AMOZON fACTS

[Armed Dragon Lvl 7]

I'm not even going to try read through that.

[Armed Dragon Lvl 7]

[Racer10]

Good morning,

I recently purchased my San Juan 24, and am interested in racing it. I
live in the San Francisco bay area, and have a relatively
inexperienced crew.

I also just moved here to the US, so I am pretty unfamiliar with what
needs to be done.

I appreciate any help !

[Racer10]

Adjustable Tires
The High Mobility Multi-Purpose Wheeled Vehicle (HMMWV) or Hummer is a highly durable motor vehicle that was originally designed for military use. A Hummer has the ability to change tire pressure while it is moving, making it practical for travel across loose surfaces like sand dunes.
The Hummer was designed to be dropped by parachute and land on its wheels unharmed. Its other interesting talents include a winch powerful enough to suspend the vehicle in midair, and, in the military version, the ability to ford streams as deep as 60 inches (150 centimeters).
The civilian version of the Hummer, which became available in 1992, is not available with a machine gun or rocket launcher, but it is just as durable as the military version.
(Hummer is a trademark of AM General

[Racer10]

Alien Sand Dunes
Scientists have recently discovered active sand dunes on Mars. The Viking spacecraft, which photographed the planet in the 1970s, hinted at the presence of sand dunes. Cameras aboard the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft, which is currently mapping the planet in great detail, returned more precise images of the dunes and showed that they are active (moving).
There are two kinds of dunes: small fields of bright dunes, which may be made of gypsum or another sulfate mineral, and large areas of darker dunes, which might be made of eroded particles of volcanic rock.
The Martian sand dunes form where winds bring in other particles to replace the reddish-brown dust that accumulates in most places on Mars. Scientists believe the winds on Mars are only strong enough to move the sand during part of the year, because the air is too thin at other times.

[Racer10]

Atomic Clocks
The most accurate clocks in the world are atomic clocks, which use the vibrations of atoms to keep track of the time. They are so accurate that they would gain or lose only one second in three million years.
Most clocks use mechanical or electronic oscillators (vibrators) to count out a fixed number of "ticks" per second. The oscillators are not all exactly the same, so ordinary clocks must be periodically reset.
Atomic clocks use the absolutely stable vibrations of atoms (usually cesium atoms). Since every atom of the same type vibrates exactly the same number of times each second, atomic clocks are extremely accurate.
The largest error in the best atomic clocks comes from slight variations in how the atoms are moving as their vibrations are measured. New atomic clocks will slow the atoms down almost to a stop, making them up to 10,000 times more accurate than today's models

[Racer10]

Black And White Moon
The most contrasting object in our solar system is Saturn's moon Iapetus (eye-AP-i-tus). The albedo (reflectance) of its leading hemisphere (the half that stays in front as it orbits Saturn) is less than 0.05, about as dark as soot. The trailing hemisphere has an albedo of 0.5, as bright as water ice.
The difference in brightness is so great that Iapetus' discoverer, Giovanni Cassini, noticed he could only see the moon during half of its orbit.
Astronomers wonder if the dark material may be debris from one of Saturn's darker moons, Phoebe. From its density, astronomers believe Iapetus must be made almost entirely of water ice, which makes the dark hemisphere especially puzzling.

[Racer10]

Body Glue
The most abundant protein in animal tissues is collagen [KOL-uh-gen], a kind of "glue" that holds the body together. The 14 different kinds of collagen account for about 30% of all the protein in our bodies.
Collagen shapes the structures of tendons, bones, cartilage and connective tissue. It also strengthens the skin, and attaches it to the underlying muscles. It makes up most of the "gristle" part of cooked meat.
Why is collagen such great cellular glue? Its molecules are shaped like long, thin rods, with many attachment points where they can be stuck together. They can form strong, rigid structures, and they can be firmly attached to many other kinds of molecules.

[Racer10]

Breathable Liquid
Doctors are using a liquid called perflubron to save the lives of people who might otherwise die of lung congestion. The non-water- based fluid fills the lungs, displacing the watery fluids that otherwise would accumulate there and possibly drown the patient.
Perflubron is a perfluorocarbon, a liquid that is closely related to the plastic teflon. It does not mix with water, and it evaporates in air. Because it carries oxygen and carbon dioxide almost as well as plain air does, it can be used instead of air in the lungs. The technique is called "liquid ventilation."
Tests are under way now to determine the best way to perform liquid ventilation. It is hoped that it can be used to save the lives of premature infants, who often experience lung failure because of fluid accumulation.

