Science

Big waves can damage a coastal reef when they break, but 100 miles at sea, waves do not affect the sea floor. As a rough formula, if the wavelength, the distance between successive crests, is less than four times the depth of the ocean at that point, the waves do not affect the bottom. In … Read more

The strength of what meteorologists call the updraft in a thunderstorm is what determines the size. A storm forms at a place in the atmosphere where the air is moving up very rapidly. When the air cools in the cold upper atmosphere, its water vapor condenses into a storm cloud. Eventually precipitation forms in the … Read more

The arrow on a weather vane points into the wind. If the arrow is to the north, the wind is from the north. The tail of the weather vane is heavier than the nose, and in some but not all weather vanes, there is some type of flap that moves as the wind blows so … Read more

The most common rainbows form when sunlight enters raindrops. The drops act like prisms and disperse the sun’s light into the familiar spectrum of colors: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet. Rainbows are round by necessity because of the geometry involved in seeing them. You see a rainbow when you have the sun … Read more

It is never too late for hurricanes, but there is a difference in when they usually occur during the year. The official hurricane season in the Atlantic begins June 1 and ends November 30. To become a hurricane, a storm must first be a tropical storm, and tropical storms in the Atlantic have formed in … Read more

Ball lightning is a poorly understood and comparatively rare phenomenon. So if you ever see one, try to take a picture. Perhaps 1 percent of the population will see ball lightning in a lifetime. Though there have been thousands of reports of ball lightning, it is still very hard to study, because scientists do not … Read more

A ring around the moon means rain or snow is coming soon. The old folk rhyme is accurate, because high clouds typically streak out ahead of a fall or winter storm. This veil of wispy cirrus clouds, about 20,000 feet up, is mostly ice crystals that act like tiny prisms in the sky. They refract … Read more

There is sometimes lightning in a snowstorm, although it is somewhat rare. In fact, the biggest snowstorms are those marked by thunder and lightning, a phenomenon meteorologists call “thunder snow.” Most “regular” thunderstorms are summer events in which warm, moist air in the lower atmosphere has very cold air over it. In this unstable system, … Read more

It can certainly get so cold that precipitation is highly unlikely, because the colder the air is, the less water vapor it can hold. At temperatures around 40 degrees below zero Fahrenheit, it is very difficult to produce precipitation, and if it does snow, there is very little of it. At very low temperatures there … Read more

The South Pole is considerably colder than the North Pole. At about 56 degrees Fahrenheit below zero, the average temperature at the South Pole is about 35 degrees lower than the average at the North Pole. The coldest weather on record was minus 129 degrees, recorded at Vostok, Antarctica, on July 21, 1983. There are … Read more

The earth spins under a plane as it travels, at 15 degrees per hour. But that doesn’t mean much when everything else on the planet including the atmosphere spins with the earth. The air mass that supports the plane as it travels is rotating along with the earth, under its gravitational pull and at the … Read more

Natural pearls and cultured pearls feel slightly rough or gritty when brushed lightly on the front teeth. Imitation pearls are glassy-smooth, or plastic-smooth, to the bite. The tooth test does not work as well if the teeth are capped, however, as their sensation is somewhat deadened. Natural pearls and cultured pearls are both made by … Read more

If they are properly maintained, structural engineers believe skyscrapers will last forever. After proper design, the key is the integrity of the materials. Steel or concrete can be damaged by things like acid rain, but if damaged material is replaced, the building will survive. If a structure like the World Trade Center were abandoned and … Read more

If the coin fell straight down on edge and did not catch on the many overhangs and projections of a building of that era, it could build up its velocity to 150 miles an hour. If the penny fell flat, the drag of the air through which it fell would be much higher and the … Read more

Terrestrial dust is mostly tiny fragments abraded from larger things. Some of it may be even smaller things aggregating together to form motes of dust. The larger things that turn to dust can be almost anything in the world, from shoes (one study found fragments of shoe leather to be a significant part of the … Read more

One simple reason why ice is slippery is that pressure and friction from shoes or skates can melt a very thin layer at the top of snow or ice. It then forms a watery lubricant between ice and skate (good) or ice and shoe (bad). Skis also glide on a layer of water. The process … Read more

