TOPIC
Discover the science behind familiar things.
You’ve probably heard that tapping a shaken can before opening it keeps the drink from spilling. A large beer-can experiment tested the idea—but does its result apply to soda, or to tapping the lid?
Pruney fingertips after a bath are not simply skin soaking up water. Here’s what blood vessels have to do with it—and whether the folds may help with wet objects.
Your reflection keeps its head at the top, yet its hand seems wrong. The mirror and the way we compare the image are doing different jobs.
An onion does not simply contain a pocket of tear gas. The eye-stinging chemical forms when a knife breaks the onion’s cells and starts a reaction.
Atmospheric turbulence bends starlight. A planet’s small apparent disk averages out some of that motion, so it often looks steadier.