The Winchester Labyrinth

So while I was surfing the web I came across an AMAZING piece of architecture that also has a really cool story to it.

It's known as the Winchester Mansion (located in San Jose, California).

Though if I were to name it I would have called it the "Winchester Labyrinth".

Why?

You'll find out why soon enough.

The house originally belonged to Mrs. Sarah Winchester (the heiress to the Winchester fortune).  After her husband and daughter died, Mrs. Winchester visited a medium (a person who claims to be able to be in contact with the spirits of the dead).  The medium told her that she was being haunted by all the spirits that had ever been killed with a Winchester riffle, and the only way to stop the "hauntings" was to continuously add onto her house...  and never stop...  Not surprisingly, Mrs. Winchester did just that, until the day she died, renovations on the house were CONSTANTLY being made.

Mrs. Winchester may have been trying to confuse the spirits that haunted her but since there was no deadline for the house to be finished on many features of the house were either dismantled, built around or sealed over.  If those hadn't been sealed over, the mansion is estimated to have about 500-600 NORMAL rooms (so not including the bedrooms and ballrooms), but because so many were blocked up, only 160 remain!!!!!!  What's crazy about though is that because many of the rooms are blocked up, the house has many odd features such as: stairs that lead into the ceiling, doors that lead to nowhere or open into walls, and chimneys that don't even reach the roof!!!!!!

The house was under constant renovations for a little over 38 years until the day Mrs. Winchester died. Aside from the many rooms blocked off in the house, the Winchester Mansion contains 160 rooms, 40 bedrooms, 950 doors, 52 skylights, 40 staircases, 47 fireplaces, 17 chimneys, 2 ballrooms, 2 basements, and 3 elevators!!!!!!

(This is a picture of one of the ballrooms...  Well...  part of it...)

Today, the Winchester "Labyrinth" offers tours through 110 of the 160 rooms, but watch out, they say that if you leave you group you'll NEVER find your way out!!!!!!

OH!!!  And there is this one room that has only one way into it but three ways out:  a door that drops into the kitchen, a cupboard that lead to a secret room behind it, and a door that lead to a cupboard that lead to another room!!!!!!

Seriously though, I'd LOVE to visit this place, it sound soooooooooo cool!!!!!!

Question of the Day:  If you could go to any place, where would you go?  What's the freakiest palace you've ever heard about (that you'd never want to visit)?
Me: (Gonna answer the second question) There's a place called Doll Island...  Maybe I should blog about that tomorrow...  What do y'all think?

The Science Behind Nail Polish

I happen to be one of those girls that enjoys having her nails painted...  And because of that, a lot of the time I often find myself wondering "how in the world does this stuff work???"

Well, thanks to this magical thing called the internet I found that our average nail polish is made from this stuff called nitrocellulose.

Nitrocellulose is what makes your nails all nice and shiny when they dry.  BUT the stuff is EXTREMELY explosive!!!  So I think the stores have found a way to make it less blowy uppy 'cause I'm not seeing anyone's nails blowing up for no reason.

Now, another question is probably popping up into your brain, "How does the nail polish stick?"

Well, it dries from lots of different resins and plasticizers (which are made of some sort of gross, fatty, acid that I can't spell let alone pronounce...  or castor oil).  But without these, our precious nail polish would crack even MORE easily that it does now!!!!!!!!!!!

Moving onto a certain polish that I'm sure we've ALL gawked at, wondering "HOW DID IT DO THAT" is crackle/shatter nail polish.  Yes, that's right, the stuff that's super duper cool!  You apply and within a good hour it dries, the polish creates a cool "cracked" look.

Crackle nail polish is mostly made of two components, nitrocellulose, and ethanol.  The ethanol is a quick moving substance that does not give the nitrocellulose time to dry "evenly" giving the polish the cool crackle effect.

Ok, one more question: "WHY IN THE WORLD DOES SHELLAC/GEL NAIL POLISH STAY ON LONGER THAN REGULAR NAIL POLISH???????"

First off, shellac isn't even made of the components as regular polish.  Instead, it's made with methacrylate monomers.  It's then mixed with benzoyl peroxide (normally) to help initiate   "hemolytic bond polish" (a process that makes an electron pair to "break off").  A lot of other scientific stuff is also thrown into the mixture as well as their purposes but it honestly confuses me...  And will probably confuse y'all as well...

Anywho, I hope you found this interesting as well as entertaining and educational.  I know I learned a lot, it was hard to figure out how to put everything in my own words...  I had to look up quite a few definitions and different characteristics of the different chemicals.

Question of the day:  What was the most fascinating science topic you have ever learned about?
Me:  Probably that I can make my own rock candy...  I'm hopeless...