[Racer10]

Brown Dwarfs
Objects that are smaller than a star but many times the size of Jupiter are called brown dwarfs. Bearing some similarities to both planets and stars, they do not qualify as either. Some brown dwarfs float freely in space, and others, like planets, orbit stars. Although they are similar to the small, dim stars called red dwarfs, brown dwarfs do not have enough mass to start the process of hydrogen fusion in their cores, and therefore cannot generate the same level of energy as a star.
Over billions of years a brown dwarf will slowly cool, releasing the heat generated by the gravitational collapse which occurred when it first formed from gas and dust. As it cools, it fades; the older a brown dwarf is, the dimmer it is.
Until recently, brown dwarfs were purely theoretical objects; their dark color and faint intensity made them difficult to see. New techniques in astronomy have allowed several to be discovered, some even quite close to our Solar System.

[Racer10]

Coin Notches
United States dimes, quarters, and half dollars have notches all around their edges, but pennies and nickels have no notches.
Notches are a remnant from days when the value of a coin was determined by the amount of silver or gold it contained. The US mint incorporated the notches as a way of discouraging people from shaving off small amounts of the precious metals from their coins. Less valuable coins have always contained only cheaper metals, and so their smooth edges were allowed to remain.
Although coins today no longer contain silver, the notches have been kept as part of their design, and are useful for recognition by the visually impaired.

[Racer10]

Complex Crystals
Mineralogists at the Canadian Museum of Nature and the University of Copenhagen were surprised when they began analyzing specimens of eudialyte, a mineral that is an important source of the rare, expensive metal zirconium.
After finding inconsistencies in x-ray diffraction patterns, which are often used to study the crystal structures of minerals, they conducted further studies that revealed as many as 46 different chemical elements could be part of eudialyte's crystal structure.
Eudialyte's unusually complex structure includes many places where rare elements might be incorporated. Understanding that structure might make the refining of zirconium and other rare elements more practical. As a result of this study, several new varieties of eudialyte have been discovered

[Racer10]

Coral Atolls
A coral atoll is a ring-shaped island or arc of islands, made almost entirely out of coral, with a shallow, sandy central lagoon. There are atolls in tropical seas all over the world.
An atoll starts out as a small island of ordinary rock, often a volcano. Coral animals settle below the tide line, building a ring- shaped reef around the island. Then, through erosion or because of geological forces, the island slowly sinks down.
The coral reef, however, keeps growing. It grows almost to the surface as the land sinks, forming the distinctive ring shape. The shallow central lagoon (where the mountain used to be) usually has a floor of coral sand, studded with small patches of reef.
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[Racer10]

Deepest Cave
Lechuguilla Cave, near Carlsbad, New Mexico, goes down at least 1,571 feet (479 meters), making it the deepest known cave on Earth. It is only partially explored, but already more than 97 miles (156 kilometers) of passages have been mapped.
The immense maze of rooms and passages that forms the Lechuguilla system was discovered in 1986. A group of spelunkers (cave explorers) decided to investigate a desert pit called Misery Hole. When they reached the bottom, they dug down and found a chamber from which a howling wind emerged, a sign of a large cave system.
Unlike most limestone caves that were formed by water dissolving the rock from above, Lechuguilla was formed by hydrogen sulfide gas coming up from underneath. The gas was released from an underground oil pocket because of geological shifts.

[Racer10]

Early Ocean Explorers
Long before Europeans set out to explore the world by sea, Polynesian explorers had sailed across thousands of miles of open water. They started as early as 1500 BC by exploring the nearby islands north of New Guinea, then sailed east and north to distant, unseen lands. By 1000 AD they had settled islands scattered across much of the vast Pacific Ocean.
The ancient Polynesians built sturdy double-hulled boats to carry colonists and all the animals, plants, and supplies that they needed to establish settlements. With time, they developed a sophisticated navigation system based on the positions of stars and the patterns of ocean swells.
By the time Captain Cook and other Europeans finally reached many of the remote islands of the Pacific, Polynesian people had been living there for hundreds of years.