Good Question: 'Reply All': Olympic Medals, Flies & Popcorn
MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) - Curt in Andover asked: How much gold is in the Olympic gold medal?
The gold in London is almost all silver.
The International Olympic Committee requires there to be at least 6 grams of gold in a gold medal. The London medals are enormous. So they're only 1.34 percent gold, 6 percent copper, almost 93 percent silver.
The gold medals are worth about $650 in raw materials.
The silver medal replaces the gold with more copper, it's worth about $330.
The bronze is 97 percent copper, and the raw material is worth about $5.
Nine-years-old Connor Barger from St. Paul asked this great question: How do flies find food?
Scientists actually have done a lot of research on flies. They have such a great sense of smell that they're able to smell food from far away, adjust their flight pattern, and head for it.
They also have an impressive sense of taste. Some researchers think they can distinguish between sweet and bitter food better than humans can.
Andrea Beier in Zimmerman lives near some cornfields and wondered: Does it ever get so hot that field corn would pop?
There are occasion stories where a farmer will claim that happened, but it's highly unlikely.
According to NASA, popcorn kernels have to be heated to about 450 degrees before they pop.
It's actually the small amount of moisture inside the kernel that does the trick. It turns to steam at 450 degrees, forcing the kernel to burst and turn inside out.
Regular field and sweet corn also has a different amount of moisture inside each kernel, as compared to an ear of corn grown just for popping.
Thus, corn doesn't pop in the field. If it were ever 450 degrees, we'd all be popping.
