1.

EXPLANATION TEXT
How do rainbows formed

Have you ever had this happen to you? You're walking down the road, rushing home from
work, when a light drizzle begins. You feel elated because while the tiny drops of water feel
cold as they fall on your bare skin, you can see and feel the warm glow of the sun, which
looks so mellow, far out in the horizon. You want to just run towards it because it looks like a
giant marshmallow, waiting to be devoured when suddenly you see something more
breathtaking: a rainbow!
The Formation of Rainbows
The process of rainbow formation has been explained in steps for your easy and better
comprehension.
The subtle arch of vibrant colors, which appears to go from one end of the earth to the other,
beckons you. Just as you come out of the magical trance and take a step towards it, it begins
to fade away. And you're back to feeling that gloom that preceded the wonderful
phenomenon that you just witnessed. Rainbows can have that effect on anyone. We all love
to watch them, but we never think about how they form. While explanations about the
formation of rainbows can range from fairy dust being sprinkled to the fox and vixen getting
married on a hill top, the real story behind its formation is quite technical, thus making it a
little (dare I say) boring.

Step 1: The main reason behind the formation of a rainbow, that is the semi-circular
band of 7 colors that you see in the sky, is basic physics. Reflection and refraction of
light is what causes the formation of the spectrum, which is the breakdown of white
light into its basic colors.

Step 2: In order for a rainbow to be formed, it is necessary for the fundamental

components of reflection to be present: light and a reflecting surface. Here, the light is
the sun's rays and the reflecting surface is the drops of water.

Step 3: When light emanates from the sun, it is in its pure form, i.e., white light.
When this white light reaches the surface of a water droplet at the appropriate angle, it
breaks down into the spectrum of colors. This spectrum reaches the inner most point
at the top of the water drop and gets reflected onto the lowermost point in the drop.

Step 4: This spectrum gets refracted from this lowermost point, gets dispersed, and
escapes the water droplet.

Step 5: This dispersed spectrum of colors is what we see as the rainbow. An

interesting tidbit is that within the droplet, the rainbow colors are in the order of red,
orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet, but when they get refracted and are
seen in the sky by the human eye, they are perceived to be in the opposite order,
which is violet, indigo, blue, green, yellow, orange, and red. So, the first color in the
actual spectrum is seen as the last one by us.

As mentioned earlier, how rainbows form is not at all as glamorous or fantastic as

imagined. Nonetheless, we can always continue to indulge ourselves in fantastical beliefs, as
long as we know what the truth is
Source : SCIENCESTRUCK

2. Precipitation

Precipitation is any liquid or frozen water that forms in the atmosphere and falls back
to the Earth. It comes in many forms, like rain, sleet, and snow. Along with evaporation
and condensation, precipitation is one of the three major parts of the global water cycle. 

Precipitation forms in the clouds when water vapor condenses into bigger and bigger
droplets of water. When the drops are heavy enough, they fall to the Earth. If a cloud is
colder, like it would be at higher altitudes, the water droplets may freeze to form ice.
These ice crystals then fall to the Earth as snow, hail, or rain, depending on the
temperature within the cloud and at the Earth’s surface. Most rain actually begins as snow
high in the clouds. As the snowflakes fall through warmer air, they become raindrops. 

Particles of dust or smoke in the atmosphere are essential for precipitation. These
particles, called “condensation nuclei,” provide a surface for water vapor to condense
upon. This helps water droplets gather together and become large enough to fall to the
Earth.

A common misconception is that when raindrops fall, they have a teardrop shape. In
fact, smaller raindrops (ones that are approximately 1 millimeter (0.039 inches) across)
are almost perfectly spherical. Larger raindrops (2–3 millimeters (.078-.118 inches)
across) are also round, but with a small indent on their bottom side. They look more like
kidney beans when falling to the Earth. Very large rain drops (larger than 4.5 millimeters
(.177 inches)) have a huge indent and look more like a parachute. These extra-large drops
usually end up splitting into two smaller droplets. The indents on raindrops are caused by
air resistance. 

Precipitation is always fresh water, even when the water originated from the ocean.
This is because sea salt does not evaporate with water. However, in some cases,
pollutants in the atmosphere can contaminate water droplets before they fall to the Earth.
The precipitation that results from this is called acid rain. Acid rain does not harm
humans directly, but it can make lakes and streams more acidic. This harms aquatic
ecosystems because plants and animals often cannot adapt to the acidity.

Source: National Geographic

3. How Tornadoes Form

Tornadoes only form when a thunderstorm has a particular combination of winds.Air rising in
thunderstorms can begin to spin when it's affected by winds blowing it in different directions.
It starts to rise and is pushed to the side by wind. It rises a bit more and is jostled again by
wind moving in another direction. Winds moving in different speeds and directions at
different altitudes cause the rising air to start spinning. 

Air that spins as it rises is typical in supercells, the strongest type of thunderstorm, but not all
spinning air creates a tornado.For a tornado to form, there also needs to be spinning air near
the ground. This happens when air in the storm sinks to the ground and spreads out across the
land in gusts. Gusts of warmer air rise as they blow. Gusts of cooler air sink as they blow
across the land. If there are enough rising and sinking gusts, the air near the ground starts
spinning. 

The spinning air near the ground speeds up as it’s drawn inward toward its axis of rotation.
This happens in the same way that figure skaters spin faster when their arms are drawn in
rather than when their arms are outstretched. This is called conservation of angular
momentum.

The rotating air moves horizontally across the land, and can be tilted vertically by the force of
the rising, rotating air. That allows a tornado to form.

Most tornadoes form during supercell thunderstorms, but not all supercell thunderstorms
produce tornadoes. Usually, the rotating air near the ground doesn't rotate fast enough, for a
tornado to form. If the rotating air near the ground is very cold, it will spread away from the
storm along the ground and slow down like a figure skater with extended arms, and a tornado
will not form.

SOURCE: UCAR CENTER FOR SCIENCE EDUCATION

4. How floods form

A flood occurs when water inundates land that's normally dry, which can happen in a
multitude of ways.

Excessive rain, a ruptured dam or levee, rapid melting of snow or ice, or even an
unfortunately placed beaver dam can overwhelm a river, spreading over the adjacent land,
called a floodplain. Coastal flooding occurs when a large storm or tsunami causes the sea to
surge inland.

Most floods take hours or even days to develop, giving residents time to prepare or evacuate.
Others generate quickly and with little warning. So-called flash floods can be extremely
dangerous, instantly turning a babbling brook or even a dry wash into rushing rapids that
sweep everything in their path downstream.

Climate change is increasing the risk of floods worldwide, particularly in coastal and low-
lying areas, because of its role in extreme weather events and rising seas. The increase in
temperatures that accompanies global warming can contribute to hurricanes that move more
slowly and drop more rain, funneling moisture into atmospheric rivers like the ones that led
to heavy rains and flooding in California in early 2019.
Meanwhile, melting glaciers and other factors are contributing to a rise in sea levels that has
created long-term, chronic flooding risks for places ranging from Venice, Italy to the
Marshall Islands. More than 670 U.S. communities will face repeated flooding by the end of
this century, according to a 2017 analysis; it's happening in more than 90 coastal
communities already.

SOURCE : NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC

5. Why the sea salty?

It is estimated there is enough salt in the world’s oceans to cover all the planet’s land surfaces
with a layer about 40 stories thick. But seawater wasn’t always so salty; when the Earth’s
oceans first formed about 3.8 billion years ago, as the surface of the planet cooled enough to
allow water vapour to liquify, the oceans were mostly fresh water. So where did all the salt
come from?

It came from rock, laden with elemental salts including sodium, chlorine and potassium, that
was spewed forth as magmatic material by massive volcanos from the depths of the planet.

Enter erosion, the process liberating these salts from their rocky prison, thanks to an
atmosphere dominated by gases including nitrogen and, importantly, carbon dioxide.

