Science

A palindrome, of course, is a word, phrase, or number sequence that can be read the same way forward and backward. An example would be the number 1234321 or the phrase “Egad, a base tone denotes a bad age.” Based on that, then, there are no palindromes in the names of the elements. Of course, … Read more

The undigested roughage, —grasses, hay, and other vegetation —is what burns and makes animal dung flammable. Most people who use dried dung cakes for fuel add more dried hay to the fire to keep it burning longer. Burning manure produces a lot of smoke, though, putting those in the home at risk for lung problems. … Read more

Just because something’s invisible doesn’t mean it’s weightless. So, no, air is not weightless. As a matter of fact, all gases have mass, and therefore they have weight. Air, a combination of gases, is fairly heavy. Good thing, too, —the weight of the air around us and the force it exerts on our bodies pushes … Read more

Helium is the second lightest gas in the universe. Hydrogen’s the lightest. Both gases have mass and therefore weight. It just so happens that they weigh less than air. Because of that, the heavier air sinks below them, pushing them upward— much in the same way that water flows below Styrofoam and pushes it toward … Read more

Quark is a nonsense word, coined by the writer James Joyce in Finnegan Wake. In the book, it may have referred to a cheer or the call of a gull, but these things are never completely clear when referencing the writings of the impossibly inscrutable Irish writer. In science, of course, a quark is nearly … Read more

Embark on a numerical journey as we ponder the colossal task of counting to a billion. Unveil the magnitude and intricacies of this remarkable numerical feat. Key Takeaways: Explore the theoretical duration of counting to a billion at various rates. Understand the incomprehensible scale of a billion in the context of time. Gain insights into … Read more

In our number system, nothing exists beyond infinity. Infinity doesn’t really exist. It is simply a concept, not a number or a thing in itself. If there’s anything “beyond” infinity as we understand it, it’s part of infinity. So, the answer is that if there’s anything beyond infinity, it’s just more infinity. Make sense?

There are several mnemonic ways to memorize pi. Most involve remembering a sentence or rhyme and counting the letters within each word. For example, count the letters of each word of the following phrase: “May I have a large container of coffee? Thank you.” “May” has three letters, “I” has one, “have” has four letters, … Read more

If the sun is too high in the sky, you won’t see a rainbow. The only time you can see a rainbow is either in the early morning or in the late afternoon. There’s a reason for this. For you to see a rainbow, the sun has to be in back of you and shining … Read more

From top to bottom, the colors in a rainbow are: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet. Except in the case of double rainbows, which occur when light reflects off another set of raindrops and forms an outer rainbow that’s a pale imitation of the original. The color sequence in the reflected rainbow is reversed … Read more

If it’s average snow, not too wet, not too dry, you’d need about a tenth of an inch of water to make an inch of snow. The general rule is that one inch of water produces ten inches of average snow. But that’s the average. An inch of water would make about fifteen inches of … Read more

Hope for a small avalanche instead of a big one and wish for luck. A bona fide large avalanche can exert so much pressure that it snaps trees, rocks, and bones in its path, carrying enough snow to bury twenty football fields in ten feet of it. Large or small, you’d think an avalanche would … Read more

Officially, the hottest place in the world is Death Valley, California. On July 10, 1913, temperatures reached 134 °F (56.7 °C). Four years later, during the summer of 1917, Death Valley broke another record—the highest average temperature—by maintaining temperatures of over 120 °F (48 °C) for forty-three consecutive days. These are the official world records … Read more

Oymyakon, Russia, has a substantial, ongoing population of 4,000, and its temperatures have fallen as low as —72 °F ( —58 °C). People have visited spots even colder, though. In Vostok, Antarctica, people were present when temperatures got down to —89 °F ( —67 °C). But no one has set up residence there yet. Too … Read more

Surprisingly, no. Australia is not the driest continent on Earth. While much of Australia is very dry, the driest continent is a desert you might not even think of as a desert. It’s Antarctica. Deserts, you may remember, are not necessarily a place of great heat, but are instead characterized by a lack of rainfall. … Read more

Although locations along the equator are hot throughout the year, they do still have seasons. Usually two: a wet season and a dry season. The equator does not have regular seasons that North America gets as it receives a uniform amount of Sun throughout the year.

