Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Your Marvellous Computer, The Brain

Scientist have claimed that the greatest invention since the wheel is the transistor. This tiny device can create and amplify electricity which has made possible space exploration, pocket-size radios and computers.
Think of the marvels of the computer. The first electronic computer in 1946 did an addition problem in one-five thousandth of a second. Computers today do the same in micro-seconds or millionths of a second (0.000001). Computers can solve problems in a few seconds that would take men centuries to do.

Complexity of the Brain
Yet these marvels of science were created and designed by the human mind. Our brain has been linked to a computer and to a telephone and communications system, which it is. But it is much more than these.
In actuality this marvelous organ is a soft rubbery mass of tissue weighing about one and a half kilograms and made up of about 70% water. Filled with a rich supply of blood, it requires and uses about 25% of the oxygen in the body, when it at rest.
Its work is incredibly complex. The brain is made up of nerve cells, 12 000 of them. Each cell is alive, uses oxygen and nutrients from the blood and has a particular function to do. These brain cells are connected with each other and with the rest of the body by a system of fibers called nerves. The thread-like fibers of these nerve cells are so small that it would take about 25 000 of them to make a bundle 2.5 centimeters thick. A nerve cell is a living wire which produces and conducts rapid electrical impulses by chemical reaction. It keeps itself "loaded" and ready for action with the aid of a built-in-battery which runs on an oxygen-sugar mixture and recharges automatically. It transmits impulses up to several hundred times a second. The speed of these nerve impulses varies according to the distance they must travel. Speeds vary from one meter a second up to 100 meters a second, or 350 kilometers per hour, relaying intelligence and information to and from the brain.

The Voice of Prophecy

Picture by Flickr

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