The shape of a letter is usually treated as a matter of convention, and to a large extent it is. But writing systems designed for a specific material carry that…
There is a small set of sounds that produce a physical reaction in nearly everybody who hears them — a wince, a shudder, a reflex to cover the ears —…
The starting point is a discrepancy. Atomic bonds are extremely strong and the materials made of them are not, by a factor of ten or more - and everything below…
The conversion of sound to signal was solved early and has changed comparatively little in principle. Connecting any telephone to any other took a century of engineering. Here are fourteen…
There is a question that sounds naive and turns out to open a real research problem: does everybody divide colours up the same way?
The physical answer is that the…
There is an assumption embedded in how nervous systems are usually described, and it comes from studying animals built like us.
The assumption is that a nervous system has a…