Everything is built around a solid form, and everything afterwards is a set of conflicting requirements settled in a particular way. Here are fifteen decisions inside any pair.
1. It…
Maya Linton
There is a useful question to ask about any standardised object: what is actually setting the dimension?
For a great many things the answer is a material property or a…
There is a demonstration that has been used to teach chemistry for well over a century, and it works because a candle is far more complicated than it looks.
The…
There is a recurring result in materials science that is worth stating as a general principle: arrangement frequently matters more than composition.
The lining of certain shells is the standard…
There is a small category of objects that are fully explained by one diagram, and this is one of them.
A vacuum flask is a container inside another container, with…
There is a common assumption about early steam power that inverts the actual mechanism, and correcting it makes the whole development sequence comprehensible.
The assumption is that steam pushes. High-pressure…