The windchill index is an interesting thing, an attempt to take a scientific certainty—, temperature and wind speed—, and quantify its effect on the perceptions of humans. In other words, it calculates perceived temperature. Scientists working in Antarctica developed the first formula to determine when the wind will turn a frigid temperature into a deadly … Read more

The traditional “dog days” of summer fall between July 3 and August 11, noted for their extreme heat and humidity. During this time of year, the star Sirius is at its brightest and can be seen rising alongside the sun. The phrase actually dates back to the Egyptians. They believed that the star gave off … Read more

Is the phrase “Indian summer” meant to be derogatory? Maybe, or maybe not. The phrase, of course, refers to a time in late fall when the weather turns unseasonably warm and mild. For many years, it was believed that the name came from the idea that Native Americans can’t be trusted, that “Indian summer” was … Read more

Although it sounds like a lot, and certainly seems like a lot if you’re the one doing the climbing, even Mount Everest is only 5.5 miles high. Considering that the sun is 93 million miles away from Earth, a measly 5.5 isn’t going to largely effect the amount and intensity of the sunlight you’re receiving. … Read more

Actually, winters are not getting colder. It only feels like it sometimes. Over the last many years, the world has slowly gotten hotter. This difference in temperature is minuscule—a fraction of a degree— which means that to most of us, things seem normal. However, it’s a potentially ominous indicator of global warming. It doesn’t take … Read more

Over the last sixty years, the average accuracy rate for groundhogs on Groundhog Day has only been about 28 percent. Punxsutawney Phil’s got a slightly more impressive record—he predicts correctly about 39 percent of the time. Maybe they’re using the wrong animal for the job. The original “groundhog” wasn’t a groundhog at all, but a … Read more

How accurate a read are you looking for? A cat can be used to give a very, very general idea of temperature. The colder the temperature, the more a cat curls around itself to sleep. If your cat’s lollin’ around, stretched out on her side or back, you can bet it’s warm. If said cat … Read more

Well, first of all, don’t stick a cricket under your tongue to tell the temperature. That won’t give you the information you seek, and nearly always damages the insect. First, some background: Cricket metabolism slows at a consistent rate when they get cold and speeds up when they get hot. This is true of not … Read more

There are two really good reasons. The first is temperature. A hurricane is created and fed with the hot air that rises off warm water. Conversely, cold water’s cooler air tends to sap the energy from a hurricane, pretty quickly killing it dead (the waters along our eastern coast have just returned from a tropical … Read more

There isn’t much difference between a typhoon and a hurricane, beyond their names and locations, they’re both tropical cyclones. Typhoons are hurricanes that occur in the western part of the Pacific Ocean or over the Indian Ocean. Hurricanes always take place on the Atlantic Ocean or the Caribbean Sea. Hurricanes get their name from the … Read more

Wind shear is a fancy name for turbulence— that windy stuff that makes airborne airplanes bounce a little. Wind can sometimes change directions suddenly, either vertically or horizontally, creating eddies and swirls and bumping into other wind currents headed in the opposite direction. Needless to say, if you’re floating on a cushion of air, this … Read more

Off screen, sensors like that don’t exist, although the idea has been experimented with by the National Severe Storms Laboratory, a government group that tracks and researches (you guessed it) severe storms. Here’s what the NSSL’s Web site FAQ says regarding the movie devices: The movie TWISTER was based upon work NSSL did in the … Read more

We’ve never actually tried using a television as a tornado warning device, so we can’t completely vouch for it. And of course, it’s best to make sure you’re in a safe place before trying it, we’d hate for you to be standing in front of your home entertainment center upstairs instead of huddled in your … Read more

Out of the twenty possible answers inside a Magic 8-Ball, ten of them are positive, five are negative, and five are noncommittal, suggesting you ask again later. That means you have a 1 in 2 chance of getting a positive answer, and only a 1 in 4 chance of getting a negative one, with another … Read more

Although Mattel, the toy company that now owns and distributes the toy, calls this patented contraption the “20-sided answer cube,” there is a more mathematically accurate name for the piece. All twenty-sided polyhedrons are called icosahedrons.

