Common Science

One of the most natural questions in the world is, "What is this made of?" If we are talking about a piece of bread, the answer is, of course, "flour, water, milk, shortening, s...

The kind of electricity you get from rubbing (friction) is not of much practical use, you remember. Men had to find a way to get a steady current of electricity before they coul...

Instantly the whole world becomes pitch dark; so does the sky. We cannot see the sun or a star; no electric lights shine; and although we can "light" a match, it gives no light....

There is a place where nothing has weight; where there is no "up" or "down"; where nothing ever falls; and where, if people were there, they would float about with their heads p...

If we were to go back to our convenient imaginary switchboard to turn off another law, we should find near the heat switches, and not far from the chemistry ones, a switch label...

If it were not for chemical analysis, most of the big factories would have to shut down, much of our agricultural experimentation would stop, the Pure Food Law would be impossib...

"Give me a lever, long enough and strong enough, and something to rest it on, and I can lift the whole world," said an old Greek philosopher. And as a philosopher he was right;...

When we look at objects through a microscope, they appear much larger and in many cases we are able to see the smaller parts of which they are made. If we had a microscope so po...

When iron rusts, it is really slowly burning (combining with oxygen). If your house is on fire, you throw water on it to stop the burning. Yet if you throw water on iron it rust...

Suppose you could turn off nature's laws in the way that you can turn off electric lights. And suppose you stood in front of a switchboard with each switch labeled with the name...

If you were to land on the moon tonight, and had with you a tank containing a supply of air which you could breathe (for there is no air to speak of on the moon), you might _try...

For many hundreds of years sailors have used the compass to determine directions. During all this time men have known that one point of the needle always swings toward the north...