Ya?l: It's time to go again to the A Moment of Science mailbag. Don: A listener writes: Dear A Moment of Science, I'm a big baseball fan, and I've always wondered why some players slide feet first and some slide headfirst. Does either way provide an...
Ya?l: Hey Don, what's round and white and goes Cheep!? Don: Uhm, I don't know, Ya?l. A ping-pong ball on sale? Y: Nice guess, but the answer is a crocodile egg. D: Crocodile eggs cheep? Y: Yep! Crocodiles call from inside their eggs shortly before th...
Ask any gradeschooler to imitate an owl and you'll probably get one of two responses: the giant, staring eyes or that amazingly swivel-prone neck. As it turns out, these two characteristic features are related; they are part of an overall system owls...
What does Survival of the Fittest mean? Imagine that some predatory animal happens to be born with slightly better vision than average. This improved vision will give it an advantage while hunting, so it'll be more likely to survive and pass on the g...
When a train enters a tunnel the air can't simply be pushed aside, it must rush backward through the narrow space between the train and the tunnel walls to fill the space behind the train. This speeding air creates a suction on the train, just like o...
Any creature that threatens to eat your wood furniture and structural beams presents a major problem. That's why a termite infestation is usually cause for alarm, followed by chemical extermination. Yet termites are as fascinating as they are potenti...
Drop it right over the X and it will land somewhere past where you want it to be. The effect will be the same as if you had stood over the X and thrown the ball forward. To hit the X you need to drop the ball before you have reached it. And the faste...
It's such a commonplace event that you probably never asked yourself why you sleep. But from a scientific point of view, this is far from a mundane matter -- in fact, for sleep researchers, it's one of the biggest unanswered questions in the field. S...
Ocean water cant put out the volcano the way firefighters put out a fire, but it does have a profound effect on what happens to the lava once its out of the ground. The biggest difference between undersea and land volcanoes has nothing to do with wat...
Time once again for the mailbox, where we read your cards and letters. Let's see what we have. Dear Moment of Science: Is Bigfoot for real? Signed, Nervous in the Northwest. A terrific question! Everybody has heard of Bigfoot, the gigantic ape-like c...
Yael: Don, are you eating my tulips? Don: Just having myself a little snack. Y: Of MY tulips? I brought those in here to brighten the place up, not for you to eat! And who eats flowers anyway? D: Have you seen that movie, Monsoon Wedding? There's a c...
Youre cruising down the street on your skateboard. In one hand you have a tennis ball. Halfway down the street is an X painted on the ground. Your job is to drop the tennis ball from your hand so that it hits the X. When Do You Drop The Ball? If you...
The secret to stopping a stroke in its tracks might lie in a lab rats whiskers. Researchers at the University of California Irvine wanted to see how a section of the brain called the cerebral cortexthe part involved with complex thoughtresponds durin...
Around 1860 he began experimenting with ways to drive steam engines using only sunlight. Mouchots big breakthrough came when he combined two technologiesbox like solar collectors and mirrors used to concentrate the suns rays on the collectors. The co...
One of the hottest technologies in solar energy today is concentrated solar power. CSP, as its called, involves using mirrors to concentrate sunlight on photovoltaic panels to make electricity. Its also used to boil water and generate steam to run el...
