Physics
- Unpacked How an Old Ball Swings the Wrong Way Arjun learned to swing the ball by tilting the seam. Then he watched a Test match where the bowler did everything the same and the ball went the other way. Here's what happens when the boundary layer turns turbulent on both sides. Opens once you've read “The Day My Cricket Ball Refused to Swing”
- Unpacked Why the Sea Bulges Away From the Moon Our poem about the tides said the far side of the Earth swells too. Here is the full reason, and what tides are quietly doing to the Earth and the Moon. Opens once you've read “Why the Beach Disappears Twice a Day”
- Unpacked One Ultraviolet Photon Beats a Billion Radio Ones The nephew told the family group that a million feathers won't break a window the way one stone will, and got removed. Here's the experiment that proved him right, and won Einstein his Nobel Prize. Opens once you've read “Family WhatsApp Group Confirms 5G Causes Colds”
- Unpacked Why Fast Charging Slows Down at 80 Per Cent The charging piece pictured lithium being marched uphill into the graphite. So why does the march race to 80 per cent and then crawl? Because the last few seats in a crowded hall are the hardest to fill. Opens once you've read “Charging Your Phone Means Pushing Lithium Uphill”
- Unpacked Why Water in Leh Gives Up at 88 °C The rajma in Leh refused to cook at 88 °C. Here's the full science of why, and how explorers once used boiling water to measure mountains. Opens once you've read “The Rajma That Defeated My Grandmother”
- Unpacked Never Shelter Under the Tallest Tree Mr Bhalerao, having given up on the roof, chose the tallest tree in the society garden as his new safe spot. Here's exactly how a bolt chooses where to land, and why that tree is one of the worst places he could stand. Opens once you've read “Lightning Strikes Same Building Twice, Ignores Famous Saying”
- Unpacked Why the Bottom of a Frozen Lake Stays at 4 °C The ice poem promised that the fish below swim on at four degrees all day. Why four, and not zero? The answer involves two forces fighting inside every drop of cold water, and a lake that flips itself over every autumn. Opens once you've read “Ice Floats, Which Is Lucky for Fish”
- Rhetoric Aristotle Was Wrong for 2,000 Years, and That's Good News A speech arguing that being wrong, carefully and in public, is the most useful thing a scientist can do.
- Unpacked Why Stars Stop Making Elements at Iron The stardust poem says stars fuse their way up to iron and stop, "for when it fuses iron, the profit's gone". Here's the single curve behind that line, which also explains nuclear power stations and why a star's death takes less than a second. Opens once you've read “Most of You Was Made Inside a Star”
- Unpacked Why You Can't Crack the Same Knuckle Twice Mr Joshi has timed it many times: twenty minutes before the same knuckle will crack again. His wife confirms it. Here's what is happening inside the joint during those twenty minutes, and what it has in common with a bottle of soda. Opens once you've read “Man Cracks Knuckles for Decades to Annoy Mother, Science Backs Him”
- Satire & Humour Product Review: The Human Eye (Four Stars) We tested the most popular camera on the planet. It has been on the market for a very long time and it shows.
- Unpacked The Pole Star Is Only Visiting Ms Kulkarni called Polaris "the only star in the sky that is not going anywhere tonight". The word that matters is "tonight". Over thousands of years, the Earth's axis wanders, and the job of Pole Star passes from star to star. Opens once you've read “How We Found North in a Power Cut”
- Unpacked Why Rain Doesn't Hit Like a Bullet The raindrop poem says rain "can sting, but never cuts you deep", because drag matches weight long before the ground. Without air, a drop from a cloud two kilometres up would arrive at about 700 km/h. Here's the maths of the brake. Opens once you've read “Raindrops Are Not Shaped Like Raindrops”
- Unpacked The Sun's Core Is Less Intense Than a Compost Heap In its statement, the Sun said its protons occasionally tunnel through a barrier, and called it Tuesday. Here's the rest of the chain, the ghostly particles it fires through you every second, and the reason the Sun doesn't explode. Opens once you've read “Sun Promises Five Billion More Years, Apologises for Summer”
- Poetry Why the Beach Disappears Twice a Day A poem about why the sea rises twice a day, not once.
- Stories The Rajma That Defeated My Grandmother A family trip to Leh, a pot of rajma that refuses to soften, and a pressure cooker that suddenly makes sense.
- Unpacked Why Humid Heat Can Be Deadlier Than Dry Heat Nani's matka beat the Jodhpur heat by eleven degrees. The one in Mumbai managed two. Your body is a matka too, and the same number that measures a clay pot's limit measures yours. Opens once you've read “The Matka That Sweats to Stay Cold”
- Deep Dives Your Fridge Is Secretly Heating Your Kitchen Heat naturally flows from hot to cold. Your fridge spends all day forcing it the other way. Here's how.
