Tag: Biology

Rediscovering the 1986 “Chemical Trainer”: A Pioneer in Interactive Learning | November 23 2025, 15:55

At my home in Kolomna, I have a book called “Chemical Trainer” from 1986. I have never seen anything like it before or since.

The material of each of the 54 programs is divided into many small, very short sections, or categories. At the end of each category, one or more questions are posed. This is done to check whether the content of the category is truly understood. For each answer, there is a place in the book to jump to in order to see if the answer is correct. If the answer is wrong, it describes why and asks a new question. If correct — you move further in this quest.

These Germans in 1986 created an interactive textbook even before it became fashionable.

Exploring the Fascinating Properties of Glass | November 21 2025, 23:58

I got carried away with the topic of glass and learned so many interesting things, so I’m sharing. It all started when I read about the supercritical state of matter – it turns out that the line separating liquid and gaseous states on a pressure and temperature graph at some point breaks off, and beyond that lies a state of matter that is neither here nor there. I started reading about states (phases) of matter and stumbled upon the fact that glass is essentially a state between liquid and solid. It flows, just very slowly. This myth is popular thanks to observations of medieval windows, where the glass is often thicker at the bottom, which was attributed to “flowing” under the influence of gravity, and it was even mentioned in school textbooks. In reality, glass is an amorphous solid with extremely high viscosity at room temperature, and it does not flow noticeably even over billions of years; the uneven thickness of old glass panes is explained by production technologies, when the thicker edge was installed at the bottom for stability.

I delved into the topic of glass further. It turned out that the reason why glass can be transparent is rooted in quantum mechanics, specifically in the electronic structure of the material, not because of the density of particles. The essence is that for an electron to absorb a photon, it must transition from one energy level to another, but in silicon dioxide, the width of the band gap is so large that the energy of visible light photons is physically insufficient to make this “jump.” As a result, light simply cannot interact with the electrons and goes straight through the material, while higher-energy ultraviolet radiation can overcome this barrier and is thus absorbed by glass.

It also turned out that melted glass conducts electricity. Moreover, the mechanism of conductivity fundamentally differs from how metals conduct electricity. In a copper wire, current is a flow of free electrons. In cold glass (an insulator), electrons are tightly bound, and ions are locked in the solid lattice. But when you heat glass to the molten state (usually above 1000 degrees for silicates), thermal energy breaks the rigid bonds of the lattice, and glass becomes a liquid, with ions gaining freedom of movement. The current in molten glass is the physical movement of charged atoms (ionic conductivity), not just “flowing” electrons.

The green tint you see on the edge of regular glass (as seen in the attached picture) turns out to be caused by iron ions, present as impurities (~0.1%). Sand is a natural material, and removing all the iron from it is difficult and costly. Low-iron glass, which has tens of times fewer iron ions, is used in solar panels, not just because it is more transparent. Iron greedily absorbs the infrared spectrum (thermal energy), reducing the efficiency of the panel. By removing iron, we allow maximum energy to reach the silicon cells.

And finally, the most “mind-blowing” (literally). There are these things called “Prince Rupert’s drops.” If you drop molten glass into icy water, the outer shell of the drop cools and hardens instantly, while the inner part remains liquid. As it cools, the core tries to contract, but the hardened shell doesn’t allow it. As a result, the inside of the drop preserves colossal mechanical stress (up to 700 MPa).

The physics of this process creates a paradox: the “head” of such a drop can withstand being struck by a hammer because the compression of the surface makes it incredibly strong (the same principle is used in tempered glass for smartphones). But just nick the thin tail, and the balance of forces is disrupted, and a wave of destruction moves through the drop at the speed of a bullet (about 1.5 km/s), turning it into glass dust right in your hands.

There’s also something in physics called “metallic glasses” (amorphous metals). If you cool the molten metal at a rate of a million degrees per second, atoms do not have time to arrange into a crystalline lattice and freeze in chaos. Such “glassy metal” possesses unique magnetic permeability and is stronger than titanium, because it lacks crystal lattice defects, which are usually the points of destruction. So glass is a much broader concept than just transparent substance in our windows 🙂

The only example of an object made from this material, amorphous metal, that I’ve encountered is, believe it or not, the iPhone clip.

