Science
Discover facts about science. Small discoveries that change the way you see familiar things.
Science
Tacoma Narrows twisted itself into a feedback loop
In the 1940 collapse, the bridge's twisting changed the airflow, and the changing aerodynamic forces drove further twisting. This aeroelastic flutter fed…
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The screwdriver that held a plutonium core apart
A screwdriver was the only thing keeping the beryllium reflector from closing around the plutonium core. Once it slipped, the assembly briefly became…
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That spinning desk toy isn't powered by light
The black side of the rotor warms the nearby gas more than the shiny side. In the narrow gaps around the vanes, gas flows from cooler regions toward warmer…
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Waiting for the marshmallow also means trusting the promise
In an experiment, children waited longer after an adult had first demonstrated reliability. Taking the treat now can therefore reflect expectations about…
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Your memory can send you back in time
Episodic memory lets you revisit a particular scene from your past—where you were, what happened, and how it felt. But your brain rebuilds that scene from…
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Mendeleev challenged a measurement of an element he'd predicted
Mendeleev’s prediction gave scientists something specific to test: gallium should have a particular density. An early measurement came in too low, so he said…
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Jocelyn Bell Burnell found pulsars as a graduate student—and was not a laureate
She spotted unusual signals in the telescope's chart records and pursued them. The 1974 physics Nobel went to Martin Ryle and Antony Hewish, with Hewish cited…
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In some reptiles, nest temperature picks sex
In some reptiles, the warmth around an egg during a particular stage of development helps shape whether the embryo becomes male or female. A small change in…
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Why mushrooms are closer to animals than plants
A mushroom may look like a plant, but it doesn’t use sunlight to make its food; fungi absorb nutrients from their surroundings. Their cell walls contain…
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Frozen atmospheric water crystals look mildly unique
Snow looks white because sunlight keeps bouncing off ice crystals and the air pockets between them. Those scattered colors mix together before they reach your…
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Your garden may be growing in worm castings
Worms eat dead leaves and other decaying matter, then leave castings that return nutrients to the soil in forms plants can use. The crumbly material also…
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A honeycomb packs space without wasting corners
Regular hexagons fit together without gaps and enclose the same area with less perimeter than a grid of equal-area squares or triangles. That makes the…
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The golden ratio appears in nature less than you think
A shell can widen while keeping roughly the same shape, producing a logarithmic spiral. That growth pattern can resemble the golden spiral without matching…
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A coin toss favors the side facing up
A tossed coin can keep rotating in a way that gives its starting-up side a little more time facing upward. That creates a slight advantage for that side when…
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Fleeing from rotating columns of violent wind
A tornado’s path can be narrow compared with the region around it, so it can devastate one area while nearby places are not struck. That does not make a…
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Dodging massive electrical sparks from clouds
A nearby lightning strike can hurt you without hitting you. Its current can spread through the ground or travel along objects, creating a route to someone…
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Living dangerously close to exploding magma
Volcanic ash can weather into mineral-rich soil that helps crops grow, but an eruption can turn that same material into a fast-moving hazard. Clouds of hot…
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Why beach sand follows you home
Sand grains slip into the loops of towels, folds of swimsuits, and seams of bags. A shake removes the easy passengers, not the ones caught in the fabric’s…
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Admiring intricate frozen water before it melts
The dangerous part can arrive after the snow starts to disappear. Meltwater fills the gaps between snow grains, then freezes into a more continuous surface…
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The mushroom is the visible part. The fungus does its feeding elsewhere
A mushroom is the fungus’s spore-making structure; the feeding happens mostly out of sight. Underground threads release enzymes that break complex material…
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Why pandas struggle to repopulate
A female panda is fertile for only a short stretch once a year. Miss that window and the next chance comes with the next breeding season; conservation can…
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Why quiet mountains sometimes explode
Sticky magma can trap gas beneath a volcano’s quiet-looking surface. As the magma rises, pressure builds because the gas cannot escape easily; eventually the…
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Adding the last two numbers to get the next one
In some seed heads, spirals wind in both directions, packing seeds into the available space. Count the spirals each way and the numbers often land next to…
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Why medical labs use genetically identical mice
Give genetically similar mice the same treatment, and there are fewer inherited differences muddying the comparison. That helps researchers ask whether the…
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