The deepest cave in the world found up to 1992 is in France, the Reseau Jean Bernard. Its total depth, not just the length of its shaft, is 5,256 feet, almost a mile straight down. The longest system of underground passageways in the world is the Mammoth Cave system in Kentucky. The numbers change with … Read more

The hole in the earth’s ozone layer and ozone pollution are two very different and basically unrelated problems. Down here, ozone is dangerous to health, but in the upper atmosphere it is protective of health. Ozone, or O3, is a gaseous molecular form of oxygen with a distinctive odor. It is a powerful oxidizer and … Read more

Yes, glacier ice purer than regular ice, and it is not surprising that some entrepreneurs have marketed it commercially for drinks. There are several scientific and aesthetic reasons for the superiority of glacier ice. First, the ice in glaciers is relatively pure water because after thousands of years of compression of the tiny snow grains … Read more

On average, the earth is certainly as smooth as a billiard ball. The earth is more than 12,000 kilometers in diameter. Mount Everest is less than 10 kilometers high, and the profoundest depths of the ocean are around 11 kilometers. Thus, the most extreme variations in the earth’s surface are roughly on a scale of … Read more

The famous soil found in Georgia, South Carolina and elsewhere in the southern Piedmont region is mainly a grayish-white clay called kaolin colored by a small amount of iron oxides. It doesn’t take a lot of red paint to paint a barn red, and it doesn’t take a lot of these iron oxides to color … Read more

New oil is being naturally cracked, or distilled, inside the basins of earth this very minute, petroleum geologists believe. It is believed that petroleum is created when deposits of incompletely oxidated plant and animal sediment are subjected to great heat and pressure from overlying sediments, causing partial distillation. Such deposits and sediments collect in ocean … Read more

Silver does not oxidize, or rust, on exposure to air. In fact, compared with most other elements, it is not particularly reactive. It does, however, react with sulfur or sulfur compounds, like hydrogen sulfide in the air, forming tarnish, a compound that is chiefly silver sulfide. Silver sulfide, A025, also called argentous sulfide, is 87.06 … Read more

On the contrary, it is a thin waterproof protective layer called a patina, that forms when copper is exposed to air. One of the challenges in the 1986 restoration of the Statue of Liberty was maintaining it. Copper and copper-rich alloys used for roofs or statues oxidize slowly to yield an insoluble mixture of hydroxo-carbonate … Read more

There are several ways to approximate an eruption date. Historical excavations can reveal when a known settlement was covered by lava. For prehistorical eruptions, some large ones near polar regions left a layer of ash trapped in the polar ice, and oxygen isotopes can be used to tell when the ice solidified around it. However, … Read more

The short answer is that light behaves like a wave of electromagnetic energy, and any material that can transmit the wave is transparent. So why do some materials transmit the wave, while others absorb or reflect the light energy? The answer is more complex. It involves the state of the electrons in the material and … Read more

After a coin has been tossed and landed tails ten times in a row, many amateur gamblers would be inclined to bet that the “law of averages” would favor the coin landing heads on the eleventh try. The problem is, the law of averages doesn’t exist. The coin’s probability of landing heads is still fifty-fifty, … Read more

In order to calculate massive quantities, American Edward Kasner coined the “googol,” which is a one followed by one hundred zeros. But the “googolplex” is now the largest number and is a one followed by a billion zeros. It allows us to calculate that the number of electrons passing through a forty-watt light bulb in … Read more

A minute usually refers to a unit for measurement of time, but also refers to a unit of angle in astronomy. Around 2400 BC, the ancient Sumerians, who used six as their mathematical base, divided a circle into 360 degrees, with each degree subdivided into another 60 parts, and so on. The Romans called these … Read more

In the 1600s, sailors measured the speed of their sailing ships by tying knots in a rope at sixty-foot intervals. They then further divided and marked the space between the knots into ten equal parts that would each be one fathom in length. Then a heavy floating log was tied to the rope’s end and … Read more

