Latest posts
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How a Computer Stores Information
Everything a computer holds is patterns of two states. The interesting part is not the binary, it is the ladder of storage types trading speed against size and cost.
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Why Do We Get Hiccups?
A hiccup is a sudden contraction of the diaphragm followed by the vocal cords snapping shut. Most attacks are harmless and self-limiting, and the reason they start is still not settled.
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How Do We Know the Age of the Earth?
The Earth is about 4.54 billion years old, and we know that because certain atoms decay at a fixed rate. Rocks containing them behave as clocks that started when the rock formed.
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How Does a Plane Stay Up?
A wing generates lift by pushing air downwards. The popular explanation involving air travelling further over the top is wrong, and the correct one is simpler than it sounds.
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Why Does Time Feel Faster as We Age?
Time perception is not a clock. It depends on how much new information your brain encodes, and a week with few novel events leaves a very thin record to look back on.
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Why Do Onions Make You Cry?
Cutting an onion ruptures cells, which lets enzymes produce a volatile sulfur compound. It reaches your eyes, reacts with the water there, and triggers tears.
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What Is Sleep For?
Sleep is not simply rest. The brain does specific work during it, consolidating memory and clearing metabolic waste, and the timing is controlled by two separate systems.
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Why Is the Ocean Salty?
Rivers carry tiny amounts of dissolved salt to the sea every day, and the water evaporates but the salt stays. Over millions of years, that left the oceans salty.
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Why Does Bread Rise?
Bread rises because yeast eats sugar and releases carbon dioxide, and a stretchy gluten network traps that gas in thousands of tiny bubbles.
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How Photosynthesis Works
Plants build themselves out of air. Photosynthesis uses light energy to split water and attach the hydrogen to carbon dioxide, producing sugar and releasing oxygen as the leftovers.