If you ever had a paper route or any other job that took you through a series of streets, you may have spent some time working out the quickest way to complete the circuit. In order to cover your route most efficiently, you would want to avoid going...
Generally we lose between twenty-five and a hundred and twenty-five hairs per day. Most of the time, new hairs grow from the old follicles. For some reason thats not entirely understood, men tend to go bald on the tops and fronts of their heads. Actu...
If you find hairs in the bathtub after a shower or you find hairs stuck in your comb, dont worry; youre not necessarily going bald. And yet if you kept track of all the hairs you found over a period of a few years, it would seem that whats left on to...
To imitate this lens, you can use a slide projector and whats called a negative lens the type used in glasses for people with myopia, or near-sightedness. First, cut a hole the size of the lens in a piece of cardboard. Place the lens in the hole and...
An eagle circling three hundred feet in the air looks to us like a dot in the sky. But even from that height, the eagle is scanning the ground for prey. To help them see small objects from a distance, birds eyes produce a telephoto effect by combinin...
The molecules of surfactant used in dryer sheets have unusually large fatty sides, and their water side is good at grabbing onto fabrics. Mix it with your clothes, and the water side locks the molecule in place while the oily side points outward, coa...
Throw your laundry into the dryer without a dryer sheet, and it comes out a rumpled, staticy mess. Toss one in and the results are much better. How can adding this flimsy sheet change the way all your clothes come out of the dryer? When you first add...
At this point your endangered skinyour ears and nose, or maybe your toeswill turn a bright red, and youll start wishing you were indoors. If the air gets just too cold, however, or an icy wind is blowing, the flow of blood to the frostbitten tissue s...
He figured if the comet was only as high as the upper atmosphere, it should appear to be in different parts of the sky to different observers. Thats because moving around under the comet would change your perspective. The stars are so far away that w...
As it turns out, bystanders that have witnessed a fight between two rivals are much less likely to challenge the winner of the fight than they are to challenge the loser. In other words, these fish are keeping score. By rememberingand avoidingthe win...
Siamese fighting fish are as beautiful and as brilliantly colorful as any other tropical fish, but this isnt the reason they were first domesticated by us humans. As their name implies, Siamese fighting fish can be rather pugnacious. Males will engag...
W: But a brain scan could change that. The researchers, at Kings College Institute of Psychiatry in London, studied 59 adult males, 20 with autism, 19 with ADHD, and 20 with normal brains.First they evaluated them with standard IQ tests and interview...
M: I know that autism is a growing problem and that it can be a devastating condition. But is there any way to test for autism during pregnancy, like doctors do for other diseases? W: Interesting question. Autism spectrum disorder, as its called, is...
Even more sophisticated is the strategy used by a type of wild potato to defend itself against aphids. The plant manufactures the active ingredient of the so-called aphid alarm pheromone, a chemical that an aphid under attack releases into the air to...
Most animals prefer to eat them. They cant hit back or run away. Yet plants dominate vast areas of Earths continents. How Can Plants Have So Many Natural Enemies And Yet Be So Successful? Of course, some plants have physical defenses such as thorns a...