By the way, that same amorphous structure of glass, which I mentioned earlier, gives it an unexpected advantage — supernatural sharpness. If you take a scalpel made of the best surgical steel and look at it under an electron microscope, its edge will look like a jagged saw. This is inevitable: steel is made up of crystalline grains, and it’s impossible to sharpen it any smoother than the grain size allows.

But obsidian (volcanic glass) when fractured provides an edge only about 3 nanometers thick (about 1/30000 the thickness of a human hair). There’s no magic here, just that glass lacks a crystalline lattice, which would otherwise prevent achieving a perfectly smooth fracture down to the molecular level. That’s why obsidian scalpels are still used in the most complex eye surgeries — the cut is so clean that tissue cells are minimally traumatized, and healing occurs faster.

And one more powerful engineering case — vitrification (glassification). Mankind has chosen glass as the most reliable “safe” for nuclear waste. Liquid radioactive waste is mixed with special additives, melted, and cooled into blocks. The trick is that dangerous isotopes are not just poured inside, they are chemically embedded into the atomic grid of the glass. Glass is chemically inert, it doesn’t rust like metal or decompose for thousands of years. This is perhaps the only material that engineers trust to store hazardous substances on a geological time scale. Yes, it takes about a million years for a discarded bottle to decompose.

And finally. Digging into history, it turns out that the Romans were engaged in nanotechnology 1600 years before we even invented the word. In the British Museum stands the “Lycurgus Cup” (4th century AD). If you look at it under normal lighting, it’s greenish and opaque. But if you place a light source inside the cup, the glass flashes bright rubin red.

Until the 1990s, scientists could not understand how this was achieved. An electron microscope showed: Roman craftsmen added gold and silver, ground to nanoparticles about 50 nanometers in size (about 1000-1800 times thinner than a hair). This size of particles triggers a quantum effect known as surface plasmon resonance: electrons in the metal begin to oscillate such that they absorb some wavelengths of light and let others pass depending on the angle of incidence. The funniest thing is that the Romans did this empirically, “by eye,” and we’ve only just learned to replicate this consciously in photonics. It’s crazy to think you could handle 50 nm gold dust by eye. This moment required additional googling.

It’s unlikely the Romans mechanically crushed the metal to 50 nanometers — they had no such mills.

More likely, they added gold and silver in the form of salts or foil to the molten glass mass. The nanoparticles formed not by crushing, but by crystallization and sedimentation from the melt under very precise temperature conditions (“glass prescription”). This is even more complex chemistry than simple grinding.

The most astonishing thing is not that they did it, but that the ratio of gold to silver was maintained perfectly. Changing the concentration of gold by just 1% would alter the color to something other than pure ruby red. This indicates that the craftsmen mastered the technology incredibly accurately, although they likely did not understand the mechanism. And that they had a heck of a lot of time for all kinds of nonsense;) probably many generations dedicated their lives to experimenting. Because it’s hard to see why all this was necessary.

There’s a beautiful hypothesis (unproven, but popular) that the cup could have been used as a detector. If you pour a different liquid into it (for example, alcohol with impurities or poison), the refractive index changes, and the color of the “flash” might vary.

Metchnikoff: Beyond Science and Survival | November 13 2025, 04:53

I was reading Metchnikoff’s biography (don’t ask why I ended up there) and thought about how much can fit into one life. He wasn’t just a scientist, but rather like a saga:

His elder brother Ivan was the prototype for Leo Tolstoy’s “The Death of Ivan Ilyich.” Another brother, Lev, was a prominent anarchist, sociologist and fought in Italy alongside Garibaldi. Metchnikoff himself tried to end his life twice: the first time after the death of his first wife (who, sick with tuberculosis, was carried to the church on a chair). He took morphine but survived. The second time was when his second wife Olga fell critically ill with typhus. He deliberately inoculated himself with relapsing fever. Fortunately, both survived. However, the Grim Reaper with his scythe only came after his third consecutive heart attack.

