Ice and Boiling Water Take an ordinary test tube and fill it nearly to the top with cold water. Into the tube drop a small piece of ice about the size of a marble or cherry. We want it to stay at the bottom of the water, but being lighter than water it floats. To overcome this put a ring …

If you stood on the shore looking across the sea to the horizon (the line appearing to separate earth from sky), you might be able to see about two and half miles. But the higher you stood the further you would be able to see. As the earth is curved, the horizon would appear farther away with energy increase in …

The Great Rift Valley is the vast geographic depression that runs from the Jordan River Valley in Syria, South-western Asia to Mozambique in eastern Africa. The valley is approximately 6000 km, and its width varies from a few miles to more than one hundred miles. Its elevation varies from 1300 feet below sea level to 6000 feet above sea level. …

The golden angle separates the florets of a sunflower. It is an approximation, since three golden arcs add up to slightly more than enough to make a circle. One of the old leaves overlaps and is pushed out in a radial line. This makes space in the inner system for a new leaf to form. New leaves move into the …

God Particle is the nickname given to Higgs boson particle, so far a hypothetical subatomic particle believed to impart mass to the atom and, eventually, to all matter in the universe. The particle has come to the limelight in the wake of the ongoing Big Bang experiment in the Large Hadron Collider at Geneva, which expects to verify the very …

AK-47 stands for Russian Avtomat Kalashnikova 1947 (Automatic Kalashnikov 1947). Designed by Russian Mikhail Kalashnikov, it was the assault rifle used by most Eastern Bloc countries during the Cold War. The rifle was adopted and standardized in 1947, thus the name.

The Fog Index was developed by Robert Gunning, an American businessman, in 1952. It is a test designed to measure the readability of a sample of English writing. The resulting number is an indication of the number of years of formal education that a person requires in order to easily understand the text on the first reading. If a passage …

In physics, the fifth dimension is a hypothetical extra dimension beyond the usual three spatial and one-time dimensions. Some scientists have speculated that the graviton, a particle thought to carry the force of gravity, may leak into the fifth or higher dimensions, which would explain how gravity is significantly weaker than the other three fundamental forces. M-theory (the mother of …

The Fermi Problem, named after Italian physicist Enrico Fermi, is about a formula regarding how to think about what assumptions we make, how to make them as realistic as possible, how to estimate well, and how to put all these in the service of a straightforward mathematical calculation in order to come up with an answer.

Most of the world’s electricity is generated by oil, gas and coal in power stations. These fossils fuels are being used up quickly, and some experts have predicated that an energy crisis will occur before long. At the present rates at which we are using oil and natural gas, the known reserves will run out in the early 21st century. …