China grows the most peanuts in the world, and India is second. Surprisingly, the U.S. grows less than 10 percent of the world’s peanut supply. However, as you’d suspect, most U.S. peanuts are grown in Alabama and Georgia. The orange veined, yellow flower of the Peanut plant grows in clusters above ground. After self-pollination, the … Read more

Humans can survive on grass longer than if you had nothing to eat, but grass, along with most other plants can’t sustain a human for very long without other nutrients in the diet. This excludes legumes. It is because humans can’t digest plant matter very well, and we only get one chance after we swallow … Read more

The name Canola came from the combination of the two words Canada and oil. Hundreds of years ago, Asians and Europeans used rapeseed oil in lamps. And as time past, people employed it as a cooking oil and added it to foods. Considered only a specialty crop in Canada not too long ago, canola has … Read more

The incredible touch me not plant, or Mimosa, is a most fascinating plant and is found all over the world. It is a member of the mimosa family, also known as humble plant, or shameful plant and isn’t related to ferns at all. The touch-me-not, better known in some places as the “sensitive” plant, instantaneously … Read more

Soybeans can be made into animal feed, oils that go into ice cream, soap, explosives, salad dressing, biodegradable plastic, adhesive, diesel fuel, paint, linoleum, ink, cosmetics, faux leather, and a whole lot more. Henry Ford was so enamored of the soybean that he tried to make an all-vegetable car in the 1930s, and was the … Read more

Peas and Beans are very closely related in that they’re all legumes, a group of plants that are nutritionally beneficial to humans. Legumes, Latin for “seedpods”, include clover, alfalfa, mimosas, rosewood, indigo, peanuts, beans, and peas. All of these plants share the unique ability to glean nitrogen from the air around them, instead of strictly … Read more

One man’s meat is another man’s poison, as the old saying goes, and some flowers put this theory to the test. Carrion flowers, also known as stinking flowers, is the name given to several different species of plants, usually members of the lily family, that all use the same process for pollination, a gross, stinky … Read more

Well, yes, some carnivorous plants do eat animals like in the Little Shop of Horrors. Carnivorous plants that eat insects have been known, on rare occasions, to eat tiny amphibians and baby fish that inadvertently land within their jaws. However, if you’re looking for a giant plant that eats big mammals or something, I’m afraid … Read more

Carnivorous plants do get nutrients and energy from the soil and air. However, carnivorous plants live in boggy areas where the soil lacks many nutrients that most plants need to survive. Bug supplements make it possible for these plants to live in their natural habitat. Charles Darwin first wrote about carnivorous plants in 1875. There … Read more

Yes, it’s true that peach pits, or peach seeds are poisonous. When ingested, peach pits release what’s called hydrogen cyanide, a gas that, in enough quantity, will kill you. Fresh almonds also release hydrogen cyanide gas when digested. Inadvertent cyanide poisoning happens periodically in countries like Turkey where fresh almonds are regularly eaten, roasting eliminates … Read more

Not all mushrooms are toadstools, only the ones that’ll kill you. And that’s where the name comes from. The German word for poisonous mushrooms is todesstuhl, meaning “death’s stool.” English speakers heard “toad stool,” and this botched translation stuck. Since many mushrooms do resemble little chairs, it wasn’t too hard to imagine little forest toads … Read more

Mushrooms have a lot of nutritional value, but not enough to risk eating one in the wild, for sure, especially if you don’t know what you’re doing. Identifying mushrooms is extremely difficult even for the experienced. Store-bought mushrooms are a good source of several vital nutrients, including magnesium, potassium, phosphorus, and selenium. They’re also high … Read more

Despite their instant availability to rich and poor alike, mushrooms have long been considered the food of kings. Consider the historical prominence the mushroom has enjoyed on the dinner table of the rich and powerful. In ancient Egypt, mushrooms were considered such a delicacy that only pharaohs were allowed to eat them. And remember ancient … Read more

There’s no specific one mushroom that we could find that is an aphrodisiac, it’s just an old adage about mushrooms in general being aphrodisiacs. Although many people say they find their shapes and textures erotic and sensual, there’s no evidence whatsoever that mushrooms contain anything that would incite lust upon consumption. As a matter of … Read more

