Water is a weird substance. Think about it, unlike most other substances, it expands when it becomes a solid. This is the reason pipes can burst in the winter, and why placing a beer bottle in the freezer is a bad idea. To make things even weirder, it is slippery when it's a solid and not for the reason you'd think. This brings us to a motor-less pump called a hydraulic ram pump. This type of pump does not use a motor, and no, it does not "generate"...

It is Winter here at headquarters and things are getting icy, and slippery. But why is that? Why is ice slippery. It makes sense that it's cold, but slippery? One of the more common reasons for why ice is slippery is there is a light layer of water atop the ice which makes the surface slippery. But if that is the case, water should be equally slippery, right? It turns out the reason is more at the molecular level. Want to find out more, see the video :)

Imagine ships and boats being made out of a metal that could never be sunk. A material which even with holes all around it had buoyancy, and as such, would always floated back to the surface. First, let's talk about what makes a boat float. In order for a boat, or ship to float above water it has to displace more water than its weight. Meaning that if a boat weighs x, it has to displace water equaling x + 1. Certain vessels use this approach, plus something...

There are some things that happen in life for which we do not have an explanation. Like, what is in fact gravity? Or where is the matter in the Universe? Find out why soda explodes when shaken and if salt makes ice colder. As a bonus, you can also figure out how a circle and sometimes get entangled with a chain.

Like all questions in life, the answer is "it depends". It depends at which point in their respective orbits you measure. Furthermore, as CGP Grey points out, the diameter of a planet's orbit has a huge impact on its relative distance to other planets. And for this reason one should ask not which plant is closest to Earth, rather which planet is on average most closest to Earth.

A placebo is a substance or procedure which should have no therapeutic effect. A harmless pill, medicine, or procedure prescribed more for the psychological benefit to the patient than for any physiological effect."his Aunt Beatrice had been kept alive on sympathy and placebos for thirty years" a substance that has no therapeutic effect, used as a control in testing new drugs. a measure designed merely to calm or please someone. This is what we have been taught since childhood. That placebos are all in the mind. However, in...

#illusion #certainty #reality Certainty, order and control are something we strive for. We want to know what will happen next. We want to know there is some order or method to the madness that is our life. And if we can figure out this order/method, we may be able to control it. For us, certainty, order and control are very important. So important in fact, that they are only less important than water and food according to Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. The reality, however, is that we live...

We've all been told this for most of our lives, "the sky is the limit" of your <insert ambition here>. But do you say to someone that has actually reached that limit? What do you say to someone whose ambition and perseverance has reached the sky? https://www.instagram.com/p/BxxeSHbFeAv/ I'm not talking about astronauts or Space-touring billionaires (Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos), I'm talking about a group of college students who became the first group of amateur rocketeers to launch a rocket into space. The students were part of the...

If you said Lithium, which has half the density of water, you'd be wrong. The answer is graphene aerogel, which holds the world record as the least dense solid.

Eye color, iris color, is one of the most distinctive features of our faces. But in reality, everyone's irises are brown. Let me explain... Like all colors, eye colors, are a result of light being absorbed or bounced off a surface. Depending on the surface, the light that is absorbed, or reflected, will result in different wave lengths. We perceive the length of these waves as colored light. When we see a white desk, we are not actually seeing a white surface. We are perceiving the photons' wavelengths...