- Unpacked Why the Monsoon Arrives From the South-West The monsoon piece said moist ocean air flows in towards hot land. Then why doesn't it come straight from the south? Because on a spinning planet, nothing travels in a straight line, and the equator flips which way it bends. Opens once you've read “Why the Monsoon Almost Always Turns Up in June”
- Unpacked Your Head Is Older Than Your Feet The GPS piece said satellite clocks run fast by 38 millionths of a second a day, and that engineers simply correct for it. That sounds like an excuse for a broken clock. Here's why it isn't, and how scientists measured time running faster at the top of a staircase. Opens once you've read “Your Phone Finds You Using Clocks in Space”
- Unpacked How One Atom in a Million Turns Sand Into a Switch The silicon piece ended with nine-nines purity as "a blank page". Here's what chipmakers write on it: a few atoms of phosphorus and boron, placed with extraordinary care, which turn a crystal of rock into billions of tiny switches. Opens once you've read “How a Rock Ended Up Running Your Phone”
- Unpacked How to Weigh Pluto Without Touching It The Pluto speech says early guesses made Pluto as big as Earth, and that it kept shrinking. What finally settled it was a smudge on a photograph in 1978, and one line of algebra any student can do. Opens once you've read “Pluto Isn't Sad, and You Shouldn't Be Either”
- Satire & Humour Gravity's Terms and Conditions (You Already Agreed) Nobody has ever read them. Everybody has agreed to them.
- Stories My Sister Versus the Thunderstorm A power cut, a thunderstorm and a little sister who won't come out from under the blanket until somebody can tell her exactly how far away it is.
- Poetry The Moon You See Is One Second Old A poem about looking up and seeing the past, from a Moon that is one second out of date to a galaxy whose light set off before there were people.
- Deep Dives Your Phone Finds You Using Clocks in Space The blue dot on your map depends on atomic clocks, the speed of light, a fourth satellite you didn't know you needed, and a correction from Einstein.
- Stories The Matka That Sweats to Stay Cold Nani swears matka water is the only water that tastes like water. In Jodhpur, her pot beats the heat by eleven degrees. In Mumbai, in July, it barely tries.
- Poetry Most of You Was Made Inside a Star A poem about where your atoms came from, and why the stars that made them stopped at iron.
- Satire & Humour Family WhatsApp Group Confirms 5G Causes Colds The forward was in red letters, with three exclamation marks and a photo of a tower. Scientists were not consulted. Then they were.
- Unpacked Why Thunder Rumbles Instead of Going Bang Meher's thunder came "rolling over the building like furniture being dragged across the floor upstairs". A bang made in a few millionths of a second shouldn't roll for ten. Here's why it does. Opens once you've read “My Sister Versus the Thunderstorm”
- Stories The Day My Cricket Ball Refused to Swing Arjun polished the ball like a fast bowler on television. It went perfectly, disappointingly straight, and the reason was in his fingers.
- Rhetoric Give Every School a Telescope A speech arguing that the cheapest science lesson no school is teaching is pointed at the sky, and that it has almost nothing to do with zoom.
- Rhetoric No, It's Not "Just a Theory" An opinion piece on the most misunderstood word in science.
- Satire & Humour Sun Promises Five Billion More Years, Apologises for Summer The statement was released this morning and reached Earth eight minutes and twenty seconds later. It contained an apology, a physics lesson and a correction about summer.
- Poetry Raindrops Are Not Shaped Like Raindrops A poem about the shape everyone draws, the shape that actually falls, and why the rain never hits harder than it does.
- Stories My Phone Died at 20 Per Cent in Spiti At the top of Kunzum Pass, at the exact moment I wanted a photo, my phone gave up. An hour later it came back, looking innocent.
- Unpacked Astronauts Are Falling All the Time and Missing Gravity's terms and conditions said astronauts float because they're falling "with very good aim". That sounds like a trick. Here's the exact aim required, worked out with a cannon Isaac Newton never fired. Opens once you've read “Gravity's Terms and Conditions (You Already Agreed)”
- Deep Dives The Sky Is Blue Because Air Is Picky The same tiny effect explains the blue of noon and the orange of evening, and why the sky on Mars does the opposite.
- Satire & Humour Lightning Strikes Same Building Twice, Ignores Famous Saying "I organised my whole life around that saying," said a man holding an umbrella, standing in the one spot he believed was safe.
- Deep Dives Charging Your Phone Means Pushing Lithium Uphill Plug in your phone and nothing seems to happen. Inside, billions of billions of lithium ions are being forced to move house, from a comfortable home to a cramped one, and that is where the energy is stored.
- Poetry Ice Floats, Which Is Lucky for Fish A poem about the one liquid that breaks the rule almost everything else obeys, and the fish that owe their winters to it.