The Strange Science Behind Everyday Things You Never Think About

The Strange Science Behind Everyday Things You Never Think About

Discover the strange science behind everyday things you never think about. Find the strange, but informative scientific facts hidden in everyday life from how soap works, to why your stomach grumbles.

Introduction

We live in a world surrounded by science, but most of the time we do not even notice it. Think about the last time you stopped to wonder why ice floats, why your stomach grumbles, or how Wi-Fi connects the way it does?

These are all everyday situations and things that we never think about, but the science of them can be strange and quite fascinating.

This article discusses the strange science of everyday life, the things we see, the sounds we hear, and the products we use every day that we have probably never spent time thinking about. By the end of this article you will see that the ordinary world around us is full of weird and wonderful secrets.

1. What Standing Behind the Mystery of Soap?

We all lather up with soap every day, but most of us don't know how soap actually works? Soap works because soap molecules have two ends: one that is attracted to water (hydrophilic), and one that is attracted to grease and oil (hydrophobic).

When you wash your hands, the hydrophobic ends attach to dirt and oil, and the hydrophilic ends attach to water. When you rinse, the dirt is rinsed away. Without that chemical process, soap would just be a slippery piece of something with no function.

2. What's That Growling Sound from Your Stomach When You're Hungry?

The funny sound of your stomach when you're hungry is called borborygmi. Borborygmi is a scientific name for the rumbling noises you hear in your stomach. It occurs when the muscles lining the digestive tract contract to move food, liquids, and gas down through the intestines.

Even if you stomach is empty, the muscles will still work causing a louder growl because there is no food in stomach to muffle the growl.

So the next time your stomach growls in public, remember—there's no need to be embarrassed, it's just science!

3. Why Do Onions Make You Tear Up?

Cutting onions is a form of torture and that's not entirely untrue. It’s chemistry. When you cut onions, you release a component known as syn-Propanethial-S-oxide. This gas interacts with the water in your eyes to form sulfuric acid, which causes you to tear up.

Fascinatingly, some modern farming is now changing how onions produce the element that causes tears.

4. Why Is Ice Slippery?

We all accept that ice is slippery, but the reason is not that simple. For many years, scientists said that when you put your foot down, the pressure gave rise to a very thin layer of water on the ice, and that is why it is slippery.

New research has shown that the surface of ice is naturally covered with a super-thin layer of liquid water, too, even at temperatures below freezing. It is that water that is the reason it is slippery.

So when you are ice skating or falling down on the ice, it may not just be your fault. It's all physics.

5. How Does Wi-Fi Travel Through Air?

Wi-Fi is almost like magic, but really it's radio science. Your Wi-Fi router takes internet data and converts it into radio waves that travel invisibly through the air. The receiver in your device takes those radio waves and converts them back into digital information that applications, videos, and websites use.

Even stranger, Wi-Fi utilizes the same type of electromagnetic waves as your microwave, just at a different frequency.

6. Why Do We Yawn--and Why is it Contagious?

Yawning is one of those daily things we routinely experience. Scientists believe yawning helps to cool the brain from latent heat. When we are tired, our brain heats up, and yawning draws air into the lungs to cool it.

Then there's the part that is really weird--yawning is contagious. If you see someone yawn, your brain often makes you yawn too. It is hypothesized, the reason yawning is contagious is empathy and social bonding.

7. Why Do We See Rainbows?

As pretty as rainbows are, the science is even prettier. The arc of colours is created when sunshine enters raindrops, bends (refraction), splits into different colours (dispersion), then reflects off the inside of a raindrop, before exiting through the top of the raindrop.

8. Why do your fingers wrinkle in water?

After too long in the bathtub, your fingers and toes become wrinkly. For the longest time, we thought it was just our skin absorbing the water. Researchers found it is actually from our nervous system. The wrinkling on our fingers and toes provides better grip underwater, much like natural rain treads on car tires.

This weird adaptation may have helped our ancestors and us to more effectively handle wet objects.

9. Why does coffee awake you up?

Coffee works thanks to caffeine, a chemical that blocks adenosine, a chemical in the brain that makes you feel sleepy. Blocking adenosine tricks the brain into being more awake and alert.

Caffeine doesn't give you energy, it prevents your brain from knowing how tired you actually are.

10. Why do fireflies light up?

On dark summer nights, fireflies illuminate the sky in small flashes of light. This is due to a chemical reaction called bioluminescence. Inside the firefly's body, a substance called luciferin reacts with oxygen, to create light without heat.

Even more strange, fireflies can use their glow as a type of language to attract mates, warn off predators, and in some cases, trick other fireflies.

11. How Does Bread Rise?

Bread might look simple, but actually it is a science experiment in the kitchen. Yeast, a living type of fungus, eats the sugar in the dough and creates carbon dioxide gas. The gas forms bubbles which get trapped in the dough causing it to rise, and gives bread its airy softness.

Without yeast, bread would be flat, boring bread.

12. Why Do Your Joints Pop?

When crack your knuckles, you're not breaking anything. The popping sound is made when gas bubbles trapped in your joint fluid implode when you put pressure on the area.

Researchers at one point were concerned about whether cracking knuckles caused arthritis, but research by scientists have shown there is limited evidence to conclude any link between cracking knuckles and joint degeneration.

Why Weird Everyday Science is Important

The weird science that happens in our everyday lives is not just interesting facts. Weird science can help foster our appreciation of just how interconnected we were to nature.

In fact, all scientific problems start with observations about nature, no matter if we are observing something as small as soap bubbles or as big as Wi-Fi signals. Science is not in laboratories, science is everywhere we look and every action we take.

Once you start noticing the little weird problems life has to offer, the mystery of each day can be enthralling. A simple rainbow after a rain shower or how bread rises in an oven can become wondrous events of the day.

Summary

We frequently tend to go through life without asking questions about what is normal. We have seen, its important that the science of the normal is amazing. Soap molecules are chasing dirt, onions make you cry, rainbows bend light, and Wi-Fi transports invisibble signals. Science is functioning in every moment in our lives.

So next time you feel your stomach growl, your coffee is keeping you awake, or your fingers are wrinkling in the bath. Remember, it wasts not random, it is enact science. And sometimes the truth is stranger than we have ever imagined.