The dude graduated from university at 19 as an external student. I.M. Sechenov himself recommended him for a professorship. But Metchnikoff was “blackballed” (rejected) by one vote. In protest, Sechenov resigned along with him.

He founded the first bacteriological station in the country at that time in Odessa. But due to an employee mistake (they spoiled the anthrax vaccine) an entire flock of sheep died. After this scandal, he left Russia. The station — on Leo Tolstoy Street.

In Paris, he was immediately taken under the wing of Louis Pasteur (the father of pasteurized milk), who supported his theory and gave him a lab in his institute. There, Metchnikoff worked for 28 years, becoming the deputy director.

While studying cholera at the Pasteur Institute, Metchnikoff proposed a theory that not everyone who comes into contact with the pathogen gets sick. He suggested that it’s all about… (of course) the gut flora. To prove it, he deliberately drank a culture with cholera vibrios. Nothing happened (it would have surely happened to you, Metchnikoff thought)

In the end, he received the Nobel Prize for the discovery of phagocytosis (cellular immunity). He is also “the father of gerontology” — Metchnikoff was the one who proposed the theory that to achieve longevity, one must combat bad bacteria in the gut with probiotics. Now, they say, gerontologists around the world drink sour milk on May 15th remembering Metchnikoff.

He died in Paris, and his ashes are kept in the library of the Pasteur Institute.

Also, in the English Wikipedia he’s Élie Metchnikoff. Not easy to guess.

In the photo, Metchnikoff and Leo Tolstoy are discussing immunology.

Gold and Gadgets: Tracing Global Influence and Metal Monopolies | October 14 2025, 03:13

Rajesh Exports states on their website that they process 35% of the gold mined on the planet. Of course, they are exaggerating, but overall, India and Rajesh do shape the market. It turns out that 11% of all the gold on the planet is adorned on Indian women. Additionally, it was found that in 1947, 70% of all mined gold was in the USA. From 1934 to 1970, it was legally prohibited for private individuals to own gold in the USA. Approximately 22% of all the gold ever accounted for on the surface of the Earth has been mined from a plateau in South Africa called the Witwatersrand. And if you consider all the gold mined throughout history, it would amount to less than an Olympic swimming pool.

China buys up silver, with India not far behind. Interestingly, platinum is significantly used in the production of catalytic converters for vehicles – almost 40% of the global production goes there. China, of course, holds much of this production.

Practically every smartphone, tablet, or touchscreen monitor that we use is coated with a thin layer of indium tin oxide (ITO). This material has a unique combination of properties: it is almost completely transparent while also conducting electricity excellently. This allows the screen to register your touches.

Although lithium is now strongly associated with batteries, historically and still today, a significant portion of it is used in the production of glass and ceramics.

When Pigs Outsmart Technology: The Failure of Precision Feeding in Large Farms | October 05 2025, 17:01

Today I learned how scientific achievements fly under a pig’s tail when faced with reality.

There’s this thing called precision feeding in pig farming. The gist is: a pig has an RFID chip attached to its tag (actually to its ear), and when it wants to eat, it sticks the tag into the feeder – and a special sensor reads its data and dispenses exactly as much feed from the machine as it should, also recording in a database how much and when it was given. If the pig sticks its tag in too early, the feed machine won’t dispense any. The idea is to reduce feed costs, improve growth and health of the animals, and lessen environmental pollution (less uneaten feed).

It seems like a great idea. However, such a system doesn’t work where there are large populations – it only works in specialized productions with few pigs, where almost all are known by name.

Why doesn’t it work on a large scale?

Because pigs are very cunning and quickly adapt. One pig inserts a tag, and then the one higher in the hierarchy chases it away and eats what isn’t meant for it.

Whole classes of oppressed arise, whose role is to insert the tag so that the authorities can gorge themselves. In the end, chaos ensues and no precision is achieved.

This is how pigs oppose technological progress.

