English Conversation Course

Wi-Fi is a wireless standard. It provides data transmission using a radio frequency signal in the ranges from 2.4 to 5 GHz. Today, Wi-Fi is used in almost all public places - parks, restaurants, shopping and entertainment complexes, and a Wi-Fi router that distributes Internet at home or in the office makes online work and communication comfortable and convenient. Nevertheless, despite all the obvious advantages, wireless Internet is shrouded in hundreds of myths and speculation. Some argue that the radio waves emitted by the router provoke dangerous diseases, while others believe that this achievement of civilization is absolutely harmless. Myth # 1: Wi-Fi is a radio signal, and the radio waves that a router emits are dangerous. In fact: most of the already familiar wireless devices work in about the same microwave range. For example, 4G LTE mobile phones, like microwaves, operate at frequencies of 2.5-2.7 GHz. Thus, there is no reason to isolate the radio waves emitted by ...

Alphonse Mucha was a Czech Art Nouveau painter, designer, poster creator and decorative artist mostly known for his colourful and subtle illustrations and prints of women surrounded by flowers. Variety of his prints (especially fine art) can be found on plates, mugs, cutlery and t-shirts. Nevertheless, there is so much more to his art and career (in the context of eye-catching projects) than few commonly known drawings. This unbelievably prolific artist from an early age was fascinated with drawing and illustration, and due to fortunate coincidence of events he had a chance to develop his skill in Academy of Fine Arts in Munich and Paris. Of course, he started working as a designer and theatrical printer, but it was year 1894 that made him one of the most popular artists of secession. One can say that he got really lucky. Few days before the end of the year an order was placed for the printing house in which he worked - a poster for theatrical art. And boy, it was big. The...

In the ancient times of Christopher Columbus' journeys, people believed that there was a timeless remedy for all the diseases of their world. For this purpose, a brown substance known as "Mumia" was used, which (under its graceful name) hid powdered human tissue. This type of medical practice wasn’t the only one known to mankind, as many cultures used human body parts to heal their relatives, gather strength and power or simply to survive. This shouldn’t be at all shocking, as there are various stories about acts of cannibalism througahout the world. As the example we can present the belief of New Zealanders according to which warriors ate the flesh of the defeated in order to absorb their strength and fortitude. Regardless of whatever the cannibals have believed, and what their motives were, this “culture” remains to this day mysterious, and to some of us, unbelievable.  Questions: 1. Have you ever heard about the history of cannibalism and “traditions” ...

Recently in my YouTube recommendations I’ve found a video about a really interesting game which is Geoguessr. The game is simple - you are taken to the random place in a street view and your task is to guess where you are. You can move like in a normal street view from Google and use a map to check your assumptions. Each game consists of 5 rounds and the closer you guess the more points you get. I’ve found the game really satisfying and addictive. As I’ve seen in various videos, people even try to guess the places with their own rules, like guessing without any moving, zooming or looking around, which makes it even more challenging. Here I have one of these videos which is a short highlights from the best guesses of a YouTuber “GeoWizard”. In the video he decided that he can only look around but can’t move or zoom. (source:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wIn8mD_Q6XU ) Questions: 1.  What do you think about the Geoguessr game? Would you like to t...

Have you ever wondered how many abandoned buildings and places we have around the world? It seems that a lot of. So many, that there are hundreds of youtube channels about exploring such places, where people go around their country or even around the world to see abandoned places and make videos about them. (source: https://intotheshadows.pl/images/intotheshadows/page/urban-exploration.jpg ) A couple of years ago I became interested in watching this type of content on youtube. It all started from a one video of polish youtubers “Tube Raiders” where they visited Chernobyl’s exclusion zone. It was many years before the hype and before the HBO series. Since then, from time to time, I like to watch some explorations on youtube made by both polish and foreign people. (source: https://www.roughguides.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/pripyat-chernobyl-exclusion-zone-ukraine-shutterstock_728433472.jpg ) That kind of trips are called Urban Exploration or Urbex in short....

Flipping Cat Physics Cats are one of  most common human’s companion. We can see them all the time walking around their own trails and climbing on everything just to be in a center of attention. Although sometimes I can see them trip on something they always fall on their four legs. How is that possible? In the video shown below we can see a youtube video created by Destin Standlin showing how cats rotate when falling. It’s fascinating how they can control their body to rotate. I won't spoil the reason but watch how percisely they control their body, every move is perfect.  Think about it for a second and watch the video presented below.  Link to the video:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RtWbpyjJqrU Did you ever wonder how is that possible? What are your thoughts about this video? Did you pity the cat as it had to suffer through the process of falling so many times (I felt a little bit angry when I was watching this video) ?

My history of board games From early ages of my life I was told to not spend so much time on a computer. I was fascinated with games on a computer but because I was spending so much time on it I was grounded many times and couldn't access a computer for long periods of time. To brighten my free time I was going to play basketball or go riding on bicycles around the block, but when it was pouring outside we had nothing much to do. Me along with my friends started to explore the world of board games, and we instantly loved it. Figure 1 . Monopoly - boardgame Source: https://static.muve.pl/data/Pawe/mon2.jpg We started with some basics that I guess we all know from the time we were young. Monopoly is a real estate game where you try to build your empire buying new estates and make others pay you big money when they step on your fields. This game is a really simple one but it opened my mind on board games. For a first time I saw that this games can be comp...