Have you ever wondered what stores do with beef that’s past its freshness date? It’s sold off to various manufacturers who render the fat (called tallow) and put it into all kinds of products, from hair conditioner to—you guessed it—crayons. The fat is often called “free fatty acid” or “stearic acid” on labels. That obviously … Read more

Definitely. Almost without fail, black’s the first crayon to go. This makes sense; folks of all ages tend to use black as an outline and background color for furniture, lettering, buildings, etc. Less predictably, red is usually the second one to go.

The master cut of a vinyl record was usually made from a layer of lacquer on top of a flat aluminum plate. A machine with a piece that looks a lot like a record-player stylus and needle was fed sound vibrations. In turn, this apparatus cut grooves with dips and bumps that correlated to the … Read more

In a world where computers and chips can create everything from dancing monsters to singing fish, it’s nice to know there are still some tried-and-true toys that are based on technology created over a century ago. The See ‘n Say basically uses the same technology that a record player does. There’s a disk inside the … Read more

First, a quick rundown of the anatomy of a yo-yo: two disks of equal size are placed together and connected with a little part in the middle called an axle. A string is affixed to the yo-yo, either by tying a loop around the axle or by attaching the end of the string directly to … Read more

On April 12, 1985, NASA decided to test just that. It sent a yo-yo into space with the astronauts aboard the space shuttle Discovery. What they learned was that a yo-yo would indeed work with little-to-no gravity. With a gentle push, it glided down the string and back up again. Simply dropping the yo-yo, though, … Read more

Because the tops of flying discs and Frisbees are rounded, air goes over them faster and has less density, creating lift, as with airplane wings. Air gets trapped underneath the disc and pushes upward, slowing the fall rate. The thrust of the throw gets the lift process started, but the spin only adds stability and … Read more

As one boomerang physics Web site states it: “Magic makes it come back.” Or scientifically, it’s a combination of lift, spin, and something confusingly titled gyroscopic precession. Gyroscopic precession is the principle that states that if an object is spinning, and movement (the tilt) is exerted on the object, it will move at right angles … Read more

Have you ever noticed how fast paint thinner evaporates at room temperature? It’s this little fact that makes the glass and plastic dunking birds work. Here’s how it works: The bulb that holds the colored liquid (methylene chloride) inside has a bubble of vapor on each end. At room temperature the liquid congregates mostly toward … Read more

Anything that’s lighter than air will float. A liter of air at sea level weighs about 1.25 grams; a liter of helium, though, is only .18 grams. Therefore the air sinks below the helium balloon, causing it to fly upward.

This seems like it should be an easy one to answer, but you’d be surprised at the explanations we’ve heard from people who should know better. Let’s go in order of what we consider least reasonable and work our way up: Because helium is less dense, sound travels faster through it, so the wavelengths are … Read more

The chemical process used in a glow stick is not that far from the chemical process that occurs inside a lightning bug. When you open the glow stick package, you find a stick with yellow liquid inside (generally, a chemical called luciferin). Inside the yellow liquid is a glass tube that contains a chemical enzyme … Read more

Thermotropic liquid crystals makes a mood ring change colors. They’re little crystals that change molecular states when the temperature changes. When their molecular states change, the crystals’ ability to absorb light also changes, meaning the color you see will change, too. The ring picks up body heat from your finger, and transfers it to the … Read more

When the Sun makes you sneeze, it’s called a photic sneeze reflex, and it occurs in about a quarter of the population. What happens to convince your nose that the sun is an object that must be sneezed out of your nasal cavities? It’s simply a case of crossed wires, like hearing interference on your … Read more

After serious research into the matter, it’s now understood that it’s actually some of the lower-frequency sound vibrations involved in this action that trigger the aversion response, and not the squeaky higher ones you might suspect. But why do some people have this response? Some researchers say it might be a physiological throwback to the … Read more

