The Name Has Been Misleading People for Two Centuries
Almost everybody believes a lightning rod attracts lightning. It is an easy belief to hold, because the thing is pointed, it…
Source: Wikipedia
The Problem It Was Invented to Solve
Source: Wikipedia
White paint on a road is nearly useless at night. A headlight beam strikes a painted line at a very shallow…
The Counterintuitive Fact at the Centre of It
For the first half of the twentieth century, cars were built to resist damage. A heavy chassis, thick steel, rigid construction. After…
A smoke alarm is a white plastic disc with a button and a battery, and the assumption is that something inside it can somehow see smoke. Neither of the two…
The governing fact is adhesion. Steel on steel produces very little grip, which is efficient on the level and useless on a slope - so the route must be flattened…
The height is the mechanism, not the storage. Here are sixteen.
1. The Height Is the Pressure
Water pressure at a tap comes from the vertical distance down from the…