Well, yes, Mushrooms are sort of related to plants, but not. Fungi are not animals, for sure. Like plants, they do have a root system and also bloom, the mushroom itself is the bloom, for reproductive purposes. But mushrooms lack the green chlorophyll that’s absolutely essential for true plants to create food for themselves. An … Read more

For a temporary drawing, you can use a marker or henna, of course. But it’s even cooler to use a Polaroid picture, and it’s an interesting, photo-realistic alternative to gumball-machine tattoos. Here’s how you do it: Using a Polaroid camera, take a picture of whatever image you’d like to use—it could be of yourself, your … Read more

Go to your workshop or toolbox and retrieve a new D battery, a big iron nail, electrical tape, and several feet of thinly coated copper wire. Wrap the middle of the copper wire around the nail evenly. Leave a good length of the wire free on either end, and strip the coating off the ends. … Read more

The hard-boiled egg trick is a fun trick that sounds even more impressive before you see it than after. That’s because you use a peeled egg. If you want to add a little more scientific mystery, you can combine this with the rubberized-chicken-bone stunt. It turns out that if you soak a hard-boiled egg in … Read more

Probably by using vinegar, an acid that will dissolve the calcium in bones. Calcium, as you probably know from school or television commercials, is what makes bones hard and strong. Try it yourself: take the drumstick of a chicken and clean off all of the meat. Place the bone in a jar of vinegar and … Read more

Any time at the equinox is a good time to try to get an egg to stand on end. Or, for that matter, on Easter, Hanukkah, Arbor Day, Ramadan, Shrove Tuesday, or your mom’s birthday. The truth is that if you’re patient or steady enough, you can get an egg to stand on end at … Read more

To make gooey Slime first get white glue, borax, food coloring, and water. Take a cup of water and add one tablespoon of borax to it and stir. Take a half cup of water and add a half cup of white glue. Add the two mixes together with some food coloring, mixing thoroughly (an easy, … Read more

Homemade rock candy is easy, fun, and illustrates the scientific concept of crystallization. It also teaches patience, because you have to wait a long time before you can actually eat the stuff. First get a jar, a pencil, and some twine. Tie the string to the pencil and prop the pencil over the mouth of … Read more

A Depression flower garden is also called a coal garden or a crystal garden. It’s a homemade set of colorful crystals. They’re a lot of fun for kids and grown-ups, and are a hands-on way of learning about crystal formations. You begin by breaking up several charcoal briquettes and putting them into the bottom of … Read more

Baking soda and vinegar probably make the best-known kitchen science combination around. There are few that have results quite as impressive. Here’s an alternative to the age-old volcano. You will need a leak-proof Ziploc sandwich bag, vinegar, warm water, a tissue, and two tablespoons of baking soda. Now place about a half cup of vinegar … Read more

Start with a glass of ice water. Pull out a thread or a strand of hair. Start by asking your seven-year-old if he can use the thread to lift an ice cube out of the glass. Let him work on it awhile until he gives up, then take the thread back. Lay the thread or … Read more

We forgot boss rock, which was a geological term long before Bruce Springsteen came along. But seriously, yes, your teacher is correct. If you’re looking for a good genre name, it’s always best to turn to science first. Check out some of these other geological terms and see if any could apply to your band’s … Read more

If you have a deep-seated fear of money, you’re suffering from chrematophobia. However, most people don’t have this fear, and love money. Some of us love money too much. When that happens, it’s called greed. Greed can occur in free market economies that have no monetary regulation and is often the result of a capitalist … Read more

Only about 2.5 percent of a penny is copper. The layer is just thick enough to give the coin its distinctive copper color. Most of the penny is made with zinc, but that’s a relatively new development in the history of the coin. Before 1982, pennies were about 95 percent copper. So why the switch? … Read more

A mile is 5,280 feet instead of an even number like 5,000 and you can blame it on the Tudors and their fondness for the furlong. The mile was originally 5,000 feet, but Queen Elizabeth I wanted it divisible by a furlong. Each furlong measured exactly 220 yards, so in 1575 she made it a … Read more