When mixed with water (H2O), carbon dioxide (CO2) can form carbonic acid (H2CO3), a
weak but corrosive acid. This carbonic acid rained down on salt-rich rock, slowly breaking
through and releasing the trapped salt into rainwater. The runoff slowly carried the salt to
nearby lakes and rivers, which in turn carried it to the seas. Although the amount deposited
by any one outlet was small, the contribution of millions of outlets over millions of years
gradually raised the salinity of the oceans. The process continues.

Along the way from rock to sea, a fair proportion of the salt released from rock is used by
living things. Salt is crucial to both plant and animal life, regulating the amount of fluid in
cells and neuron function. When an organism dies and decomposes, the salt is freed to
continue its seaward journey.

Acid rain isn’t the only way the seas are fed with salt. Ongoing volcanism still has an
important role to play. Hydrothermal vents allow seawater that has seeped though the rock of
the oceanic crust to return to the surface. The water is superheated from magma below, and as
it travels up it dissolves minerals locked in the crust, erupting as mineral-rich steam.

A similar process involves the interaction of submarine volcanoes with surrounding seawater.
Submarine volcanoes are comparable to their above-ground relatives except that their lava
cools much more rapidly, allowing for speedy growth. Magma erupting through submarine
fissures boils the surrounding water, which then dissolves salts in the cooling rock to escape
in a manner similar to hydrothermal vents. Many of the worlds islands were formed by this
process, releasing thousands of tons of salt in the process.

While seawater contains, on average, about 35 grams of salt per litre, the oceans and seas are
not uniformly salty; generally the closer you get to the poles the less saline the water
becomes, as fresh water released from the ice of the frozen poles dilutes the concentration of
the salt.

There is still one question left: if most of the salt in the sea comes via rivers and streams, why
are they not also salty? The simple explanation is that they do contain salt, but the
concentration is much lower, and the salt flows rather than accumulates. It is estimated that
each year four billion tons of dissolved salts are carried to the sea by rivers.

So is the ocean getting saltier? The answer right now is probably not. The input of salts is
balanced by salts being buried underground by the movement of tectonic plates, the flow of
freshwater and a host of other processes.

Source : cosmos magazine

6. What causes an aurora over the poles

The aurora is one of nature’s most spectacular light shows. It’s easy to be captivated by the
beauty of the phenomenon, with massive bands of blue, green and red streaking across the
sky. However, these stellar lights are indicators that the Earth is saving your life, protecting
you from the deadly solar radiation spewed out by the sun.

The aurora is caused by the interaction between Earth’s magnetic field and charged particles
shot out from the sun, dissipating them before they cause damage.

So how do these auroras occur, what is the magnetic field and why is it so important to life on
Earth? Let’s find out.

If you play with a magnet, you notice that if you put it near a metallic object, it is more
attracted at one end than the other. This is due to the forces of magnetism, where charged
atoms that have unequal amounts of electrons and protons are attracted to the opposite charge
and repel the same charge.

The Earth is in fact a giant magnetic bar with a positive end and a negative end. Today, the
positive end is the South Pole, while the negative end is the north pole. The Earth’s magnetic
field on average switches a few times every million years – if you waited long enough, your
compass would flip directions.

The magnetism is generated deep within the core of the planet. The Earth’s core is divided
into two main parts: the solid inner nickel-iron core and the liquid outer core. It’s the
movement of these two parts of the core that generate an electrical field, through electrically
conductive metals and convection currents that move around vast amounts of liquid metal.
This magnetism erupts from each of the poles and loops out, touching back down at the
opposite pole.

This creates a bubble, known as the magnetosphere, that surrounds Earth and acts as a shield
against solar radiation. The magnetosphere is not a perfect sphere as it is subjected to a
massive “pushing” force by the solar winds. This forces the sphere into more of a teardrop
shape, with the side facing the sun extending only 65,000 kilometres with a magnetotail
believed to be than 6 million kilometres extending beyond the orbit of the moon.
So what causes the auroras to occur? Now that we know that Earth has a magnetic field we
can see what happens to it when the sun turns violent. The sun is a very temperamental body,
shooting out huge masses of charged material, often towards Earth, known as coronal mass
ejections (this is detailed in our explainer on the sun, flares and CMEs).

These ejections contain deadly radiation that would kill off most life and turn what remains
into a mutated mess. When these immense waves of radiation and charged particles are aimed
at Earth, they hit and peel back the outer layers of the magnetosphere, exposing the lower
layers. You would think that this would spell certain doom – if the CME can breach the
magnetosphere it surely can reach us?

Fortunately Earth has a secondary defence system where it uses its magnetic field
lines, which form part of the magnetic field, to direct the stream of particles towards the
poles. How does this dissipate the energy coming in? Well, when the charged mass enters the
upper atmosphere, it collides with oxygen and nitrogen atoms. These collisions impart the
deadly energy into these atoms, exciting them and making them glow. This is why auroras
are so bright, and allows the atmosphere to dissipate the remaining radiation before it can
reach us at altitudes ranging from 100-400 kilometres up.

How do we know that the magnetic field is so important? We can see what happens when it
isn’t there by looking at our planetary neighbour, Mars. Billions of years ago, Mars lost its
magnetic field, leading to the solar winds stripping its atmosphere and any water on the
surface boiling off. Today it has a very thin atmosphere and a barren and dry surface.

Earth is not the only place in the solar system where you can catch these light shows. We see
the same thing happening on an even bigger scale on Jupiter and Saturn, with bands of light
even larger than Earth itself. Both of these planets have powerful magnetic fields extending,
in the case of Jupiter, to a size so large it would appear as being five times larger than a full
moon in our sky!

So if you are lucky enough to catch an aurora as it streaks across the sky, spare a moment to
think about how close you are to potentially deadly forces. The Earth’s magnetosphere is the
key to life as we know it, and without it we would likely end up with a dead and empty
wastelan

7. What is the Fermi Paradox?

The Fermi Paradox – named after the Italian-American physicist Enrico Fermi – can be
summed up in a simple question that anyone looking out at the night sky has probably asked
themselves: Where is everybody? Or, to put it another way, it’s a big universe, so why can’t
we see life anywhere but here on Earth?

That’s the question that occurred to Fermi at lunch one day in 1950, after a discussion about
UFO sightings. Unlike most idle daydreamers, however, he put some mathematical grunt into
addressing the problem.
A gifted theoretician who made significant advances in statistical mechanics and was the first
to postulate the existence of the neutrino, Fermi also built the world’s first nuclear reactor and
played a key role in the Manhattan Project that developed the atomic bomb.

Fermi, who had won a Nobel Prize in 1938, was famous for his ability to estimate pretty good
answers to tough questions using very little data and back-of-the-envelope calculations.

In one well-known example, he estimated the strength of the blast created by the first nuclear
test explosion by dropping small pieces of paper during it and watching how far they
travelled through the air. This allowed him to calculate the change in air pressure caused by
the blast, which in turn meant he could work out the amount of energy released. His rough
estimate that the explosion was the equivalent of 10,000 tons of TNT was not too far off the
real figure of 21,000 tons.

This was the technique he turned to the question of extraterrestrial life.

In outline, the argument runs like this:

1. The Milky Way contains hundreds of billions of stars, and billions of them are similar
to the sun.
2. It is highly likely that some of these stars will have planets that are similar to Earth.
3. If we assume – via the Copernican principle – that Earth is not particularly special,
then intelligent life should also exist on some fraction of these Earth-like planets.
4. Some of these intelligent life-forms might develop advanced technology, and even
interstellar travel.
5. Interstellar travel would take a long time, but as there are many sun-like stars that are
billions of years older, there has been plenty of time for such travel to have occurred.
6. Given all this, why haven’t we met or seen any trace of aliens? Where is everybody?

According Herbert York, who was present at the lunch, Fermi reportedly backed this
argument up with some rough calculations, but he never pursued the question seriously. That
task was left to the astrophysicist Michael Hart, who ran some more rigorous numbers in a
paper published in 1975.

