Science
Discover facts about science. Small discoveries that change the way you see familiar things.
Science
The bird that can disembowel an attacker
The cassowary’s danger is concentrated in a long, sharp claw on the inner toe of each foot. If the bird kicks forcefully, that claw can slash an attacker and…
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Davy discovered sodium by electrifying strong lye
Davy passed an electric current through molten sodium hydroxide, the caustic chemical in lye. The current split the compound, and tiny beads of sodium metal…
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Thermal stratification prevents deep lake water from mixing
Temperature differences can keep a lake’s surface water and deep water in separate layers, limiting how much wind can stir them together. In spring and fall,…
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A giraffe can fold its neck onto its own body to sleep
During brief REM-sleep episodes, a resting giraffe bends its long neck back and supports its head near a hind leg or on the ground. Observed bouts can last…
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Triceratops horns changed shape as they grew
As a Triceratops grew, its horns changed shape, so two skulls could look different even if they belonged to the same kind of dinosaur. Age can explain some…
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Your brain floats in its own cushioning fluid
Cerebrospinal fluid helps buoy your brain, so its weight presses less heavily on the structures beneath it. The fluid also softens impacts, but it doesn’t let…
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Hafnium exhibits an extreme chemical affinity for carbon
Pure hafnium and hafnium carbide are not the same material. When hafnium bonds with carbon, the resulting carbide’s strong bonds make it exceptionally…
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An electron can be in several places at once
Before a measurement, an electron is described by a cloud of probabilities: some places are more likely than others. Measure it, and you find it at one…
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Concentrated sunlight perfectly melts solid structures
A mirror can collect sunlight from a broad area and aim it at one small target. That concentrates the incoming energy in one spot, raising its temperature…
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Why Blood Falls stains Antarctic ice red
Beneath Blood Falls, salty water rich in iron has been trapped under the glacier. When it escapes and encounters oxygen, the iron rusts, turning the water red…
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Elastic collisions perfectly conserve total kinetic energy
A billiard-ball collision looks like a perfect bounce, but a little motion energy goes into sound, heat, and tiny deformations of the balls and table. Because…
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The Sun spins at different speeds
The Sun is made of flowing hot plasma, not a solid shell, so different latitudes can rotate at different speeds. Its equator and poles slide past one another,…
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CAPTCHA has an absurdly long full name
CAPTCHA expands to “Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart.” In practice, it gives you a task people can handle more…
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Vesta built a core like a planet before remaining an asteroid
NASA's Dawn mission found evidence that Vesta's interior separated into layers, including an iron core. Early heating allowed dense material to sink while…
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A refrigerator magnet can overpower gravity
Put a magnet near a paper clip and magnetic forces can pull harder than Earth’s gravity pulls the clip downward. That doesn’t make magnets stronger than…
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Matrix multiplication absolutely refuses to commute
Matrix multiplication keeps track of a sequence of transformations, and the sequence matters. Shift a point and then rotate it, and the rotation acts on the…
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Some wild pigs have farm animals in their family tree
California's wild pig population descends from released domestic pigs and introduced wild boar. Once animals live and breed outside human management, their…
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Why bad performers often feel so confident
A novice is trying to judge their work with a ruler they haven’t learned to read. When the task and its standards are unfamiliar, errors are easy to overlook…
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A dairy experiment put slow music on the milking playlist
University of Leicester researchers reported roughly 3% more milk with slow music than with faster music in a trial. A calmer environment was their proposed…
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Rolling resistance constantly steals pure forward momentum
A tire squashes where it meets the road, then springs back as it rolls on. Rubber doesn’t give all the energy back after each squeeze, so some escapes as…
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Toy car track loops rely on strict entry speeds
A toy car needs enough speed entering a loop to still be moving at the top. As it climbs, some of its motion energy becomes height, so it slows; if it gets…
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The element that makes flames apple green
Heat gives atoms in barium compounds extra energy. As they release it, they emit light that our eyes see as apple green; the color comes from the atoms, not…
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An elephant carries its own snorkel
While swimming, it can keep the trunk tip above the surface to breathe with much of its body underwater. The same organ that gathers food and detects smells…
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Why parmesan cheese can smell like vomit
When fats break down, they can produce butyric acid, a compound found in both Parmesan and vomit. But smell comes from a whole mixture of compounds, not one…
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