The Maunder Minimum’s Impact on Stradivari’s Unique Violins | September 18 2025, 21:20

I stumbled upon an interesting scientific hypothesis from 2003 regarding why Stradivari violins (and those of his contemporaries) are so unique. Traditional hypotheses—about the secrets of the varnish or the aging of the wood—prove insufficient. According to this hypothesis, the entire blame lies with the Maunder Minimum, a period of reduced solar activity occurring from 1645–1715, during which the tree growth rate slowed down due to the climate, meaning the wood was denser. The hypothesis suggests that amidst the perfect combination of altitude, humidity, and temperature, this environmental shift provided material with unique properties, ideal for resonant soundboards.

Stradivari was born a year before the Maunder Minimum began. His “Amati Period” (1666–1690), “Experimentation Period” (1690–1700), and “Golden Period” (1700–1720), during which he perfected and produced his best instruments (see Henley 1961), all coincided with the Maunder Minimum. Cremona’s craftsmen during this period used the only wood available to them, i.e., from trees growing during the Maunder Minimum. Neither before nor after this period was such wood available. And, probably, it is nowhere to be found in the world even now.

But really, modern violins are also quite something. Two-three hundred years ago, musicians extracted the maximum from an instrument through trial and error, whereas now it is done through meticulous calculation of sound. It is almost impossible to differentiate violins by their sound anymore, and the difference lies in the realm of individual preferences, rather than an undisputed objective worse-better.

Echoes of Anthrax: The Amerithrax Investigation Unveiled | September 02 2025, 13:33

From the museum of the day before yesterday. Probably, some of you remember the notorious case in 2001: shortly after the 9/11 attacks, the USA experienced a series of bioterror attacks: someone mailed letters containing powder with anthrax spores (Bacillus anthracis). This led to the deaths of 5 people and infected 17, but it could have ended much worse for the entire planet. The investigation, known as “Amerithrax,” was conducted by the FBI in collaboration with other agencies and became one of the most complex in history.

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For those who might not know — the inhalational form of anthrax has a mortality rate of 85–90% without treatment. Symptoms appear after 6 days, by which time dozens will be infected. It can’t be destroyed — spores remain viable for decades in the soil. For example, on the Scottish island of Gruinard, they lingered for nearly 50 years after wartime testing. Only after 50 years had passed and after 280 tons of formaldehyde solution had been sprayed across all 196 hectares of the island, and the most contaminated topsoil around the dispersal site had been removed, did the island become relatively safe. Thus, anthrax could easily be more terrifying than a global nuclear war.

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So, returning to the subject. Initially, suspicions fell on various individuals, including Iraq or Al-Qaeda, but no evidence was found.

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The key breakthrough was scientific examination. Scientists analyzed the anthrax strain from the letters — it was the Ames strain used in American laboratories. Using microbial forensics (genetic analysis), they identified unique mutations in the spores that narrowed the source down to flask RMR-1029 in the USAMRIID (United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases) laboratory at Fort Detrick, Maryland.

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In other words, every living being has names and genealogy from birth, it’s just a matter of willingness to dig into the genealogy. Apparently, controlled substances have their own registry office, so to speak.

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Bruce Ivins, a microbiologist who worked there, was the custodian of this flask and had direct access (although more than 100 others did as well).

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Later, investigators gathered circumstantial evidence. Ivins had been working late at the lab just before the mailings in September and October 2001, which was inconsistent with his usual schedule. He could not convincingly explain these hours. Moreover, in early September 2001, he was vaccinated against anthrax, which seemed suspicious. The FBI also accused him of attempting to mislead the investigation: he allegedly provided false anthrax samples to divert suspicion and attempted to frame colleagues. In 2001, Ivins sent an email to colleagues offering the Ames strain for analysis, which might have been an attempt to cover his tracks.

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Behavioral signs also played a role. Ivins suffered from depression and suicidal thoughts, especially after another suspect (Steven Hatfill) was cleared in 2008. In June 2008, he was hospitalized in a psychiatric clinic, where during therapy, he made statements that the FBI interpreted as “denials without denial” — for example, that he “had no heart for killing” and did not remember participating in the attacks.