Though the Fermi Paradox is the accepted name for the argument, some argue that it more
properly belongs to Hart.

Whoever is responsible for it, there are any number of proposed answers to the question.

The most obvious is that we are alone: Earth is unique, or close to it, in having life.
Alternatively, large-scale interstellar travel may be impossible. Or perhaps intelligent life will
inevitably destroy itself via nuclear weapons, or runaway artificial intelligence, or global
warming, or something else.

Other ideas include the suggestion that we are not looking for the right kind of signs, or that
aliens are so alien we cannot even recognise them as living things. Or perhaps other
civilisations are deliberately keeping us in the dark until we are ready to join the galactic
community.
Or perhaps other life is abundant, but living in subsurface oceans – such as that thought to be
on Enceladus – unaware that anywhere, or anything, else exists.

The possibilities are endless, and speculation will no doubt continue forever, or until we find
extraterrestrials.

Fermi’s lunchtime conversation petered out, according to Edward Teller, another physicist
who was present, with the conclusion that “as far as our galaxy is concerned, we are living
somewhere in the sticks, far removed from the metropolitan area of the galactic centre”.

8. What happens when you don’t get enough sleep

Many of us have experienced the effects of sleep deprivation: feeling tired and cranky, or
finding it hard to concentrate. Sleep is more important for our brains than you may realise.

Although it may appear you’re “switching off” when you fall asleep, the brain is far from
inactive. What we know from studying patterns of brain electrical activity is that while you
sleep, your brain cycles through two main types of patterns: rapid eye movement (REM)
sleep and slow-wave sleep.

Slow-wave sleep, which occurs more at the beginning of the night, is characterised by slow
rhythms of electrical activity across large numbers of brain cells (occurring one to four times
per second). As the night progresses, we have more and more REM sleep. During REM sleep
we often have vivid dreams, and our brains show similar patterns of activity to when we are
awake.

What are our brains doing while we sleep?

Sleep serves many different functions. One of these is to help us remember experiences we
had during the day. REM sleep is thought to be important for emotional memories (for
example, memories involving fear) or procedural memory (such as how to ride a bike). On
the other hand, slow-wave sleep is thought to reflect the storing of so-called “declarative”
memories that are the conscious record of your experiences and what you know (for example,
what you had for breakfast).

We also know experiences are replayed in the brain during sleep -- the memories of these
experiences are like segments from a movie that can be rewound and played forward again.
Replay occurs in neurons in the hippocampus – a brain region important for memory – and
has been best studied in rats learning to navigate a maze. After a navigation exercise, when
the rat is resting, its brain replays the path it took. This helps to strengthen the connections
between brain cells, and is therefore thought to be important for consolidating memories.

But is it that important for you to remember what you had for breakfast? Probably not. That’s
why the brain needs to be selective. Sleep allows it to sift through memories, forgetting
certain things and prioritising what’s important. One way it may do this is by pruning away
or scaling down unwanted connections.
A leading theory of sleep function – the synaptic homeostasis hypothesis – suggests that
during sleep there is a widespread weakening of synapses, the connections throughout the
brain.

This is thought to counterbalance the overall strengthening of these connections that occurs
when we are awake and learning. By pruning away excess connections, sleep effectively
cleans the slate, so we can learn again the next day. Interfering with this scaling down process
can, in some cases, lead to more intense (and perhaps unwanted) memories.

The importance of sleep for keeping our brains active may be reflected in our changing sleep
patterns as we age. Babies and children sleep much more than adults, probably because their
developing brains are learning much more, and being exposed to new situations.

Later in life, sleep declines and becomes more fragmented. This may reflect either a reduced
need for sleep (because we are learning less), or a breakdown in sleep processes as we age.

Sleep is also needed to do a bit of brain housekeeping. A 2013 US study in mice found sleep
cleanses the brain of toxins that accumulate during waking hours. During sleep, the space
between brain cells increases, allowing toxic proteins to be flushed out. It’s possible that by
removing these, sleep may stave off neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s.

Sleep deprivation: the reality

Getting enough sleep is important for attention and learning during our waking hours. When
we are sleep-deprived, we can’t focus on large amounts of information or sustain attention for
long periods. Our reaction times are slowed. We are also less likely to be creative or discover
hidden rules when trying to solve a problem.

When you haven’t had enough sleep, your brain may force itself to shut down for a few
seconds while you’re awake. This is called a micro-sleep and is potentially very dangerous.
Drowsiness is a leading cause of motor vehicle accidents, and sleep deprivation affects the
brain as severely as alcohol. Sleep deprivation can also lead to fatal accidents in the
workplace – a major issue in shift workers.

The beneficial effects of sleep on attention and concentration are particularly important for
children, who often become hyperactive and disruptive in class when they don’t have enough
sleep. A 2012 study in the journal Pediatrics found getting just one hour less sleep per night
over several nights could adversely affect a child’s behaviour in class.

Chronic sleep deprivation

The longer-term effects of sleep deprivation are more difficult to study in humans for ethical
reasons, but chronic sleep disturbances have been linked to brain disorders such as
schizophrenia, autism and Alzheimer’s. We don’t know if sleep disturbances are a cause or
symptom of these disorders.

Overall, the evidence suggests having healthy sleep patterns is key to having a healthy and
well-functioning brain.
9. What creates Earth's magnetic field?

Travelling to see the Northern or Southern lights has made its way into almost everyone’s
bucket list. But unknown to most, these beautiful displays of light are caused by dangerous
cosmic rays that have been deflected by our Earth’s magnetic field.

Magnetic fields around planets behave in the same way as a bar magnet. But at high
temperatures, metals lose their magnetic properties. So it’s clear that Earth’s hot iron core

isn’t what creates the magnetic field around our planet.

Instead, Earth’s magnetic field is caused by a dynamo effect.

The effect works in the same way as a dynamo light on a bicycle. Magnets in the dynamo
start spinning when the bicycle is pedalled, creating an electric current. The electricity is then
used to turn on the light.

This process also works in reverse. If you have a rotating electric current, it will create a
magnetic field.

On Earth, flowing of liquid metal in the outer core of the planet generates electric currents.
The rotation of Earth on its axis causes these electric currents to form a magnetic field which
extends around the planet.

The magnetic field is extremely important to sustaining life on Earth. Without it, we would
be exposed to high amounts of radiation from the Sun and our atmosphere would be free to
leak into space.

This is likely what happened to the atmosphere on Mars. As Mars doesn’t have flowing liquid
metal in its core, it doesn’t produce the same dynamo effect. This left the planet with a very
weak magnetic field, allowing for its atmosphere to be stripped away by solar winds, leaving
it uninhabitable.

10. How solar cells turn sunlight into electricity

Renewables have overtaken coal as the world’s largest source of electricity generation
capacity. And about 30% of that capacity is due to silicon solar cells. But how do silicon cells
work?

A silicon cell is like a four-part sandwich. The bread on either side consists of thin strips of
metallic electrodes. They extract the power generated within the solar cell and conduct it to
an external circuit.

Just like a sandwich, it’s the filling which is the most interesting part – this is where photons
from the sun are converted into usable electricity. The filling of a solar cell consists of two
different layers of silicon: negative and positive silicon, or n- and p-type silicon.

Creating positive or negative types of silicon is relatively easy. The silicon is impregnated
with elements known as dopants. Dopants replace some of the silicon atoms in the crystal
structure, allowing the number of electrons present in each layer to be manipulated.

For instance, phosphorus is used to create n-type silicon while boron is used to create p-type
silicon. Phosphorus has one more electron than silicon. When substituted into the silicon
structure, the electron is so weakly bound to the phosphorus that it can move freely within the
crystal, creating a negative charge.

On the other hand, boron has fewer electrons than silicon and sucks up silicon’s electrons.
This creates “electron holes” – regions of mobile positive charge in the crystal structure.