People have been fascinated by this phenomenon of asparagus making your pee stink for eons. Why, even Ben Franklin had something to say on the subject. He wrote, “A few stems of asparagus eaten shall give our urine a disagreeable odor; and a pill of turpentine no bigger than a pea shall bestow upon it … Read more

A higher ratio of wastes to water turns urine a bright yellow color, which explains why the first urine in the morning is often quite a deep yellow. If your urine is a very faint yellow, it generally means you’re well hydrated. If your urine is dark, you’re probably dehydrated. Eating different types of food … Read more

Yes, most beans make us gassy and fart. Blame it on the oligosaccharides, or, if you prefer, the dog. Oligosaccharides are a special sugar found in beans and other fibrous foods like soybeans, cabbage, peas, and cauliflower. These sugar molecules are very large and are not digested by the small intestines, so they pass on … Read more

Perhaps you’ve noticed this when changing your cat box, but one of the main ingredients in urine is ammonia. This means that urine can act as a disinfectant. Ammonia is also used to take out the stinging and itching of insect, jellyfish, and anemone encounters. In our germ-conscious society, you may not be aware that … Read more

Farts are pretty flammable. Of the three main gases in farts—nitrogen, methane, and hydrogen—methane and hydrogen are both highly flammable. Nitrogen’s not. According to the statistics we found, over a quarter of the idiots who try lighting farts get burned. The rest are treated to a barely visible show of yellow and blue flames, as … Read more

Burps are produced when you swallow air. Normally, this can happen while eating and drinking, but it’s possible to build up air in the stomach through the regular, automatic swallowing that your body does to clear away draining saliva and mucus. The bubbles in carbonated drinks will often cause burps as well. But the digestive … Read more

For years we’ve heard there’s a fixed quantity of water we should drink every day. It turns out it was just a marketing ploy by companies that sell bottled water. We guess it goes to show that if you can’t trust people who’ll sell you a plentiful, virtually free substance for a buck-fifty a bottle, … Read more

First, a little explanation for those more refined readers among us: a “high-colonic irrigation” is a high-powered enema in which up to twenty gallons of liquid are pumped into your intestines a few pints at a time, with a really smelly liquid pouring out afterward. A few “alternative health” gurus claim that cleaning out your … Read more

Your armpits stink because bacteria love dark, wet places. You sweat there, creating moistness, and because your arm isn’t always raised —which would allow constant airflow, —bacteria begin to multiply. You don’t really stink, per se, it’s the excrement of the bacteria that stinks. The general advice here would be to have a shower as … Read more

The only thing at work in a deodorant is fragrance. It may be natural fragrances from oils, or it may be chemical perfumes, but when you use it, all you’re doing is masking the smell. An antiperspirant, however, contains aluminum or zirconium to block pores so sweat can’t escape from the sweat glands as easily, … Read more

Sweat glands and sebaceous glands are totally different. Sweat glands produce sweat, and sebaceous glands produce oils. Most of your sebaceous glands are located on your scalp and face. When something obstructs the regular release of sebum (fatty oil), it leads to painful and blocked glands, also known as acne.

Yes, hair oils are the same as body oils, both come from sebaceous glands on the scalp. Unfortunately, we end up washing most of them away before they have time to work their magic on our dried, cracked hair but hey, that’s why we have conditioner. Showering less often would work, except you end up … Read more

Hair conditioners work to detangle hair and don’t do much else except make you smell nice, but here’s what they’re doing when you put some in your hair. Have you ever looked at a strand of healthy hair under the microscope? It’s crackly, with a lot of crevices up and down the length of it … Read more

No, double-jointed joints are not different from regular joints, they’re basically the same thing. As a matter of fact, no joints are truly “double-jointed.” Instead, the joints and connecting muscles are merely more flexible and mobile, bending farther back than most people are capable of. Although some people are born with a greater range of … Read more