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By 2008, the investigation had narrowed down to Ivins. When he learned that charges were being prepared against him, on July 29, 2008, he took a lethal dose of Tylenol (acetaminophen). Formal charges were never brought. In 2010, the FBI officially closed the case, declaring Ivins the sole perpetrator.

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However, the conclusions remain controversial: the US National Academy of Sciences noted in 2011 that the genetic examination was not convincing enough for a definitive conclusion, and some microbiologists, victims’ families, and politicians demanded further investigation. As of now, no new discoveries have been made, and the case is considered closed.

Exploring the Boundless Spectrum: The World of Animal Hearing | August 29 2025, 17:56

From my notes as I read Ed Yong’s Immense World—

“..It is known that the range of audible frequencies for animals is different from that of humans, but I didn’t realize just how different. Imagine the highest pitch in the world—it would be just under 20 kHz, as it’s considered the upper limit of the audible range. Both the upper and lower limits tend to decrease with age. Most adults can’t hear sounds over 16 kHz. Anything above 20 kHz we call ultrasound.

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So, it turns out that our closest relatives, chimpanzees, can hear up to 30 kHz, dogs up to 45 kHz, cats up to 85 kHz, mice up to 100 kHz, and moths even up to 300 kHz. Imagine, there are so many high-frequency sounds around us, and how rich their sound world is compared to our limited one. It would be interesting to wear headphones that compress the range from 20-40000 Hz to 20-15000 Hz. Many animals, such as mice, actively use ultrasound for internal communication, beyond the hearing range of their predators.

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And when the topic of ultrasound comes up, it’s impossible not to mention bats with their echolocation. Turns out, it’s a wildly interesting topic.”

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Probably everyone knows that bats successfully hunt in caves, where no light penetrates at all, and they don’t crash into stalactites and stalagmites. There’s an English saying, blind as a bat, but actually, they can see. Some species see better, others worse. But let’s talk about echolocation.

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In general, it’s just radar. The bat screams, the sound bounces off a tree, comes back into its ears, and it gets information about how far away the tree is and whether to slow down or not. But the devil, as they say, is in the details. “Engineering” ones.

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Firstly, high-frequency sound attenuates quickly, so you need to shout very loudly for something to bounce back from a few meters away. Beyond that, bats simply don’t “see.” So, they do indeed shout very loudly, and it’s a directed scream. Specifically, they measured 138 decibels, the sound level of a jet engine if you stand next to it. But in the ultrasonic range.

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Secondly, when they scream so loudly, they need to plug their own ears so as not to kill their sensitive apparatus. It turned out that they have special muscles that block the inner ear during the scream.

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Thirdly, both they and their prey are on the move, very fast and erratic. Meanwhile, the speed of sound is about 343 meters per second. The bat’s brain must calculate the difference between the signal and the echo, taking into account both its own movement through space and the movement of the prey. It turned out that the bat’s vocal muscles can contract up to 200 times a second. Moreover, the frequency depends on the phase of the hunt. 200 times—that’s the final phase, when the moth is right in front of the nose, and tiny movements need to be tracked.

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Fourthly, the bat’s brain also has to cope with creating interference between what was shouted out two moments ago and what was shouted out a moment ago. Considering that the sound can echo off the far wall and the near branch. Plus there are waves from the cries of other bats, and they’re usually very numerous in caves. To manage this, they seem to throw a bit different modulation, plus this musculature allows them to “fire” very short pulses—a few milliseconds—and to renew pulses at their own frequency through very short intervals. Imagine what kind of computer in their brains performs the inverse Fourier transform.”

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So, all this works pretty well in small groups. But for example, the Brazilian free-tailed bats live in groups of millions. Really, together 20 million mouths shout something and wait for their echo from the walls and each other. You can’t just pick modulation and frequencies that easily, but somehow they manage. Not perfectly, and if they gather in a really big bunch in the cave, then they perform their commute to the hunt and back to the cave “by memory” – probably due to issues with echolocation. When a “door” was placed at the entrance to the cave, a bunch of bats crashed into it.