At the interface of the p- and n- type silicon, the positive electron holes and the electrons
combine. It’s not a simple electrostatic interaction, but the upshot is that you get a slightly
positive charge in the n-type silicon and a slightly negative charge in the p-type silicon at the
interface of the n- and p- type silicon – the opposite of what you might expect.

Photons from the sun pass between the strips of the top electrode and strike silicon atoms in
the crystal structure. Like the strike of a cue ball, the colliding photon gives some of the
silicon electrons enough energy to escape from their parent silicon atom.

The “free” electrons move to and accumulate within the n-type silicon.

Once free electrons have accumulated in the n-type silicon, it’s time to put all the free
electrons to work. In order to use their energy, the electrodes must be connected via an
external circuit. Electrons flow through the electrodes and the external electric circuit from
the n-type to the p-type. The p-type silicon acts as an electron sink. Without it, the electron
flow would clog up.

It is this flow of electrons that creates the electrical current we can use to power appliances or
charge batteries for when the sun isn’t shining.

11. Why do stars sparkle?

Gazing up at the heavens at night, it’s easy to get lost in the beauty and immensity of the
universe: the moon’s silvery glow, planets moving through their orbits, distant stars twinkling
with light emitted millions of years ago.

This dancing of light we see when we look at stars has fascinated humans for centuries –
even the smallest humans. “Twinkle twinkle little star, how I wonder what you are” is one of
the first songs we learn as children. As we grow older, we learn the names of the stars and
constellations.

But what about that twinkle? Why do stars “dance” in the night sky?

We must first turn our gaze to ground level. Picture the wavy motion of air just above
burning hot sand. We see this effect because the hot air has a different density to the cooler
air above it, and it moves up. As it does, the heat dissipates and alters the density of the air,
making it refract light, bending and redirecting it in a slightly different way than the cooler
air it meets. To our eyes, it almost appears as if the air is liquid.

The way light travels can be manipulated and redirected by forces altering something called
the refractive index. Essentially, this index refers to how much a beam of light can bend in a
new direction: a high refractive index means the light will be bent a lot; a low index, a little.

To get back to our star subject (pun intended): between us and the billions of suns above and
around us is a thick film of atmosphere. While this is responsible for keeping us alive, it also
distorts light.

The atmosphere is like a multilayered “cake”, with stacked levels of decreasing density the
higher up you go. In the same way the heat of the sand causes interference in the air above,
light doesn’t have a smooth journey as it makes its way from space to our eyes. Where the
different layers meet, light is slightly refracted in a new direction, a process that repeats as it
penetrates each successive layer.

This results in a zig-zag effect, creating the illusion that the star is slightly shifting. The
scientific name is “stellar scintillation” and it’s the reason space-based telescopes produce far
superior images to ground-based observatories.

But why, you may wonder, don’t all stars twinkle? There are two main reasons. One is that
the light from stars closer to the horizon has to travel through more atmosphere to reach you
and so is even more zig-zagged than light from stars higher up. The other is that what appears
to be a star is sometimes, in fact, a planet.

A star twinkles not only because its light has to pass through the atmosphere, but also
because its light is tiny. The distance of these stars from Earth is so huge that they appear as
just a dot. Planets, on the other hand, are closer, so their light appears more as a disc than a
dot. The atmospheric distortion is partly cancelled out by light from the planet zigging and
zagging in opposite directions.

So the next time you gaze skyward at night, wondering about dancing stars, or when your
child or grandchild asks you why that little star in the nursery rhyme twinkles, you’ll have an
answer.
12. Why do clouds float?

Clouds must have weight, because water has weight. A cloud is many, many tiny “clumps” of
water, either liquid or frozen.

The liquid droplets are about 0.002 millimetres across (smaller than the thickness of a human
hair, which is about 0.050 – 0.070 millimetres). Some of these tiny droplets are so small that
it would take a billion of them to make a single raindrop.

Different clouds carry different amounts of water. After all, cloud shapes and sizes can range
from thin, wispy cirrus, right up to monstrous cumulonimbus thunderclouds.

A typical cumulus cloud carries about 0.50 grams of water (the weight of a big garden pea) in
each cubic metre. But the whole cloud might be one kilometre by one kilometre by one
kilometre. So it could carry up to about 500 tonnes of water.

What holds this water up?

There are three main reasons. First, the heat of the Sun warms the ground, which then creates
rising currents of air. Second, an advancing storm or weather front running close to the
ground can push the air that it runs into upwards. Third, air carrying water vapour can run
into a mountain and rise, adding buoyancy to the cloud above.

Air (when it is moving very fast) can easily hold up a 600-tonne jet plane. So a huge volume
of slowly moving air can definitely hold up a 500-tonne cloud.

Cloud trivia

— The name “cloud” comes from the 13th-century Old English word “clud” or “clod”,
meaning a mass of rock, or a hill. A very dark cumulus cloud can look like a hill.
— Other planets have clouds. On Venus they are made of sulfur dioxide, while the clouds on
Mars carry water as ice. The clouds on Jupiter and Saturn are (from the top down) made of
ammonia, ammonium hydrosulfide and near the bottom, water. The clouds on Uranus,
Neptune and Titan (a moon of Saturn) are made of methane.
— The first successful weather satellite was TIROS 1, launched on 1 April 1960. It survived
only 78 days, but proved that weather satellites could be useful.

13. What is energy?

Any physics textbook will tell you energy is “the capacity to do work”. Then it usually goes
on to explain that “work” is the action of moving something against a force. But isn’t this
definition kind of unsatisfying? It’s a bit like Plato’s definition of man as a “featherless
biped” – it’s hard to poke holes in the reasoning, but you can’t help but feel something is
missing.
The reason energy is so hard to define is because it’s an abstract notion. In physics, the
concept of “energy” is really just a kind of shorthand, a tool to help balance the books.
Energy is always conserved (or converted into mass) so is incredibly useful in working out
the results of any kind of physical or chemical process.

There is no physical “essence” of energy, and no such thing as “pure energy”. Energy is
always carried by something, usually in the form of movement.

The classic example of kinetic energy is a billiard ball rolling across a table. The heavier the
ball, the faster it moves, the more energy it carries. In other words, the more painful it will be
if it pops off the table and lands on your little toe.

Another form of kinetic energy is known as heat. The temperature of something is a direct
measurement of how fast the atoms inside it are moving. In a hot cup of coffee, the water
molecules are racing around at a fast clip, slowing down as the cup cools.

Throw an iron bar into the fire and its atoms start moving faster too, although in this case the
atoms are bound in position, and so the movement is the form of a jiggling vibration.

Sometimes an object is pulled or pushed in a particular direction, but its movement is stopped
by some other force. In this case, the object is said to have potential energy. Potential energy
means the potential to move.

It’s a bit like a racing car driver pressing the accelerator with the handbrake still on – nothing
much happens until she releases the brake.

A glass sitting on a table is being pulled down by the force of gravity. But any movement is
being stopped by a much stronger force – the electrical repulsion of the atoms in the table.
Give the glass a nudge off the table, though, and it falls.

What about chemical energy, electrical energy, or nuclear energy? These are a bit more
complicated, but in the final analysis, all these forms of energy also involve a type of
movement or a potential to move.

For example, lots of energy is locked, like a coiled spring, inside atomic nuclei. This energy
can be released when a uranium nucleus splits in two. The two halves are both positively
charged, and so just after the split they are electrically repelled by other another and fly apart.
Thus the nuclear potential energy ends up as kinetic energy.

As the Russian physicist Lev Okun said, “The more basic is a physical notion, the more
difficult to define it in words.” For energy, the best we can do is say it’s the capacity to cause
movement. And that should do us poor featherless bipeds just fine.

14. Say what? How hearing loops amplify one voice above the rest

If you find yourself trying to talk to someone in a loud, busy bar or at a party, you probably
find it quite difficult to hear what they're saying. Background noise generated by other people
in the room, music or other loud sounds muffle your and their words.
Now imagine this happened every time you went somewhere with moderate background
noise, such as a theatre, train station or university – where not hearing an announcement
could mean missing a performance, train or lecture.

