Steve Wozniak
 THE MAN WHO HIRED STEVE JOBS

In 1975, Steve ‘The Woz’ Wozniak designed and built the Apple 1, single-handedly creating the hardware and operating system from scratch. It was the first computer ever to output video  to a TV screen, and the patent Wozniak received for it (US Patent No. 4,136,359: ‘Microcomputer for use with video display’) is one of the most important in tech history. The following year Steve Jobs, a friend from the Homebrew Computer Club, persuaded him to form a company. That company, Apple Inc., is now the largest and most profitable publicly traded company in the world. We sat down with Woz to talk screens, smartwatches and sharks

My favourite phone…

Well, I really like the Galaxy Note 3, the S4 and the S3 – I like the way they feel in your hand, the style, the bright screens. For me, the best is still the iPhone, but I won’t say “you have a lousy phone” just because someone has something else. I love that they try a lot of things. It’s called innovation.

 I actually like Windows Phone 8. Some people love to disdain it,  but I like the appearance and how it works with the user. But what  I really like about Android and iOS is voice control, and I found I had to speak to Windows Phone 8 in a certain way. I think Siri’s still the best. If you were a brilliant person on sharks, I’d say “how much do sharks sleep?” and I’d get an answer. I want a machine that  can do that, near me, all the time

haven’t seen any smartwatches that really amaze me But then, I like to carry things around; I like to buy it myself, test it for a couple of weeks and I haven’t done that with a smartwatch yet.  I did get one called the Martian Watch – it doesn’t have a flatpanel display, just a tiny strip for text. And it has normal hands and dials, but what’s great is, I press a button, and I can speak any Siri command to it. I can also take phone calls by pressing the same button, and it has a good speaker that’s plenty loud

If I was to design a smartwatch,
 it would look very different When they first came out  I thought, “I’m sorry, that tiny display works for an iPod, just about. But I want a bigger screen, like I have on my iPhone.” And now that foldable displays with organic LEDs printed on foldable plastic are coming to fruition, I’m thinking you could have a big display that wraps around your wrist, or maybe it even flips open into your hand, so you have this screen that covers your wrist and your palm. And then you whip your hand down, it flips back on to your wrist and grabs it a little. Or maybe it’s on the front of your wrist, and you just pull it, and it slides out

How Do Snakes Smell?

While snakes have both nostrils and nasal cavities, they do not use them to smell with. In fact, snakes smell through the combination of a specialised organ located in their oral cavity and a fl icking motion of their elongated tongue. The organ in question is referred to as the vomeronasal organ (or Jacobson’s organ) and is located in the roof of their oral cavity. Due to its internal positioning, the snake utilises its forked tongue to fl ick air particles from the surrounding environment into contact with it. From here the vomeronasal organ translates the smell into electrical signals to be sent to the snake’s brain, enabling it to determine whether prey or predators are in its locale. In addition, due to the tongue’s role as a smelling device, it is not used by snakes to aid the swallowing process.

How Does Thing Biodegrade?

What makes something biodegradable? What is microbial decomposition and how does it break down our rubbish? Did you know that when you throw a soft-drink can in the bin it will take between 200 and 500 years to break down? Plastic dumped in landfi ll sites gets squashed down and sealed off by tons of earth. While you may think it then just breaks down like organic compost, it actually doesn’t because two vital ingredients for biodegradation are missing: oxygen and water. So to stop landfi ll sites getting bigger and bigger, and to prevent the planet from becoming a fl oating garbage site, humankind has had to come up with alternative ways to dispose of its waste. While recycling and reusing products again is one way to limit the amount of trash that we generate, there is also a way to make man-made materials more environmentally friendly: make them biodegradable. Through the actions of living organisms in the ground, such as algae, bacteria and fungi, the molecular structure of such materials can be metabolised (that is, broken down) into smaller, simpler substances that decompose far more readily. Traditional plastic is hard to break down as it comprises long, tightly bonded polymers. Plant polymers metabolise easily though. Starch from plants like wheat can be processed to make biodegradable plastic bags. Upon disposal, the grains of starch take on water and expand, breaking the material into tiny pieces that are more easily decomposed.

What is lava?

What is lava?


Take a closer look at the molten material ejected by volcanoes
Beneath the Earth fl ows molten rock known as magma. When a volcano erupts, the resulting explosion shoots this magma out into the atmosphere. At this point the magma becomes known as lava. There is no major difference between magma and lava; the terms merely distinguish whether the molten rock is beneath or above the surface. Caused by gas pressure under the surface of the Earth, a giant volcanic eruption can be incredibly powerful with lava shooting up to 600 metres (2,000 feet) into the air.

Hot lava coming out

Lava can reach temperatures of 700-1,200°C (1,300-2,200°F) and varies in colour from bright orange to brownish red, hottest to coldest, respectively. This viscous liquid can range from the consistency of syrup to extremely stiff, with little or no fl ow apparent. This is regulated by the amount of silica in the lava, with higher levels of the mineral resulting in a higher viscosity. When lava eventually cools and solidifi es it forms igneous rock.
Inside lava are volcanic gases in the form of bubbles, which develop underground inside the magma. When the lava erupts from inside the volcano, it is full of a slush of crystalline minerals (such as olivine). Upon exposure to air the liquid freezes and forms volcanic glass. Different types of lava have different chemical compositions, but most have a high percentage of silicon and oxygen in addition to smaller amounts of elements such as magnesium, calcium and iron.