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Fifth, consider how they determine distance. It’s necessary to calculate the difference between the signal sent and the signal received (amid a bunch of noise from other bats), and for hunting, it needs to be calculated very precisely. And sound of course isn’t light, but 343 meters per second is also a lot. So studies have shown that bats can recognize differences as little as 1-2 millionths of a second, which allows them to determine distance to fractions of a millimeter. In other words, our eyes are significantly less accurate than their ears.

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Plus, a moth is actually a fairly complex 3D creation that reflects sound differently with its different parts. Otherwise, bats would eat everything that moves. They recognize. In complete darkness. A mouse’s scream contains a whole palette of frequencies, which reflect differently off parts of a moth, and the mouse’s brain somehow manages to translate this into a coherent picture. Moreover, for each of the constituent frequencies, the delay will be its own.

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Then, all this information is layered over time. Roughly speaking, a snapshot from one point is combined with a snapshot from a point a half meter to the right, then from a point half a meter forward, and so on many, many times, which enhances “sharpness” and detail. Overall, it’s the same with us – we only see the spot in front of us clearly while the rest is constructed by the brain. But the brain of a bat weighs 1-2 grams against our half kilogram.

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Think about it, you’re flying with such a built-in radar, and in front of you are two branches at the same distance, which produce essentially the same echo for their ears. And to distinguish them and understand that it’s not one object but two, you really need an advanced brain.

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So, they send pulses lasting 1-20 ms, plus longer pauses between pulses. The pulses are complex in terms of frequencies, so such bats are called frequency modulation (FM) bats. But there are about 160 species that have a much longer cry—many tens of milliseconds but with short pauses, and instead of a complex gamma of frequencies, these use a pure “note.” These bats are called CF—constant frequency. So here’s the thing with these bats—there’s a problem with the Doppler effect, which is an increase in frequency as the distance decreases. Since their brain is tuned to a strict frequency, like 87 kHz for example, they might lose their prey if the echo that reaches their ears is shifted in frequency. And what they do—they shout at a sound speed lower, so that after the Doppler effect it arrives at the correct frequency for the brain.”

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Incidentally, their radar has two modes—forward and downward, the echoes from which are processed separately. The downward radar provides information about position in space, and the forward radar—about the position in space of the prey.

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When I researched the subject, I found that yes, after 20 kHz humans hear nothing, with one exception—frequencies of 2.4 GHz and 10 GHz, which actually belong to the microwave range. Yes, humans can “hear” these frequencies, but not with the ear, but “hear.” This phenomenon is called the microwave auditory effect or the Frey effect. Initially, this effect was registered by people working near radars during World War II, and the sounds they perceived were not heard by others. It turned out that when pulsed or modulated microwave radiation was applied to areas around the cochlea, it was absorbed by the tissues of the inner ear, accompanied by their thermal expansion. In the course of this process, shockwaves are produced, perceived by humans as sound, which no one else hears. It was also discovered that with the appropriate choice of the modulating signal, it is possible to transmit information to a person in the form of individual words, phrases, and other sounds. Depending on the radiation parameters, the sound created in the head can be irritating, cause nausea, and even disable. The volume of the perceived sound can be changed, but acoustic trauma is not possible, as the eardrum does not participate in the process at all. Generally speaking, the method of specifically transmitting sonic messages that are absolutely inaudible to others opens up a whole bouquet of possibilities. I wonder if research is still being conducted on this topic. Google shows that they used to be pretty intense.”

I once published this along with a video, and Facebook reckons that if you publish a video, the text should be one, at most two lines. And in the end, almost no one saw this text. Everyone just watched the video of a bat flying around my apartment 🙂

Faces of Language: Understanding the Human and Animal “Face” Across Cultures | July 25 2025, 16:35

I read about a fly on my windowsill, it’s a predatory critter, and its face is described on Wikipedia. Just like that, face. It got me thinking, is the word “face” applicable to animals other than humans (let’s skip the discussion of whether the term animal applies to humans). On the same Wikipedia, but on the face page, the face is only human. Yet, it is written that in professional terminology (veterinary, ornithology, entomology) it is quite appropriate to speak of the “facial part of the head” of an animal. For example, ornithologists at Cornell University use the term “face” specifically in descriptions of owls. Well, fine, we have a face, others have a snout. And birds? A snout in feathers? A beak is something else entirely.

