Freeze Suppose you are an animal. Well, actually, you are an animal, but suppose youre another kind of animal, maybe something small that might make a tasty snack for a larger predator. Youre walking along one day when you see a big dog. What do you...
How Neanderthals Fought Disease Every year people are encouraged to get their annual flu shots. Signs are posted at drug stores and clinics. Get your shots here. Modern preventive medicine has saved millions of lives. But you may be surprised to hear...
Why Do Zebras Have Stripes? For many animals, camouflage is an important part of survival. A leopards spotted coat and a polar bears white fur help them blend into their respective environments. But a zebras bold stripes cant help to disguise it in i...
When Continents Collide: The History Of Our Planet It was one of the Earths momentous times. Continents collided. Volcanoes erupted. Ocean currents shifted. Species ran amok. Twenty million years ago, North and South America were arranged in nearly t...
The Mathematics Of Middle-Age Spread Lets say youre an 18 year old male who runs every other day, logging 12 miles a week. Now fast-forward to your late 40s. Your eating habits are the same. To maintain your high school weight, how many miles a week...
Survival Of The Sluggish Silkworms have been bred over thousands of years to behave quite unlike their caterpillar cousins in the wild. Thats because people purposely breed silkworms to fit this job description: WANTEDSuperlative silk producers. Bene...
Secrets Of Silk Production Fifteen hundred years ago in China, silk production was a state secret. The silk trade was so valuable that anyone who tried to take silkworm eggs or mulberry seeds out of China was put to death. Then in 552 AD, two monks s...
Sometime Cavemen From the bestselling novel Clan of the Cave Bear to the 1981 movie Caveman, pop-culture tends to misrepresent prehistoric people as cave dwelling brutes. But even the most speculative recreations of early human society are based on a...
Why refrigerators hum? Why refrigerators hum，on toay's moment of science.On the recent program we have discussed how fluorocarboncoolant cools your food by coming to a boil in coils hidden in your fridge. How is this possible? When you boil water o...
The Rolling Boil That Cools Your Food When you think of something boiling, you probably picture a pot on the stove, but theres another kitchen appliance that brings liquid to a boil, not to heat food, but cool it. It sounds crazy, but household refri...
The Blurry World Underwater When you open your eyes underwater, things look blurry, but with goggles, everything looks perfectly clear. Why cant we landlubbers focus underwater without goggles? First, we need to explore how our eyes focus when were h...
Why The Sky Is Not Blue Look at various parts of the sky on a clear day and you will see that it is not a uniform blue. Even if the sky is deep blue when you look straight up, near the horizon it is lighter. This is partly due to pollution, but even...
Night Vision And Humans: Why Cant We See Color? When we are in a fairly dark room, or outside at night away from lights, we can still see, but we cant see the colors of things very well. Why is that? There are two kinds of light-sensitive organs loca...
Why Do Golf Balls Have Dimples? Youre out on the golf course one pleasant afternoon. Your ball is set on the tee. You lean over the ball. You grip the club just right. Your arms are straight. Your stance perfect. Whoosh! You swing, and the ball takes...
Do Magic Mushrooms Make People Nicer? Ive heard that psilocybin, which is the hallucinogenic ingredient in psychedelic mushrooms, can alter peoples personalities and make them nicer. Is that true? Well, first, before answering the question, we need t...