Well, yes, but British royalty (as noted above) don’t always do things because they make sense. The original marathon from the first modern Olympics in 1896 was actually based on physical landmarks. It began at Marathon Bridge and ended at Olympic Stadium in Athens. This gave it a distance of 24.85 miles, or an exact … Read more

You can’t see any man-made object on earth from the moon. It’s too far of a distance from earth to see anything. If you look at pictures of astronauts on the moon with the full Earth behind them, you can see why—, Earth from the moon doesn’t look much bigger than the moon looks from … Read more

It’s a good question. You’d think that a rocket’s exhaust has to push against something, like a paddle needs to push against water to propel a canoe. But in reality, a rocket doesn’t need to push against the atmosphere to fly. What it’s doing is essentially pushing against the inertia of the rocket exhaust. But … Read more

The squid uses jet propulsion to get around. It fills up a sac within its body with water and then forces it out through a tube below its head. This jet action makes the animals glide through the water at pretty high speeds.

On November 3, 1957, less than a month after its first ever space launch, the Soviets sent up Sputnik 2, complete with a dog named Laika. She didn’t survive in space for very long. Conflicting accounts put the number of days at somewhere between four and seven, but that was it. The Soviets, rushing to … Read more

Surprisingly, eating and drinking in space isn’t quite like you’ve seen in movies. Not everything has to be sucked out of a tube. It turns out that astronauts can eat most foods normally without having them float out of their containers. True, food containers need to be fastened to a surface with Velcro, magnets, or … Read more

It’s hard to get an exact figure on how many nuclear bombs have detonated since World War II, because governments try to keep these things secret. We do know that up until 1996, there were 2,036 known nuclear bomb explosions. Three-quarters of those were exploded underground, with 511 taking place in the open air. More … Read more

The British were pounding Fort McHenry with a weapon that had been used against them twenty years earlier while they were conquering India in the 1790s. Indian gunpowder experts had enlisted in the fight against British imperialism, pounding the British troops with a hail of primitive exploding rockets. Though India eventually lost, the devastating effect … Read more

How would you explain the “rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air,” written during the War of 1812? Now go back even further, to A.D. 1232. That year signaled the oldest known reference to using rockets in battle. At the time, the Chinese were fighting against Mongol invaders. The written record shows that the … Read more

The sound a whip makes is the tip of the whip being propelled at over 700 miles per hour. When flicked just right, the end breaks the sound barrier, creating a small sonic boom. The sonic boom is what you hear when it’s “cracked.”

No one invented time; it was likely discovered, even if subconsciously, by every culture. At some point early on, humans were aware of time passing and began keeping track of it. Although we don’t know who was the first, archaeologists are discovering more and more ancient civilizations that devised their own unique ways of marking … Read more

Self-winding watches wind themselves by using a little pendulum that swings when you move your arm. A few hours of natural arm movement will wind a self-winding watch enough that it can go for thirty-six hours without further winding.

Yes, there is a type of wine that will make you tipsy faster than other wine. It’s champagne. The little bubbles in champagne are carbon dioxide, which moves into your bloodstream faster. But there could be a more contextual reason why it gets you intoxicated more quickly than regular wine. It’s usually consumed during momentous … Read more

To measure how many calories there are in food, we use a hot little device called a bomb calorimeter. It burns foods and measures the difference between how much energy went in versus how much energy comes out. Here’s where it gets confusing if you ever talk to a physicist about your weight loss program: … Read more

Not all corn kernels are equal. In order to pop, the kernel needs a water content of about 13.5 percent. Each popcorn kernel consists of soft, moist starch inside a hard outer shell. When heat is applied, the moisture expands and the starch is cooked. Eventually, the pressure gets so high that it bursts the … Read more

No matter how much high-impact channel surfing you might do with the remote control, you burn only 1 to 2 calories per minute when you watch TV. What you should do instead is get off your bum and get outside. Do something. Anything.

T.W.I.N.K.I.E.S. stands for Tests with Inorganic Noxious Kakes in Extreme Situations, and was conducted by students at Rice University during finals week in 1995. These tests were conducted on Twinkies, with a special emphasis on experiments using the force of gravity, radiation, flame, and heat, etc.