This is one of the biggest issues faced by the hearing impaired who rely on a hearing aid.

While the device can amplify sound, it isn’t great at focusing on one voice among tens or
hundreds. This is where the hearing loop comes in. But what is it and how does it work?

Essentially, the hearing loop lifts one voice to stand out of a crowd by combining an
electromagnetic field with a special component of the hearing aid, known as the telecoil or T-
coil.

This small metallic tube wrapped in copper wire acts as a tiny antenna. Its job is to take an
electromagnetic field and convert those signals to audio.

When an alternating current is passed through a border of conductive metal along the
outskirts of a space, such as a theatre or room, it generates an electromagnetic field.

When a person with a hearing aid steps into the room (and the field), the telecoil inside their
device picks up that electromagnetic energy. The electromagnetic waves are converted back
into electricity, which is then processed by a computer chip into audio.

The wearer of the aid controls this system. A hearing aid must be switched to the T mode to
begin using the telecoil.

So what does this all mean?

Let’s move from the party to the classroom. Say you were trying to listen to a lecturer using a
hearing aid. You notice the hearing loop sign and switch your aid to T-mode.

The lecturer begins speaking into a microphone hooked up to an amplifier. This amplifier
connects not just to the speakers, but also to the hearing loop, transmitting an electromagnetic
field.

The hearing aid converts the electromagnetic field into an electrical signal, and through a
processor, back into the voice of the lecturer.

Suddenly the lecturer sounds loud and clear rather than muffled and washed out by other
students’ conversations.

15. What is colony collapse disorder – and is there hope for bees?

Honeybee kingdoms – or, rather, queendoms – can end in tragedy. Beekeepers find hives
mysteriously empty of workers with only the queen, and her nurses and babies left behind to
perish when food runs out.
This phenomenon is called colony collapse disorder. And while managed honeybee colonies
have declined 60% since the 1940s, according to the US Department of Agriculture, they've
found it harder to bounce back in recent years says Boris Baer, director of the University of
Western Australia’s Centre for Integrative Bee Research. “We’re not seeing the recovery
phases anymore.”

A decline in honeybee populations as a result of colony collapse disorder may at first seem
like a relief – no more swollen, aching stings. But the effect on agriculture will hurt more.

Around a third of our food production relies on honeybee pollination. Without them, we
might be eating our last apples, onions, pumpkins and avocados.

So why are colonies collapsing?

The prevailing theory for colony collapse disorder is that environmental stressors cause
worker bees to die too quickly and all at once, forcing younger bees who have not yet reached
maturity to take their place.

These younger bees make longer trips and die earlier, triggering a cycle that ultimately leads
to collapse.

As far as scientists know, these environmental stressors include pathogens, pesticides,

climate, beekeeping and nutrition. And combinations of these can trigger colony collapse.

For instance, bees exposed to pesticides such as neonicotinoids have weaker immune
systems, making them more at risk of disease – even infections the bees could previously
have fought off.

Designed to deter pests from plants during non-blooming periods when bees aren’t typically
present, neonicotinoids are absorbed by the plant leaving long-lasting traces in pollen and
nectar.

For honeybees exposed to a sub-lethal dose, neonicotinoids tamper with their flying and
navigation, taste sensitivity and slow their learning capabilities.

And Baer says in his opinion, bees aren’t designed to be domesticated. “The bee is a complex
animal,” he says. “You can’t really contain it like a dog in a house.”

Since beekeepers truck their bee colonies to the farms and let them loose to mingle with other
bee colonies, they also exchange pesticides and infect each other.

Baer says they’re overloaded as beekeepers send them out to try and pollinate huge swathes
of pesticide-laden crops.

“It’s a completely new agricultural landscape that the bee is experiencing at the moment.
Basically colony collapse disorder is a signal for us that tells us they can’t do this anymore.

“You can stress them to a certain level but if you go beyond this, the bee cannot recover,” he
says.
So what can we do about it?

Baer suggests giving domesticated bees a landscape free of pesticides where they can recover
and detoxify.

He also says studying the genetics of bees that can recover from diseases by themselves, or
breeding them, could also help.

But ultimately, it comes down to not overloading the bees’ system so they can deal with the
changing landscapes on their own terms.

16. How solar power towers generate electricity at night

One of the biggest issues facing renewable energy has been generating power during periods
of unfavourable weather or time of day. On a windless night, for instance, neither solar panels
nor wind turbines can produce energy.

This is where solar power towers shine. They capture the sun’s energy during the day and
store it to be used after sundown.

If you’ve ever used a magnifying glass on a sunny day, you might have noticed that if you
place it at just the right angle and distance from an object, it focuses light into an intense
point.

This is essentially how a solar tower collects heat.

Thousands of moveable mirrors called heliostats on the ground are angled to reflect sunlight
to a central receiver at the top of the tower.

That concentrated heat can turn water into steam to power a turbine – or, in newer models, be
stored in a “hot tank” full of molten sodium or salts (such as a mix of potassium nitrate and
sodium nitrate) sitting around 550 °C.

These substances have a high thermal capacity, meaning they need loads of heat energy to
increase temperature. In effect, they can stay molten for hours in an insulated tank and
provide heat storage capabilities on which solar power towers rely.

Water piped through the hot tank of molten sodium or salts quickly turns to steam. This is
used to power a turbine and crank out electricity throughout the night.

Of course, the sodium and salts lose heat as steam is generated. If they cool too much, they
solidify.
So to prevent the system clogging, the cooling fluids are pumped to a "cool tank" where
natural gas kicks in to keep them above melting temperature.

And when the sun rises again and the heliostats line up, those fluids are pumped from the
cool tank to the receiver where they are heated and stored in the hot tank again.

The cycle of heating and cooling can go on indefinitely – as long as the sun is mostly shining.
While this system is certainly an improvement on other systems that convert heat directly to
steam without the salt storage, it does not totally overcome the reliance on consistent
sunlight.

This is why solar towers are built at locations that experience mostly sunny days year-round,
such as the Mojave Desert in the US and Andalusia in Spain.

17. How does absorbent concrete 'drink' so much water?

With heavy rain comes water pooling on roads – and the chance of an accident skyrockets (as
any driver who’s lost control as their car tyres slip on a cushion of water knows).

What if water could be absorbed by the road, keeping your wheels firmly on the surface?

Enter absorbent concrete. Where conventional concrete lets relatively little water through,
absorbent concrete appears to drink it down. Its secret: a network of gaps that allow water to
slip through to the ground below or to pipes which whisk it away.

Conventional concrete is made from a mixture of cement, made from heated limestone and
clay, water and an aggregate such as sand, rock or gravel to provide structural stability and
stop the mix shrinking too much.

It’s a formula used in various forms since the Egyptians mixed mud and straw with gypsum
and lime to build the pyramids around 5,000 years ago.

The resulting dense concrete is very strong. And, by regulation, concrete must be able to
allow some water through to the ground underneath but this takes time, leaving the surface
wet and slippery.

So UK company Tarmac developed Topmix Permeable concrete. Each square metre can
absorb up to 1,000 litres each minute.

It is able to do this because unlike regular concrete, around a third of Topmix Permeable’s
volume comprises gaps between aggregate.

It may sound simple, but the first permeable concrete was developed 50 years ago, and only
now is it tough enough to be certified for the weight of motor vehicles.
The compressive strength of residential concrete is usually around 17 megapascals. Tarmac
claims Topmix Permeable’s compressive strength is 10 to 20 megapascals.

Once through the permeable layers, stormwater can be collected by an attenuation layer,
which directs the water to pipes for distribution or storage, allowing even more water to
funnel through.

The water can also pass straight through into the ground below if it is deemed safe to do so.

There is a drawback – if water sitting in the gaps freezes and expands, it can crack the
concrete.

