Children’s science questions|We also tell you why we also take flowers to the memorial places of the cremated and how the wind is created. We also thought about whether it would be possible to have a sauna on the space station.
Is there something slightly different about me than my mother? One that changes the human species?
Tristan Ranta, 11
In you there are small genetic, i.e. hereditary, differences compared to your mother.
You got half of your genes from your mother and half from your father – a bit like you got a box of different Lego bricks from both. Genes form an entity that is just typical of you.
Sometimes small changes can also occur in genes, which are called mutations. Most of them do not affect anything, but some can change, for example, the appearance or the way the body works.
Still, a single mutation or genes received from parents do not give birth to, for example, a completely new body part or a different human species.
The change of humans and other organisms is a long process, in which many small and sometimes slightly larger changes accumulate over generations. Changes that are beneficial will gradually become more common.
New traits and characteristics always arise through many successive changes, and it is usually not possible to say from which or which individual people a trait of our species originally originated.
Johanna Mappes
Professor of Evolutionary Ecology
University of Helsinki
There is a memorial place for people buried in the urn vault under the Kallio church.
Why do you take flowers to your great-grandmother’s grave, if there are only ashes in the grave and great-grandmother will be in heaven one day?
Sofia Lehtonen, 7
In Christianity it is believed that even when a person dies and is buried, his soul does not die. The soul of a believer goes to God in heaven.
However, the ashes or body of the deceased are buried in the grave during the funeral. The grave usually also has a stone or slab with the deceased’s name and date of birth and death, and often a cross.
The cemetery is certainly the most visible and common place to remember the dead. The grave has also been visited together with relatives and friends to accompany a deceased loved one, so it could have become an important place.
Many people think that the grave is also a good place to quiet down in their thoughts and remember the person in question. Flowers and candles tell others in the cemetery that the deceased was loved by his relatives and that they have been visited to remember him.
Taking flowers to the grave and visiting the grave site is an old and well-established way of remembering the deceased. Finns have been visiting graves even before Christianity became established here in the 13th and 16th centuries.
At first, offerings were made to the dead so that the ancestors would remain satisfied and protect the living, but with the advent of Christianity, graves began to be marked with a cross and candles were brought to them. At the same time, they also started burying near the church.
At the end of the 19th century, cemeteries in Finland became more park-like in the European way. Plants were planted on the graves and cut flowers and wreaths could be taken to them.
The grave has also reminded Christians from the beginning that eventually God will raise the dead, just as he raised his son Jesus.
However, the deceased can also be remembered elsewhere, for example at home. Everyone remembers the deceased in their everyday life or on holidays in their own way and according to whether they are religious or non-religious.
Johanna Lumijärvi
university teacher of practical theology and head of subject
University of Helsinki
The Skylab space station had a closable shower in the early 1970s. In the picture, astronaut Charles Conrad is going to wash himself.
If you build a sauna on the space station, can you use it? How could you throw a slurp?
Lenni Sillanpää, 11
On the space station the stove would get warm, but the biggest problem there would be water.
The water thrown on the stove would float everywhere in the sauna due to the weaker gravity of the space station, and only a small part would hit the stove.
The water would also gather together in spherical lumps and some of them would stick to all kinds of surfaces such as the skin. Water heated by a stove could be scalding hot when it comes on the skin.
In practice, taking a sauna on the space station would require precise control of the water on the sauna stones and continuous efficient mixing and exchange of air, so that the vaporized water does not accumulate into balls or boards. One would also need one to be able to breathe in the sauna.
There is only a little water in the conditions of the space station, so running water is not used, for example, for washing, but the skin is wiped clean with towels moistened with water. Toothpastes are also edible, so that even brushing your teeth does not use water.
On the space station, the moisture in the air created by breathing and perspiration is precisely collected, cleaned of dirt and bacteria and turned into drinkable water.
Throwing the lye would certainly feel like a waste of precious water there.
Silja Pohjolainen
docent of astronomy and university teacher
University of Turku
In stormy winds, trees and bushes are hard.
How is wind created?
Eino Rautiainen, 5
Colder air is heavier than warm air. So when the air warms up, it gets lighter and rises. That’s why heated air, for example, lifts a hot air balloon into the sky.
The same movement of air also happens in the atmosphere we breathe and in the middle of which we live.
When warm air rises, it is replaced by an area with less air, i.e. low pressure.
When colder and heavier air descends, high pressure forms. Air moves from high pressure to low pressure. That movement of air is called wind.
The sun heats the earth unevenly. For example, it is much warmer in the tropics, i.e. near the equator, than in the north.
Therefore, temperature differences occur on Earth and with them differences in air pressure. Wind, i.e. the movement of air, evens out those differences and transports heat from one place to another.
The greater the temperature differences, the greater the air pressure differences and the stronger the wind. Without wind, there would be such hot and cold areas on the ground that it would not necessarily be possible to live here.
Terhi Laurila
researcher of extreme weather phenomena and climate change
Department of Meteorology
Send the question, the questioner’s full name and age to lasten.tiedeskö[email protected]. The column is provided by Touko Kauppinen.