What we call a “funny bone” isn’t funny and it isn’t a bone. It’s a nerve called the ulnar nerve, which is entirely too exposed for its own good and yours. When it is hit, tingling, numbness, and pain strike the outer fingers on your hand and may take seconds or even minutes to subside. … Read more

It can be embarrassing when stomachs make noises, but they have their reasons; a lot is going on in there. When your stomach is empty, and there’s nothing for the stomach acid to do, it doesn’t just go away. It churns and produces gases as it bubbles and waits, impatient for you to feed it. … Read more

Hiccups are muscle spasms in the diaphragm and throat, and it happens to us at the worst times, when we least expect it. The large muscle at the bottom of your chest cavity sometimes spasms (as do most all of the muscles in the body, at one time or another). When this happens, air gets … Read more

Let’s blame Aristotle for the term meteorology. He was a smart guy who was right about a lot of things. However, he was wrong about meteors. He coined the term meteorology in 340 B.C. in a book called Meteorologica in which he laid out his ideas of weather. He believed that meteors were part of … Read more

Air pollution was a problem long before cars and trucks—in fact, long before the Industrial Revolution. No doubt the tens of thousands of fires used for cooking and heating often created lung-unfriendly environments in ancient cities. Wood smoke was bad enough, but things got worse as humans discovered other sources of heat. For example, London … Read more

Not even close. In 1272 King Edward I banned the burning of the notoriously smoky sea-coal under penalty of torture or death. Even after the king had the first offender put to death publicly, the law deterred no one. Few people could afford wood, so out of necessity they continued to burn sea-coal, and the … Read more

The sun emits light waves in all colors of the spectrum, with the wavelengths of each color vibrating at different rates. The reds and yellows have a long wavelength. Since they’re traveling in straighter lines from the sun to Earth, they are covering more ground with less chance of interference. As a result, fewer of … Read more

Well, don’t underestimate the time-of-day factor: for most humans, nearly everything looks better at 8:00 P.M. than at 5:30 A.M. However, in this case you’re right—on most days, sunsets are much more brilliantly colored than sunrises. It doesn’t make sense, since most of the same conditions are in place for each—a sun in a low … Read more

Clouds consist of millions of tiny water droplets. Light waves of all the colors bounce and reflect off and refract through the water droplets evenly, sending all of the various colors off in (more or less) equal measure. As you may remember from school, the “color” white is technically all of the colors mixed together. … Read more

Despite having a fluffy facade of unbearable lightness, clouds are actually pretty heavy things in the sky. Take even a small, fluffy cloud measuring a mere cubic kilometer. The water in that cloud would typically weigh about a million kilograms, about the same as 500 mid-size automobiles. So how does all that weight stay up … Read more

Cirrus clouds, those high, wispy-looking clouds you see on a clear day, are above 18,000 feet—about 3.5 miles high. The highest clouds ever recorded were just under 60,000 feet, or about 11 miles high, though the instruments used to measure such things are less than precise. To put this in perspective, Mount Everest is 29,035 … Read more

Cirrus means “curl of hair” in Latin. The four main types of clouds were all named in Latin, according to what they looked like to someone standing on the ground. Besides cirrus, cumulus. means “heap,” stratus means “layer,” and nimbus means “rain.” Why do clouds have Latin names? It’s just cooler that way.

There are several ways it can rain instead of snow even when the temperature is below freezing. It helps to think of the air— from clouds to ground—as a series of layers, each with its own temperature, and each with the ability to affect falling precipitation. For example, the cloud may be below freezing temperature, … Read more

Hail is not even the same thing as sleet. Not even close. Freezing rain, raindrops that freeze once they hit the ground—occurs only during wintry, subfreezing weather. Hail, on the other hand, almost exclusively falls during thunderstorm season between spring and early fall. Here’s how hail happens. When thunderstorm clouds gather together from heat and … Read more

Well, one rational theory on the origin of the phrase “raining cats and dogs” is that it’s just a comically overblown expression of hyperbole. However, other theories exist as well. Some believe it literally describes an actuality of the past. Here’s what we do know for sure. The phrase comes from England, and its first … Read more

