A traffic light looks like the simplest control system in existence: three lamps, one at a time, in a fixed order. Almost everything about it is a compromise between constraints…
Maya Linton
Source: Wikipedia
Most insects live fast. A mayfly is famous for having a day. Periodical cicadas run the opposite strategy to an extreme that has no real parallel: nearly two decades…
A Turtle’s Shell Is Its Own Ribcage and Spine Fused Into a Box, Which Is Why It Cannot Ever Leave It
Almost every popular depiction of a turtle gets this wrong in the same way, treating the shell as a portable house. The reality is stranger, because building a box out…
Usually the oldest ground in the village, and it keeps records. Here are seventeen.
1. The Ground Is Higher Than the Street
Centuries of burial add material rather than remove…
Mostly about air, not water. Here are fifteen.
1. The Bend Is Holding Water on Purpose
Every fixture has a trap, a dip in the pipe that retains water after…
The everyday language is wrong in a way that hides something interesting. People say hair turns grey, goes grey, is going grey, as though the strands on a head are…