18. All you need to know about heat waves

Heat waves kill more people in Australia than bushfires. By 2040, in each calendar year, heat
waves will sweep across 20% of the land area of our planet. (That’s a massive increase from
just 1% in the 1960s.)

Most Australians would remember the terrible 2009 Black Saturday disaster in Victoria.
Flames, heat and smoke from those horrendous bush fires killed 173 people. But what most
Australians don’t realise is that the crippling heat waves around Black Saturday killed 374
people. That’s more than twice as many people.

Overall, heat waves have killed more Australians than all other natural hazards combined –
55% of all such deaths. More than 4,500 Australians have died from heat waves since the
year 1900.

In the European heat wave of 2003, some 50,000 to 70,000 people died between June and
August. The Russian heat wave of 2010 killed around 55,000 people.

Thanks to global warming, future heat waves will be more extreme in temperature, happen
more frequently, last longer and cover more of the Earth’s surface.

What exactly is a heat wave?

Confusingly, the definition varies depending on the country. Sometimes it can vary from one
state to another within a country – such as in the US.

One widely accepted definition comes from the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO).
It starts by setting the baseline as the 30 years between 1961 and 1990. Then, for the location
you’re interested in, pick one day of the year, such as 27 January. Each of those “27 January”
days across the 30 years will have a minimum and a maximum temperature (usually after
midnight, and after midday).
Add the 30 maximum temperatures, divide by 30, and then you have the average maximum
temperature for that particular day and location. Do the same for the next four days to give
you the average maximum temperature for five days in a row.

According to the WMO, a heat wave happens when you have five days in a row that each
have a daily maximum temperature 5 °C or more higher than the average maximum
temperature.

What causes a heat wave?

Basically, a heat wave occurs when a high-pressure system in the atmosphere, instead of
moving across the landscape, stays stuck in one location – for days or even weeks.

But in the mega heat waves that killed tens of thousands of people in Europe and Russia,
there was another factor. These heat waves were made worse by a vicious positive feedback
loop between ultra-dry soil and unexpectedly powerful high-pressure systems in the lowest
level of the atmosphere.

This combination trapped the heat. The trapped heat couldn’t dissipate overnight – so the
next morning started as hot as the previous afternoon. The cycle intensified with each passing
day. Ultimately, it created a thick blanket of hot air, four kilometres thick.

How can you tell if a specific death is caused by a heat wave?

Mostly, you can’t – directly. There are many factors involved. How well you tolerate heat
depends on what temperatures you are used to, your age and general health, your home’s
architecture and its location, and so on.

So the heat wave that kills one person might not kill their neighbour. And when you do an
autopsy, there is no specific pathology in the corpse that implicates a heat wave as the cause
of death.

But you can tell, indirectly, when heat waves cause deaths. You know that something very
bad is happening when the dead bodies start to pile up in the morgue.

In the heat waves of Europe in 2003, Victoria in 2009, Russia in 2010 and Victoria again in
2014, morgues had the metaphorical “No Vacancy” signs up. There was simply no more
room to store the dead bodies coming in. Overflow had to be stored in mortuaries,
universities and funeral parlours. In Paris in 2003, the corpses of most of the 15,000 heat-
related victims had to be stored temporarily in a refrigerated warehouse outside the city.

Then, after the heat wave has passed, you call in the statisticians to work out how many
people it killed. They compare the number of deaths during the heat wave with the number of
deaths over the same time period in previous years.

In Australia, the most lethal day for a heat wave is 27 January, the day after Australia Day.
What exactly is it that kills somebody in a heat wave?

Amazingly, we still don’t fully understand what goes on. In Paris alone in 2003, some 15,000
people died. In this case, they were overwhelmingly elderly women, living alone and in the
upper levels of walk-up apartments.

Excessive heat seems to be especially harmful to the very young and the very old, and also to
those with chronic diseases and mental illnesses. Related risk factors include being obese,
very malnourished and very unfit.

Another factor is drugs – both legal and illegal. Dehydration combined with alcohol
consumption makes the situation worse.

When the electrical power grid crashes, the loss of air-conditioning in poorly designed houses
can be fatal. Another factor in Europe is that the houses are generally designed to keep the
heat in, not out.

19. What is brown fat?

What do Antarctic explorers and newborns have in common? A nice layer of brown fat to
keep them from hypothermia.

“I’m envious of my chilled Melbourne friends,” laments Paul Lee, a brown fat researcher
based at Sydney’s Garvan institute. It’s not just that it’s harder to do his research in a
subtropical climate; it turns out brown fat might also stave off diabetes and obesity.

But what exactly is brown fat and why is it good for us?

We have two types of fat. The vast majority is white; less than 1% is brown and it’s mostly
distributed like a collar around the neck. Why here? Possibly to keep the blood supply to the
brain well-warmed, Lee suggests.

Until 2009 it was thought that brown fat, though important for infants and rodents, largely
disappeared in adults. But a 2009 study in the New England Journal of Medicine found that
adults still carry brown fat. Proportional deposits were heftier in colder climates, women
carried twice as much as men, and generally slim people carried more than the obese,

especially as they aged.

These findings spurred a wave of new research aimed at discovering exactly what brown fat
does, and whether raising its levels might be a way to fight the obesity epidemic.

White fat gets deposited all over the body but most commonly accumulates around the belly.
It’s called white fat because the deposits, stored in fat cells, are white.

Brown fat bears more resemblance to muscle than fat. Like muscle, its brownish tinge comes
from mitochondria – the fuel-burning engines of the cell – that are dotted through the fat
cells. The entire tissue is threaded with blood vessels to keep up the oxygen supply. If white
fat is a fuel store, Lee says, then “brown fat is the furnace”.

So if brown fat is burning fat, why don’t the deposits just disappear? In fact they do. But new
fat is supplied from the circulation when the supply runs out. Lee knows this from autopsy
studies of drowning victims who experienced severe hypothermia. The brown fat furnaces are
empty, having burnt their stores trying to keep the victims warm.

Because brown fat is so good at burning glucose, Lee’s team wondered if there would also be
immediate health benefits. In particular, would it benefit people at risk of developing diabetes
where blood glucose levels rise to dangerous levels that poison the blood vessels? To find
out, his team carried out two studies, one in 2014 and one in 2016.

In the first study, healthy volunteers spent their nights sleeping in a room fixed at 19 ˚C
wearing a standard hospital gown. Not snug enough for me, but Lee says they had no trouble
sleeping. After one month, the activity of the volunteers’ brown fat was measured by seeing
how much radioactive glucose (a harmless dose) was burned in their neck and comparing that
to how much they had burned a month before. The increased activity corresponded to a 44%
increase in their brown fat deposits. Interestingly, brown fat burn also hewed to a circadian
rhythm as shown in the 2016 study; it was most active in the hour before dawn, presumably
helping the volunteers gear up for the day.

The volunteers with the highest levels of brown fat also performed best at controlling their
blood glucose levels – a sign they were at less risk of developing type 2 diabetes.

Lee followed up this finding by studying how people handle sugar at different temperatures,
using a New Zealand database of some 65,500 patients. The study looked at the year-long
results of the so-called HbA1c test, which measures what percentage of haemoglobin proteins
are sugar-coated – a long-term proxy of how high blood sugar levels have been. Those living
at lower outdoor temperatures have lower levels of HbA1c, indicating better glucose control.

Brown fat may do more than just burn glucose; it may also spread its good influence by
releasing factors that “brown up” the white fat.

Researchers haven’t pinpointed this factor but, for now, Lee has shown robust “fat browning”
action by fibroblast growth factor 21 (FGF-21) in the laboratory. Treatment of white fat cells
with FGF-21 transformed them into fat-burning brown fat cells.

Once researchers have nailed it, we might be in for a new type of fat-burning pill.

Until then, Lee’s advice is to not just rely on staying cool. “ Brown fat is hot and exciting but
it is not the solution for obesity, at least not based on what we know now,” he says. “The
commonsense things are true: diet and exercise.”

