What is fracking? Fracking is a method to get natural gas and oil out of shale rocks by fracturing them. Humans have used oil and natural gas for thousands of years, but we only really began using it on a large scale from the middle of the 19th century. It was the Industrial Revolution that […]
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What is a seiche? A seiche is a standing wave that rocks back and forth in an enclosed body of water, similar to a pendulum. Most waves are caused by the wind. The wind pushes across the surface of a body of water and picks up water, pushing it across the body of water. If
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How do seedless fruit reproduce? Seedless fruit don’t produce viable seeds, so they can’t reproduce, but they don’t need to because they are produced by breeding two different plants that can produce fruit with seeds. These days, we can buy fruit with seeds, and we can usually buy seedless varieties of fruit as well. Watermelon
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When did the FBI’s Top 10 Most Wanted list start? The FBI’s Top 10 Most Wanted list started on March 14th, 1950. The first person on the FBI’s most wanted list was an accused murderer called Thomas James Holden. He was part of a gang that had been involved in robbing trains, banks, and payroll
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What is the tragedy of the commons? The tragedy of the commons is the idea that if anybody can use a finite resource as much as they want, they will usually overuse it and destroy it. That is human nature. The common that the tragedy of the commons refers to is common land that most
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Why does coral bleaching occur? Coral bleaching primarily occurs because heat stress causes the coral to expel the algae that give them their beautiful colors. If you go diving in a tropical region, you will probably see enormous numbers of coral. They should be a whole range of beautiful colors, but these days, enormous numbers
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How does a watch keep time? Modern watches use a quartz movement to keep time, but mechanical watches use a wound spring. Modern watches are probably easier to understand, so let’s look at those first. They work on the principle of piezoelectricity, which is a property that the mineral quartz possesses. The piezoelectric effect is
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How does an airplane de-icing system work? The plane’s wings are sprayed with a heated, high-pressure solution of propylene glycol and water. Planes fly throughout the year, in all kinds of weather, and there is very little that can stop them. When they fly, they have to avoid heavy storms, but rain is generally not
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What is the honeybee waggle dance? Honeybees do a waggle dance to communicate the distance and the direction away from the hive of a patch of flowers. It demonstrates that bees can remember information, communicate that information, and that other bees can understand it. It is a fairly complex type of communication. When you think
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What is a Stirling engine? A Stirling engine is an engine that uses the expansion and contraction of a gas when heated and cooled to carry out mechanical work. A Stirling engine works on the principle that gases expand when heated and contract when cooled. When thermal energy is applied to a gas, the molecules
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