One of the coolest things about science is how often it pops up in day-to-day life. And why shouldn’t it? Science is just a method of studying the world around us to arrive at truths about how it all works.
We can learn so much without even trying all that hard, which is good because my days of hitting the books before exams are long behind me. Nuts to that. I’m here for the easy, fun stuff, like what’s below.
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That’s a new one.
“Some public bathrooms in the Netherlands can be raised and lowered into the ground,” the uploader of this pic explained.
One has to imagine that they give it a good knock to make sure nobody’s inside before lowering it into the ground. Otherwise, interesting space-saving idea.
Apparently moose licking cars is a problem.
How one stops a moose from licking whatever it wants to lick is a mystery to me, but there are good reasons to drive off if an interested moose does try to lick your ride.
For one, we don’t want salt-hungry moose to think cars are safe to be around. For another, they’re going to get more than just road salt from licking a car — they’re going to get some nasty chemicals, too.
Soap is an oil wrangler.
Oil and water don’t mix and when you add soap, it will go out of its way to make sure that they stay separated.
Those lines in this pan are the soap, corralling little puddles of oil in the water.
Ants are miners as well as farmers.
I’m starting to think Settlers of Catan is more about ants than people. Just check this out: ants will dig garnets up out of the ground when making their nests and drag them to the surface.
The garnets are just getting in their way, of course, and ants will dig up any rocks that size, not just garnets. But to humans above, it’s just a waiting game to gather some valuable rocks.
It’s hard to keep a good shark down.
These are nurse sharks and apparently, they can take some punishment. The shark on the left is missing a good chunk of its tail but it’s still swimming strongly.
You’d think that a missing tail would be a huge detriment to an animal that needs to keep swimming forward to survive, but here it is.
Not popcorn.
But it does go on popcorn. This is the result of someone using a paint shaker to churn butter. I kind of like how the little balls are almost their own little serving sizes. This could catch on.
Handy.
This tablet has three potential doses in one. You can take the whole thing at 15 milligrams, cut it in half to get two 7.5 mg doses, or cut along the other lines to get three 5 mg doses.
How clever is that?
Like magic.
It’s not magic, of course; it’s science.
Just when you think the whole universe is headed toward more and more chaos, you can see how easy it is to impose some order, in this case using only sounds and vibrations.
So there is a method to it.
Those little Intel stickers that come on computers are cool-looking but they’re not just random designs; they’re actually modelled on the chip’s architecture, which you can see on the reverse side of the sticker.
Each of these hammers is only about a year old.
That’s because they’re made of brass, and there’s a good reason why some workers need to use brass hammers, even if they’re worn out after a year.
For one, they don’t damage steel parts. They also don’t spark when striking against steel. And, if need be, they’re much easier to drill through than steel.
D’oh!
Just a reminder that out of sight dough is still dough and it’s still going to do what dough does if salt hasn’t been added to it: rise.
And in this case, make a gigantic mess for someone to clean up.
That’s crafty.
This black-colored lather builder showed its true colors when it started to unravel. It’s actually green!
There must be something to the pigment to make it appear black when it’s bunched up but not so much when it’s unraveled.
When your chills are multiplying.
Here’s a nice little explainer about dendritic ice crystals. Of course, you don’t need to know or understand the science behind them to appreciate how pretty they are.
I always wondered about that.
Why doesn’t water sloshing around inside of a truck during transport throw the weight off? Because the water tank contains these baffles that help stop that dangerous sloshing.
Weird flex.
“I’m able to bend just my finger tips without bending the other joints,” the uploader of this pic wrote.
Oooooookay.
“From what my anatomy teacher told me, it seems like my brain is able to flex and extend the tendons in my fingers in those joints at the same time,” they explained.
I just checked and nope, my brain does not work that way, nor do my tendons. How about you?
“So apparently Dollar Store brand Play Dough dissolves pennies from 1984.”
I don’t know if it’s something specific to 1984 pennies or to dollar-store play-dough, so there might be some more experimentation required.
But there’s definitely a chemical reaction at work, likely between the salt in the play-dough and the zinc in the penny.
Sweet prize.
Frankly, I’m usually just happy to get the amount of Doritos in the bag that the packaging promised. Giving away free data, as apparently is done in India, sure sweetens the deal. Good promo!
Sneaky shortcut.
If you think there’s something a little off about the dude in this ad’s face, you’re absolutely right. They only had one side of his face to work with, so they mirrored it. It’s…weird.
Life gonna life.
In fact, life is so determined to live that it will do the unexpected to achieve that goal. In this plant’s case, that meant reaching a shoot out to a neighboring pot and planting itself.
You can see that it has taken root there despite still being attached to the original plant.
Shiny!
Bananas are a pretty amazing fruit — not only are they packed with potassium and other wonderful nutrients, they’re also radioactive enough to be used to measure how much radiation a person has been exposed to, aka the Banana Equivalent Dose .
So maybe it’s not that surprising that the brown dots they get as they age and ripen glow under a UV light.