In English too, by the way, things are not so simple. Even a cube has faces. In other European languages, the boundary between a human “face” and an animal one is more or less clearly drawn. Italians use faccia only for humans and muso for animals; faccia for a cat or dog would be inappropriate and even offensive. In French, visage usually means “human face,” and for animals, it’s gueule, museau, tête, etc. In Polish, there’s twarz for people and pysk/morda for beasts; moreover, the word morda in relation to a person is a crude insult (and in Russian too, only adding nationality to it). In Scandinavian languages (“ansigt” in Danish, “ansikte” in Swedish) “face” is also almost always human.

There’s also the word “physiognomy.” Interestingly, it only later came to denote a face. Essentially, this word means “the study of facial features to determine character.” It consists of φύσις (physis) – “nature, essence, character” and γνώμων (gnomon) – “indicator, determining.”

And then I remembered the word “unflattering.” Strange word, right? How can a conversation be unflattering? Turns out, its definition is as follows: “not based on flattery, the desire to please someone; impartial, fair.” So formally, Vitsyn could exclaim, “long live the most unflattering court in the world!” I’m not joking, for example, Saltykov-Shchedrin writes: “At the present time, in all corners of Russia, even the most backward people are beginning to recognize the vital need for a lawful and unflattering court.” “I must confess, I was very nervous, handing my brainchild over to the unflattering judgment of the editorial staff” (D. N. Mamin-Sibiriyak, “Features from the Life of Pepko,” 1894).

Actually, an interesting word. In Russian, its only decent synonyms are snout, mug, phiz, physiognomy, dial, and very memorable indecent ones.

From Forbidden Fruit to Linguistic Roots: The Curious Case of Currants and Smorodina | July 17 2025, 13:09

You know, 99.9% of Americans have never tried blackcurrant. It was legally banned here in 1911 because blackcurrants carried a disease that killed pine trees. And along with it, gooseberries and Kinder Surprise were banned too. It even got to the point where in the USA, purple Skittles are grape-flavored, while in Europe, they taste of blackcurrant.

But today I am thinking about something else. I wondered why in Russian blackcurrant is called ‘smorodina,’ and in English, it’s called ‘currant.’ It turns out that ‘smorodina’ is related to the word ‘smrad,’ which meant a strong smell because, according to our ancestors, it smelled bad. ‘Smrad’ used to mean any strong smell. I don’t know how unpleasant it was for them, but this differentiated it from gooseberries, both of which grew along rivers, hence in Ukrainian and Polish, it’s also called ‘porzeczka’ and ‘porichka,’ especially the red and white varieties. To me, gooseberries even smell stronger.

The English name is also interesting. The English ‘currant’ stems from the Middle English ‘rayson of Corantes’ (‘grapes from Corinth’), where ‘Corantes’ is a distortion of the Greek city Corinth. In the Middle Ages, small dried grapes were actively imported into England from Greece (specifically the region around Corinth) and these dried berries were called ‘raisins of Corinth,’ which later shortened to ‘currant.’ Originally, ‘currant’ referred specifically to raisins, dried grapes (essentially, small raisins). And it still means that in some places.

But then a shift in meaning occurred. Later, when shrubs of the Ribes genus (currant bushes), specifically Ribes rubrum (red currant) and Ribes nigrum (black currant), began to be cultivated in Northern Europe, they were given the same name, since their berries were also small and dark like the Greek raisins. Thus, the word ‘currant’ came to be used to denote both currants and gooseberries 🙂 but later on they were differentiated. Yes, gooseberries and currants turned out to be related both biologically and etymologically.

And do you remember the fairy tale about the good heroes and warriors Dobrynya Nikitich, who fought the three-headed Chudo-Yudo on the Kalinov Bridge spanning the River Smorodina? Well, that river, Smorodina, marked the boundary between the world of the living (Yav) and the world of the dead (Nav).