

Well, it's not easy to get. It can only be made in labs. But if you're curious to know what it tastes like, there’s people who have already tried it and you’re not missing anything, because it has not flavor at all.

The taste of water is given by minerals and impurities. So if it has nothing and is completely pure, it can be described as a viscous sensation that passes through your throat. It can even be felt in the teeth.

Speaking of teeth, if you have yellowish teeth it doesn’t mean that your teeth are less healthy. There is some people who think that. Personally, I think it's the because of the media and advertising. "Fresh teeth, white teeth, healthy teeth." No, that's not true.

Nor is it true that dark-skinned people's teeth are whiter. They look like that because of the contrast with dark skin, but its natural color is the same as the average.

If you want to know if you have healthy teeth, you have to look at the gums. If your gums have a pink color you’re okey, but if they are very red (and bleed) then you have to go to the dentist as soon as possible.

Let's keep talking about teeth. They are very hard. Even more, they are the hardest part of the body. Though they are not exactly bones, they have a slightly different composition. One of the things that sets them apart is that, for example, teeth cannot be repaired or grow back. If you break a tooth, you will most likely have to remove it. That's right, as hard as they are, they can break.

But the hardest material in your body is not the teeth themselves, but the enamel that covers them. It contains a mineral called hydroxyapatite, which is very strong. You can still say that teeth have the hardest or strongest material in the body.

We need them to be hard in order to chew and crush food. Although the force comes from the masseter muscle of your jaw, which can close your teeth with a force of 25 kilos in the front and of 90 kilos in the molars.

Don't you hate when you buy a bag of snacks and most of the bag is filled with air? Well, that air is actually nitrogen.

Tests have shown that nitrogen preserves these types of snacks better than air. You can leave an open bag of Doritos and at the end of the day you’ll see they are softened. Nitrogen prevents that from happening.

When you’re washing your hands, do you think the soap will clean them and also kill the germs? That is not the case. Common soaps don't kill germs. All they do is break the surface tension of the water and then the germs simply slip from your hands and go down the drain.

Surface tension happens when the surface of a liquid behaves like a membrane in tension. That's where a needle or a clip rests if you put them in the water.

It is also the reason why some animals can literally walk on water.

This tension can be broken by a chemical agent like the ones contained in soap or detergent. Of course you can also find antibacterial soap that do kills germs (not all of them, of course). But the scientific community does not recommend using them because they contain triclosan, a compound that has proven to be very harmful to humans and also has no evidence of being more effective than regular soap. So it is much better if you can use common soap instead of products containing triclosan.