Ming’s Wisdom

A lot of us have taken medicines in the form of a pill. However, most of us probably have never thought about the distinct sequence of motions that produce the action of swallowing a pill. I’ve found that more often than not, a successful pill-swallowing involves the following:

1. Put pill in mouth, on top of tongue.
2. Gulp a small mouthful of water, but do not swallow.
3. Pill floats in mouthful of water near center of mouth.
4. Swallowing pulls pill with water.

This sequence prevents mishaps such as when swallowed too fast, only the water goes down while the pill is stuck on the tongue. The key is that the pill floats to the middle of the mouth so that it follows the flow of the water. Sure, most people already know how to swallow a pill, but this could be good knowledge in case you need to teach a kid or younger sibling, who often have trouble with it.

Next is a tip on keeping your laundry wrinkle-free. I’ve long used washers and dryers, but clothes would come out wrinkly, even if I thrash the clothes around to shake out the wrinkles after taking them out of the dryer. This usually involved quick heavy movements of the hands while holding the clothes, pulling the clothes up, then quickly pulling back down, to cause a wave movement in the clothes and lots of pulling force to pull the wrinkles to become straighter. Well doing this after taking clothes out of the dryer works okay, but doing this after taking clothes out of the washer and before putting into the dryer works great. If you do it between the washer and dryer, your clothes will come out with much fewer wrinkles.

This next tip most people already know about, but it’s useful enough to put out there again. Get your gas at night or early morning when the temperature is colder. Gas stations measure how much you pump using volume, not mass. “Pounds” or “grams” are measurements of mass, while “gallons” and “liters” are measurements of volume. Mass measures how much you really get, volume measures how much space it takes. And because fuel expands in heat, the same amount of fuel takes up more space (gallons) when it’s hotter, and more gallons means you’re paying more for the same amount of fuel if the temperature is hotter. So, pump gas in the coolest time of the day and you’ll save a little bit of money on gas.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 30th, 2009 at 18:35 and is filed under Tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.