Not just in Mexico, —it’s been raining frogs all over the world for a long time now, if you believe the reports. And not just frogs either, but fish, periwinkles, crabs, jellyfish, coins, worms, baby alligators, and even ears of corn. These are not just stories from the tabloids; some have even been reported in … Read more

Angry gods, of course. Haven’t you ever watched cartoons? Okay, it’s electricity, and it’s not that far removed from what happens when you rub a large, furry cat. Start with those tall, puffy cumulonimbus clouds that develop quickly as hot, moist air flies up into colder layers. The turbulence forces water vapor to move up … Read more

The speed of light is a lot faster than the speed of sound, about a million times faster, so lightning can often be seen before thunder is heard. Next time you’re in a storm, wait until lightning flashes, then begin timing the seconds until you hear thunder. Divide the number by five, and that’s about … Read more

The difference between thunderstorm warnings and thunderstorm watches is the same as a tornado watch and warning: A thunderstorm watch means that all the ingredients are in place to possibly create a severe storm. A warning means a storm of this magnitude has already been spotted, so take cover now! For more information, tune in … Read more

Lightning is an electrical charge trying to find its way into the ground. It will use whatever conduit it can to best accomplish that. Air doesn’t conduct electricity all that well. Actually, it’s pretty resistant, so when there are other alternatives, lightning will use them to make its way toward ground. The best thing to … Read more

No. It’s true that a car is a relative safe haven during a lightning storm, but it’s not because of its rubber tires. As a matter of fact, rubber offers no significant insulation whatsoever from lightning. Cars work as an okay shelter from lightning storms because the metal frame will tend to attract lightning and … Read more

Generally, your odds are 3,000,000 to 1 that you won’t get hit by lightning. But in lightning strikes, as in real estate, location is everything. If you’re a park ranger and spend most of your time outdoors, your odds of course will be higher than if you’re a practicing couch potato. If you get your … Read more

Yes. All rainbows are completely round. It’s just that we don’t usually see the whole rainbow because we’re standing on the ground and looking toward the horizon. Unless you’re in the air, or looking down from a mountain, you can usually just see the top part of a rainbow. The “bow” in rainbow refers to … Read more

If you’ve ever made bread dough by hand, you can imagine what a strain it would be to knead dough with your arms all day. About 6,000 years ago an unknown Egyptian baker took a tip from wine makers and tried using his feet instead of his hands to do the hard work. It worked … Read more

Most old phones including rotary phones would be compatible with today’s phone system. Basic phone technology hasn’t changed much in the last one hundred years, so that “candlestick phone” from the 1920s will work as fine as your cordless, and better in a power failure. The only thing you’d have to do is adapt the … Read more

Yes, phones used to have hooks. They were there to hold the earpiece. “What’s an earpiece?” you ask. Remember old movies where people held a bell-shaped thing to one ear while shouting into a cup-shaped thing on a boxy phone hanging on the wall? Well, the bell-shaped thing is the earpiece. Anyway, if someone’s earpiece … Read more

Most land line phones would work in a power failure, just not cordless ones unless there’s a battery backup system. The telephone network system provides its own power system through the phone lines, so that your basic corded phone will often work even when your lights won’t. It’s a pretty good system, but it gets … Read more

Chemical ice packs work kind of like magic, if you think about it: You break something inside and shake it, and suddenly the whole pack gets icy cold. What’s funny is that what’s inside is pretty basic stuff. You could conceivably make one yourself—all that’s in it is water and ammonium-nitrate fertilizer. Breaking the bag … Read more

Let’s start with the two basic principles that make modern refrigeration possible: The first rule you know already if you’ve ever inflated a tire using a hand pump and noticed that the pump was surprisingly hot afterward: Gases will heat up when you compress them. Conversely, gases cool down when you release pressure and allow … Read more

Sundials were and are not that accurate, alas. There were too many variables in sun positioning during the year to make sundials useful for more than a give-or-take-an-hour guess of the time. The quantum leap forward in time measurement took place in December 1656, when Dutch scientist, musician, and poet Christiaan Huygen invented the world’s … Read more