20. The science of sunscreen

When we think of life saving inventions, vaccines, antibiotics and other medical
breakthroughs come to mind. Often missing from this list is one of the most common tools
for cancer prevention: sunscreen, the amazing lotion that can stop harmful radiation in its
tracks.

Before delving into how sunscreen works, we need to first understand the injury that we are
trying to prevent in the first place, sunburn.

We generally know that we have sunburn because of the change in skin colour that can
appear soon after spending time in the sun.

The colour change is a result of inflammation, the immune response generally associated with
bruising or infection. With sunburn, the cause of the inflammation is deliberate cell death,
known as apoptosis. Cells are intentionally killing themselves to prevent potentially
cancerous mutations occurring.

Solar radiation

But why would mutations be occurring in the first place? Radiation emitted by the sun. This
radiation pummels the skin, entering the cells and causing damage to the delicate DNA
residing inside the nucleus.

Not all radiation can reach this far into the cells: the kind you need to worry about is
ultraviolet (UV) radiation, which sits next to visible light on the electromagnetic spectrum.

UV light comes in three main forms. UVA has the lowest energy (longer wavelength) but
highest penetrative ability, UVC has the most energy (shorter wavelength) and lowest
penetrative ability, and UVB sits in the middle.

Sunburn

In terms of sunburn, UVC isn’t relevant as the radiation is absorbed in the upper atmosphere.
UVB on the other hand present more of danger, it has a dangerous combination of penetrative
ability and energy that can cause DNA damage. UVA can be hazardous but mostly it causes
the tanning effect that beachgoers often crave.

When UV radiation reaches our skin, specialised cells known as melanocytes produce
melanin, the photoprotective pigment that causes skin to darken or tan. After a certain point
these cells are overwhelmed and radiation starts to penetrate both skin cells and melanocytes,
causing apoptosis (deliberate death). Later this skin, full of cells that have died to protect the
body, will peel off revealing a new skin layer beneath.

Skin cancer

Melanocytes are more vulnerable to becoming cancer cells than other cell types as they have
a special ability to prevent normal apoptosis, allowing them to live for decades. This ability is
a double-edged sword: if it mutates it can turn a long-lived melanocyte into a cancerous
melanoma. The deadliest type of skin cancer, melanoma occurs when melanocytes divide
uncontrollably, producing a distinctive misshapen mole that appears at the skin’s surface.
Sunscreen

Luckily, the chance of sunburn and skin cancer can be massively reduced by applying a
simple layer of sunscreen.

Applied as a lotion, spray or wax, sunscreen can consist of organic and inorganic compounds
that chemically and physically protect the underlying skin.

Inorganic compounds, such as zinc oxide or titanium dioxide, reflect harmful UVB and UVA
in the same way that white paint reflects light off a surface.

Organic molecules including benzophenone and cinnamates absorb the energy of the UV
radiation and convert it to heat. While they lack the often-white appearance of physical
blockers, chemical blockers don’t last as long in the sun, requiring them to be re-applied
more often.

While sunscreen can be a big help, to keep your skin safe remember to avoid unnecessary sun
exposure and use sunscreen correctly: put it on whenever you’re out in the sun, and re-apply
every two hours.

21. The physics of coffee

If you pour coffee into warm milk at just the right speed, the laws of physics will make the
two liquids arrange themselves into an elegant series of layers shading from white to dark
brown, according to a new study that may have applications far beyond the barista’s realm.

The secret, Howard Stone of Princeton University, US, and colleagues write in Nature
Communications, is lies in a phenomenon known as “double-diffusion convection”, which
occurs when variations in density and temperature work together to create self-sustaining
loops of flowing liquid.

The researchers started by pouring coffee into a glass of milk, with both at a temperature of
50 degrees Celsius. The coffee is slightly less dense than the milk, so it has a tendency to
float on top.

If it is poured quickly enough, however, it will penetrate more deeply into the milk and the
two liquids will form a turbulent and chaotic mixture.
Now, as the mixture begins to cool down, double-diffusion convection comes into play. The
liquid at the top of the glass contains more coffee so it is less dense than the liquid below it,
creating a vertical density gradient. And the liquid at the sides of the glass, which can radiate
heat to the air outside, is cooler than the liquid in the centre of the glass.

The cooling liquid at the sides becomes denser and starts to fall down until it meets liquid
that has slightly higher density due to the proportions of its milk-coffee blend. At that point,
the falling flow of liquid turns inward and runs horizontally to the centre of the glass. There it
is pushed upward, until it runs into the horizontal flow of liquid at the bottom of the layer
above and flows out to the side of the glass again.

This process divides the liquid up into a series of layers containing different concentrations of
coffee. If the glass is not disturbed, the layers can stay in place for 20 minutes or more.

Stone and his team replicated the results using a mix of salt water and fresh water, which has
a similar ratio of densities to milk and coffee, and also conducted computer simulations that
confirmed the mechanics of the process.

The researchers hope the process will offer a simple technique for creating layered structures
in soft substances that can be used in food manufacturing, tissue engineering, and elsewhere.

22. The next-gen exoskeletons promising paraplegics will walk again

The opening kick of the 2014 FIFA World Cup was not taken by a professional footballer; it
was taken by a paraplegic. Juliano Pinto, paralysed from the waist down, took the kick using
a robotic ‘exoskeleton’ to power his legs. The suit was experimental, but commercial
exoskeltons are beginning to enter the marketplace, giving paraplegic patients who can afford
the price tag the power to walk again.

Though we rarely give it a conscious thought, walking is deceptively complex movement; a

kind of continual falling forward involving tens of muscles operating in smooth synchronicity
to ‘catch’ the body at each step. Walking has been incredibly difficult to reproduce in
machines. Most robots, and robotic exoskeletons, still ‘shuffle’ slowly and steadily from one
foot to the other.
The A$130,000 ReWalk Personal 6.0, from German firm ReWalk Robotics, is one of a new
generation of exoskeletons that more naturally mimics human gait. When the user tilts
forward, ReWalk’s gyroscope senses the motion and takes a step. Keep repeating the
movement and ReWalk can reach about 2.5 km/h, the fastest on the market. Even patients
with complete paralysis of the legs can stand up, walk, turn, and climb stairs, though with the
help of crutches for balance.

The Phoenix Exoskeleton, by SuitX, a new spin-out from the University of California at
Berkeley, is more of a budget model. At about half the cost of ReWalk, the Phoenix lacks the
auto-step function. Instead the user controls it by tapping buttons on a pair of crutches. Top
speed depends on the user, but can reach up to 1.7 km/h.

It’s been a long and tortuous path to reach this milestone in exoskeleton development. As
long ago as the 1960s, General Electric teamed up with the US armed forces to build the
Hardiman, a bulky metal suit designed to amplify a soldier’s strength 25-fold. But the
technological limitations of the age made the device so erratic and dangerous, it was never
tested with a person inside.

More recent efforts at building supersuits have fared only a little better. Lockheed Martin
spent more than a decade developing their Human Universal Load Carrier (HULC) for the
US military. HULC was supposed to allow US soldiers carry 91kg backpacks for hours
without tiring. But the project was shelved in 2012 as the strap-on metal frame forced wearers
into a sightly unnatural gait that actually increased fatigue on some muscles.

But the latest exoskeletons are finally managing to work in lockstep with natural
biomechanics of walking. Harvard’s Biodesign lab threw out the clunky metal components
and are building soft exoskeletons instead, using regular clothing fabric. Their device, funded
by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), looks a bit like a pair of
spandex pants strapped to a climbing harness. Cables snake from a motorised belt down the
user’s legs, following the curve of the user’s muscles. Take a step, and the machine works in
harmony with the wearer’s calf muscles to drive the body forward. Counterintuitive as it
sounds, the soft exosuit reduces the energy expended through walking by about 23%.

