What happens in Winter?

Why is salt spread on roads in the winter?

The simple answer is that salt melts ice. Salt lowers the freezing temperature of water down from 32 degrees F to as low as 0 degrees F. When you spread salt on the icy road, it lowers the ice's melting temperature and dissolves it. Water, for example, that contains a solution that is 10 percent salt will not freeze until it reaches 20 degrees F. If a road's temperature dips to below 15 degrees F, the salt won't have much effect on the ice but it can give more traction to a vehicle's tires. ROCK Salt was first used to de-ice highways and walkways in 1930's. Unprocessed rock salt will look like ice, which is used to melt. This salt comes from 1000 feet below the earth surface at the canadic/US border. This rock salt has 98% sodium chloride.

What is Iceberg B-15?

Iceberg B-15 was the largest iceberg ever discovered by the U.S. National Ice Center. It was about 4,500 square miles (7,242 square kilometers) in area and half a mile thick. A remnant of the Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica, Iceberg B-15 was bigger than twice the amount of usual icebergs that break off from Antarctica. In 2005, a swell from an Alaskan winter storm traveled to Antarctica and smashed the massive iceberg into land. When B-15 broke up, even its smaller chunks were larger than most icebergs.

How does a lack of sun affect us?
Melatonin - hormones that helps you sleep
serotonin - a hormone connected with feelings of happiness and wakefulness

Sunshine affects the brain via the interaction of the chemicals melatonin and serotonin, as well as vitamin D. When sunlight hits your eyes, your optic nerve sends a message to the gland in the brain that produces melatonin; the gland decreases its secretions of melatonin until the sun goes down again. The opposite happens with the chemical serotonin; when you're exposed to sun, your brain increases serotonin production. And when the ultraviolet rays from sunshine touch your skin, your body produces vitamin D, which helps you maintain serotonin levels. Generally, we're asleep or feeling slowed down during the dark hours, and physically and emotionally up during the day. This is the human circadian rhythm. We are able to function against these biological rhythms when we must (as night-shift workers do), but it can be hard on our bodies and minds. When we go without sunshine, we can even get seasonal affective disorder (SAD); people who suffer from this disorder get depressed during the times when there's not much sun, although they're typically fine in the warmer, sunnier months of the year. SAD is most prevalent in places where there are scant sunlit hours in the winter (such as Alaska) or where it's overcast for extended periods (parts of the U.S. Northwest). SAD can often be treated with phototherapy that exposes the patient to full-spectrum light, which may be sunlight or artificial light.

Being out in the sun isn't enough by itself, though. We have to soak in the sun's rays. But we've been taught to put on sunscreen whenever we go outside, and there are downsides to the use of sun-blocking chemicals. Our bodies need to be exposed to some full-spectrum sunshine - at least 15 minutes of undiluted sun three times a week. The ultraviolet rays of the sun make our bodies produce vitamin D, which is thought to help protect us from various types of cancer and helps us build a store of the vitamin to last through the dark winter months. In addition, vitamin D helps our brains make more serotonin. If we slather our skin with sunblock every time we step out the door, we're cutting down on vitamin D and its benefits

Why does smoke come out of your mouth?

The air you speak is referred to as 'vapor'. Seeing your breath when you're outside lets you know that it is indeed cold! The reason you can 'see' your breath is due to the water vapor in your breath. When you breathe in, water vapor is added to the air by your lungs, along with the carbon dioxide from your body. When your breath leaves your warm body and comes in contact with the cold air, it is immediately cooled. As it cools, the water vapor, which you cannot see, condenses into tiny water droplets, very much like the droplets in a cloud or fog. The particles are so small that they can't be identified by the eye either, but we see the light reflected off them much like smoke from a cigarette. So we really don't see our 'breath' at all, but we see the condensed water vapor droplets in our breath."

This can happen in summer as well. Hold your breath and squeeze your chest muscles. Then exhale. The mist you see will be caused by the same phenomenon but the difference is caused by the increase in pressure which allows more water vapor to be in the exhaled breath.

How do Enertia homes stay warm in the winter?

Enertia homes are a patented building system that combines traditional building concepts with new concepts that save energy. Enertia homes have a bank of windows along their southern walls, which allows the winter sunlight to enter the house. This sunlight heats the air in the sun space and in the primary living space. The warm air then rises up to the attic, warming the southern yellow pine walls, and then sinks down along the north side of the dynamic envelope surrounding the main living space. At night, the direction of the air movement reverses. The air in the sun space cools faster than other areas of the house once the sun sets. This air sinks to the basement to be warmed by the radiant heat stored by the timber walls. The warm air then begins to circulate throughout the house.