The photographs are among the most striking images in science: a column of ash rising into the dark, with lightning threading through it.
The informal name is a dirty thunderstorm,…
Almost every design feature on an aircraft has a reason, and most of them are invisible to passengers. The window shape is the exception: it is the one piece of…
What distinguishes these is what was left in rather than what was taken out. Highly refined sugar tastes of nothing but sweet; everything below tastes of its source. Here are…
Almost everyone has done it: left a note in a pocket, washed the trousers, and found the money at the bottom of the drum, damp and crumpled but entirely usable.…
Children ask why the sea is salty, and the standard answer — rivers carry salt into it and evaporation leaves the salt behind — is correct as far as it…
Scripts are usually classified by what a single character represents: a sound, a syllable, a consonant, or a whole word. Almost every design choice below follows from that decision. Here…