While soft exosuits might enhance the natural muscle motion of able bodied users, paraplegic
patients require support simply to stand. But the latest hard exoskeletons are also making
headway. For these users, a 100 kilometre route march isn’t the target, a simple stroll to the
local shops would be life-changing. At the current price it could be a while before
exoskeletons become a common sight on our footpaths, given that motorised wheelchairs are
available for a few thousand dollars, around one fiftieth the price of a ReWalk. Costs need to
come down, and more evidence shown for their effectiveness, says Andrew McDaid, a
biomedical engineer at the University of Auckland. “Then there will be a huge rush in
adoption of this technology.”

Supersuits for heavy industry

Strap on a Dual Arm Power Amplification Robot, made by a Panasonic subsidiary, and you’ll
soon be lifting 100kg loads without breaking a sweat. Other exosuits for industrial tasks are
being developed by Hyundai in South Korea, and Cyberdyne in Japan. But none have seen
widespread adoption as yet. It might not have the cool factor of an exoskeleton, but we
already have human enhancement devices for hoisting heavy loads – the tried and tested
forklift. In the end, the uptake of a technology comes down to economics, says McDaid.
“What value does the exoskeleton add? And does that value exceed the cost of the device?”
Not yet, it seems.

23. Explainer: Can cheese make you have weird dreams?

It’s common folk wisdom that eating cheese can give you nightmares. But is this really the
case?

The question hasn’t been extensively studied with scientific rigour, but we might find some
answers by looking at how cheese can influence the brain.

Our brains are directed by a range of hormones including serotonin, which promotes
relaxation and sleepiness, adrenalin, which acts as a stimulant, and testosterone, which
regulates libido, fat distribution and strength.

These hormones and others can influence how we think, how we act and how our internal
systems function. Not all of these chemical directors are produced by our body: some are
contained within the foods that we eat.

Cheese, for example, contains an amino acid called tryptophan that when consumed can be
processed into serotonin, an essential hormone for sleepiness. So there’s at least a tenuous
connection between cheese-eating and sleep.

And there is some research to indicate that eating different types of cheese may influence the
content of your dreams.

In a 2005 study (admittedly conducted by the British Cheese Board), participants were asked
to eat 20 grams of cheese a half hour before going to bed every night for a week. They would
then record their dreams in a diary the moment they woke up.

Each participant was assigned a single type of cheese: one of stilton, cheddar, red Leicester,
British brie, Lancashire and Cheshire.

Surprisingly, 83% of the participants that ate red Leicester had pleasant dreams, with 60% of
dreams being about fond childhood memories. Cheddar, on the other hand, led to dreams
about celebrities while Cheshire led to no dreams more than half of the time.

That’s about it for cheese research, but what about other foods?

According to Gary Wenk, a medical professor at Ohio State University, a peanut butter and
jelly sandwich may a good before-bed snack.

“Sleep is a very active process and your brain needs a lot of sugar. I actually recommend to
people having a peanut butter and jelly sandwich before they go to bed. The bread and the
jelly are great sources of simple carbohydrates, which are terrible usually, but great for
sleep,” says Wenk.
While a peanut butter and jelly sandwich or piece of cheese may be good for sleep, some
foods are worth staying away from.

Chocolate, particularly dark chocolates, contain caffeine, a simulant that is likely to keep you
awake rather than drifting off to sleep.

A high calorie meal, such as a steak, can also influence sleep. The energy that our body burns
to digest these types of food raises our body temperature, an issue when cooler body
temperatures are linked to better sleep patterns.

So while a connection between cheese and nightmares is still in the realm of anecdote, the
idea that what you eat can influence your sleep rests on solid scientific ground.

24. Explainer: Why does hair turn grey?

For many people, grey hair is a fact of life. It’s a sign that we are getting older and that our
bodies are going through change.

To understand why hair turns grey, we first need to understand why it has colour in the first
place. The answer is a special type of cell known as a melanocyte. These produce melanin,
the pigment that gives your skin, hair and eyes their distinctive colours.

Melanin comes in two forms, eumelanin (black or brown) and pheomelanin (reddish-yellow).
Combinations of these two create the spectrum of eye, hair and skin colours found among
humans.

One way to understand how melanocytes determine hair colour is to think of these cells as
tiny printers, applying their ink to paper. The paper in this case is our hair strands, formed of
keratin, the same protein that makes up our fingernails.

Just as a printer sprays ink onto a sheet of paper to produce an image, melanocytes produce
pigments that are embedded into the growing hair strand, providing them with colour. The
melanocytes live within the hair follicle, so each hair strand has its own colour-producing
printer.

While some people’s melanocytes print a lighter ink combination, such as blonde or red,
others have darker colour palletes and so have black or brown colourations.

Now that we understand how hair gets its colour, we can understand why it goes grey.

In hair, grey is not a colouration like any other shade: it is the lack of colouring. The keratin
of people with grey hair lacks pigment because their melanocytes have died, revealing the
natural grey-white colour of the keratin protein.
Because each hair strand has its own melanocytes, some go grey before others. Exactly what
decides which strands go grey first is still unknown. However, age, exposure to chemicals
and even the climate can influence how early the melanocytes die.

The strongest influence, however, is written in our genes. The genetic influence on hair
colour is so strong that if your parents have grey hair, yours is likely to grey at around the
same time as theirs did.

25. Is nature really chaotic and fractal, or did we just imagine it?

In common usage, the word “chaos” means disorder, but is that so in physics? Not really.
Chaos in physics stands for “unpredictable” and refers to physical systems that change their
state over time.

A physical system is simply a slice of universe that we decide to consider as somehow

separable from its surrounding environment. Sometimes we assume the collective effect of
the system’s surroundings, but more often we prefer to assume that the system is isolated.
Does true isolation exist? No: it’s artificial.

For example, a crystal is traditionally defined as a solid possessing an ordered structure that is
infinitely periodic in the three spatial dimensions. Even assuming that such a “perfectly
ordered” system could exist (and it cannot), such a system would still have a finite size in
reality.

It is easy to realise that such perfect structures are therefore more imaginary than real:
crystals, as they are found in nature, are not only of a finite size, but also possess many
defects and are far from perfect.

Luckily for us all, perfection is subjective, and in physics a crystal is usually described by a
set of rules, commonly annotated as equations, defining a set of symmetry operations that can
be repeated recursively on a set of points representing atomic centres. These unfold into an
infinite, 3D, periodic structure.

These rules are arbitrarily defined as “perfect” simply because they describe infinitely self-
repeating patterns. Therefore, any real structure is, by comparison, very imperfect.

How can we predict the discontinuities and irregularities of a real structure if our model does
not allow for defects? We cannot. The system we describe could therefore be labelled as
“chaotic”, because it is unpredictable using those “perfect” rules.

We can thus conclude that the issue of chaos has nothing to do with reality, and a lot to with
its human interpretation.

Such “imperfections” also give rise to an interesting phenomenon: the fractal geometry of
nature, which is also the title of a book written by a famous mathematician who studied these
ubiquitous structures: Benoit Mandelbrot.
What are fractals? Fractals are technically geometric structures with a fractional dimension,
for example 2.3. To understand what I just wrote, however, I’ll give you an example: suppose
you are told to trace a straight line. We know from elementary school that straight lines are
just an infinite set of points lying in one dimension, and a straight line itself is therefore
infinite.

Can you actually draw a straight line? No, but you can possibly draw a segment! A segment
is an infinite set of points delimited by two extreme points. If for a straight line you need a
whole dimension to trace it all, for a segment you will certainly need less than that!

In other words, you will need a fraction between 0 and 1 to trace it: therefore a segment
constitutes a very simple, yet fractal, geometry! Can you predict, using the equation of a
straight line, y = a * x + b, all possible segments that lie on a single dimension? Yes, but such
an equation would generate an infinite, uncountable, uncomputable and therefore inherently
unorderable set of values for the coordinates of the segment extremes.

We can now confidently state that nature seems fractal, but is that truly so? One may argue
that the answer to this question has more to do with philosophy than physics, and in a way
that would be correct. But what if fractals are just an emergent property our innate inability to
grasp infinity?