Content tagged with “science” under “The Interesting List”

“ There’s a unique architecture to keeping the South Pole research station running. ”

“ Turns out that the environment inside a plane in flight makes us subconsciously crave certain foods and drinks. ”

“ Humans have a natural instinct for music, and a musician demonstrates this by making music using an unwitting audience. ”

“ People aren’t only poor because they make bad decisions. Often, they make bad decisions because they’re poor. Poverty affects a person’s ability to make rational decisions. ”

“ We’re still not totally sure why we find things funny, but scientists are (very seriously) studying it. ”

“ Elephants might be adapting in real-time to limit their danger from poachers. ”

“ In 1978, a BBC science show pulled off a shot for which timing was critical, and for which there would be no second chance. ”

“ The title gets fact-checked, but is mostly true: the vast majority of the population of the world will experience sunlight at the same time during a 1-minute period every July 8. ”

“ A guy builds an obstacle course for the squirrels in his backyard. In the (very entertaining) process of watching them solve it, he explains some of the physiology of how a squirrel moves. ”

“ Unfortunately, there’s not nearly as much energy in a lightning bolt as you probably imagine. The economics of trying to capture them are not good. ”

“ A professional basketball dunker breaks down his discipline and explains the science and physics behind dunking a basketball. ”

“ There is a single whale that emits a call at a different frequency than any other whale. No one has seen it – its lonely call has just been recorded multiple times over the last 40 years. ”

“ A specific bird flew from Alaska to New Zealand, without stopping, and this is typical for the breed. ”

“ An interactive tool which demonstrates how incredibly vast the solar system is. (Hint: hold down your right arrow key.) ”

“ A 3D visualization of the depth of the oceans. ”

“ Mythbusters proved that the climactic scene in the final episode of ‘Breaking Bad’ could have worked exactly as it was portrayed. ”

“ A record temperature that stood for 90 years was probably just human error. ”

“ There’s a lot of food in a grocery store, but there’s an ideal order and process to make it last as long as possible. ”

“ ‘High explosives’ is a technical term, not a colloquial one. It means something specific. There is also ‘low explosives.’ ”

“ There is a ‘forest’ of 47,000 ‘trees’ in Utah that is actually one massive tree, connected underground by a single root system. Each individual ‘tree’ is just a connected offshoot of the same, original tree. ”

“ Researchers think they finally have an explanation for the chilling Dyatlov Pass Incident. ”

“ A new study suggests that cardio interval training as short as four seconds has significant benefit for sedentary, middle-aged adults. ”

“ Researchers have tracked almost a quarter-million cases of COVID back to a single conference in February 2020 which was attended by 200 people. ”

“ A fascinating forensic analysis and re-enactment of the Beirut explosion video that demonstrates how and why it was so destructive. ”

“ Using just conference call video, researchers can reverse-engineer your shoulder movements to figure out what you’re typing with surprising accuracy. ”

“ A long exploration of an abandoned agri-chemical research facility. It’s exactly like something out of a video game. ”

“ A GIF that shows the difference in shock absorption between a truck with wheels connected by solid axles, and another with wheels independently suspended. ”

“ A solar-powered satellite has been in orbit since 1958. It is the oldest man-made object in space, and circles the earth every 132 minutes. Its orbit characteristics still constitute valid experimental data. ”

“ A bull from the 1960s was patriarch over a lineage of millions. It carried a faulty gene that wasn’t discovered for 40 years after hundreds of millions of dollars had been lost. ”

“ There’s a standard body of text which is used by linguists and speech pathologists to assess and compare accents when read out loud. ”

“ An AI researcher considers a single image and notes all the things a computer would have to understand to perceive the image the same way humans do. ”

“ The front tires of Formula One cars are not normally pointed straight ahead, which sounds ridiculous, but this video clearly explains why. ”

“ There’s a particular spot over the Earth that disproportionately damages satellites because of a radiation field. We’ve come up with ways to account for when stuff malfunctions. ”

“ Some substances move very slowly. Experiments have been going on for almost a century that measure how many years it takes these substances them to form a single drop. ”

“ There’s a waterslide in Poland that rotates, so different sections of the slide become ‘down’ at different times. It’s calculated to get you to the end in a full rotation. ”

“ The moon is a lot further away from Earth than you probably think it is. ”

“ Incredible scrolling visualization of what’s under the ocean. I scrolled for five full minutes to reach the bottom. ”

“ In 2004, the Navy encountered something off the coast of California that it still can’t explain. And there’s video, despite what might be a cover-up. ”

“ An introduction to the sport of ‘tricking’ and the physics of how its participants do some pretty amazing things. ”

“ An entertaining look at the problem of ‘cranks’ in mathematics. These are people who are convinced they’ve solved impossible problems, and refuse to be disabused of that notion. ”

“ A primer on the Dunning-Kruger Effect, written by Dunning. It turns out that ignorance often feels like knowledge. ”

“ The titular question doesn’t get answered, but this is an interesting breakdown of a tennis serve. The record serve is 163mph, and there’s a seven-footer on the tour who can serve downhill in a straight line and still get the ball over the net. ”

“ The stated calories for a given food are a very crude measure because the actual calories our bodies absorb and use from that food are different for everyone, and can be dramatically affected by how the food is prepared, stored, and combined. ”

“ Someone has invented a new science: erisology, the science of disagreement and argument. It’s named for Eris, the ancient goddess of discord. ”

“ An incredible interactive feature article about diffusion among networks, such as illnesses or innovations. It has some wonderful JavaScript visualizations. ”