You have to leave a tooth in Coke for mighty long time for it to completely dissolve. Despite the facts, this long-running myth just keeps going and going. A tooth won’t dissolve in Coke or carbonated soda of any kind. However, if you eat lots of candy and drink lots of pop, and you don’t … Read more

It sounds reasonable to put up fences on San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge to deter suicide jumpers, considering the bridge is open to pedestrians and is a popular tourist spot. The average is about twenty-two deaths a year. Only a few have ever survived the 250-foot drop into the chilly, raging Pacific below. We’ve heard … Read more

Burnished copper gives the Statue of Liberty that green hue. The copper sheets are no thicker than a penny, and were made in France, shipped over, then riveted to the iron frame of the statue. Because the rusted green copper actually serves as a coating that protects the integrity of the metal below, there have … Read more

When constructed in the 1800s, aluminum was a semiprecious metal, both hard to find and difficult to extract from bauxite, also known as aluminum ore. So at the time, it was considered a fine luxury to have an aluminum cap crowning the top of the monument. Still, there were practical reasons as well. For starters, … Read more

No, a light bulb can’t turn on in your mouth like Uncle Fester did in The Addams Family unless you’re electrically charged. That, of course, would require having enough electricity running through you to electrocute you. Uncle Fester’s lit-up bulb was just a stage trick for the show. You can, however, make a light bulb … Read more

A computer engineer named Ray Tomlinson invented e-mail, otherwise known as electronic mail. He’s also the guy who designated the @ sign as a crucial part of email addresses. Long before the Internet as we know it existed, there was ARPANET, an experimental forerunner commissioned by the Defense Department in 1971. It consisted of fifteen … Read more

Here’s how a candle burning at both ends rocks like a perpetual-motion drinking bird. Grab a candlestick, a match, and a pin, and let’s do the impossible: burn the candle at both ends. First, make sure you’re working on a clean, flat surface like a bare kitchen counter or table—one that won’t instantly go up … Read more

The best way to see if you’ve generated static electricity is to put on wool socks, run around on a plush carpet rubbing your feet briskly, and touch metal or another human. See how many times you come out unscathed. We also recommend a less painful way, like bending water. You’ll need clean and dry … Read more

One of the three best in-the-dark revelations of adolescence is that if you crack a Wint-O-Green Life Saver between your teeth, tiny blue and green sparks will flash in your mouth. If you’ve never seen it happen, pick up a pack of Wint-0-Greens and wait until after dark. Turn out the lights and crunch one … Read more

In 1906 Thaddeus Cahill first unveiled the Telharmonium, an instrument made up of 145 modified electrical generators and specially geared shafts and inductors that produced alternating currents of different frequencies. Since it was twenty years before the invention of the amplifier, Cahill ran the resulting current through the Bell Telephone system to phone receivers equipped … Read more

A global positioning system receiver is a pretty cool little gadget. It’s somewhat based on the navigational systems of old in which skilled sailors using compasses, astrolabes, and sextants could tell where they were (give or take a hundred miles) by combining the data of the stars, sun, and moon positions. Of course, there were … Read more

The person who invented the Moog synthesizer is Dr. Robert Moog, the man who invented the instrument that helped define the psychedelic sound of the late 1960s. A decade earlier, as a graduate student at Cornell, Moog financed his musical science dreams by selling about a thousand of his do-it-yourself Theremin kits for $49.95 each, … Read more

It’s a theremin, which sounds like it should be one of the B vitamins, but instead it’s a spooky-sounding electronic instrument developed by a Russian scientist named Leon Theremin in 1920. The instrument used two radio wave oscillators to generate the sounds, and musicians obtained its sliding sound by moving their hands along the theremin’s … Read more

A Scottish clockmaker and inventor named Alexander Bain patented the first facsimile machine on May 27, 1843, —thirty-three years before Alexander Graham Bell’s invention of the telephone. It took another few decades before the invention got any significant use. A commercial fax service (called “pantelegraphes”) opened between the French cities of Paris and Lyon in … Read more