Physics & Math, features and articles | Educational Science

Oct 31, 2022

Who invented the lightbulb?

Though Thomas Edison is usually credited as the man who invented the lightbulb, the famous American inventor wasn't the only one who contributed to the development of this revolutionary technology. Alessandro Volta, Humphrey Davy and Joseph Swan played a critical role in the development of this technology. Early research &...

Mar 31, 2022

Time might not exist — but that's okay

Does time exist? The answer to this question may seem obvious: Of course it does! Just look at a calendar or a clock. But developments in physics suggest the non-existence of time is an open possibility, and one that we should take seriously. How can that be, and what would...

Feb 28, 2022

Why daylight saving time starts Sunday

Don't forget to move your clock forward an hour overnight Saturday (March 12), as daylight saving time begins Sunday. And yes, this is the time change that takes an hour away from your day, but spring is on its way. Daylight saving time (not savings, as many people say) begins...

Dec 31, 2021

What is the Fibonacci sequence?

The Fibonacci sequence is a series of numbers in which each number is the sum of the two that precede it. Starting at 0 and 1, the first 10 numbers of the sequence look like this: 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, and so on forever....

Dec 31, 2021

Stephen Hawking would have been 80 today. Google Doodle honors famous physicist.

The pioneering work of physicist Stephen Hawking is honored in a Google Doodle today (Jan. 8), including a video with Hawking's quotes about everything from cosmology to disability. On what would have been Hawking's 80th birthday, the cosmologist was cited not only with his work in probing the fate of...

Dec 31, 2021

Keeping time: The origin of B.C. and A.D.

The terms A.D. and B.C. have their roots in Christianity. A.D. stands for anno domini (Latin for in the year of the lord), and it refers specifically to the birth of Jesus Christ. B.C. stands for before Christ. The system labels years based on a traditional notion of when Jesus...

Jan 31, 2023

New map of the universe's matter reveals a possible hole in our understanding of the cosmos

Scientists have made one of the most precise maps of the universe's matter, and it shows that something may be missing in our best model of the cosmos. Created by pooling data from two telescopes that observe different types of light, the new map revealed that the universe is less...

Apr 7, 2023

Baseball home runs could increase by 10% in the next 80 years. Here's why

Home runs are becoming more frequent in Major League Baseball (MLB) due to climate change, a new study finds. There's a very clear physical mechanism at play in which warmer temperatures reduce the density of air, study co-author Justin Mankin, an assistant professor of geography at Dartmouth University in New...

Apr 19, 2023

Oppenheimer: Everything we know about the atomic bomb creator's epic new biopic

This summer, renowned filmmaker Christopher Nolan returns to the big screen with Oppenheimer, his second movie based on real wartime events — the first was Dunkirk (2017). This time around, however, he's not taking us to the frontlines of World War II, but instead dealing with the complicated process behind...

Apr 30, 2023

Why do magnets have north and south poles?

Cutting a bar magnet in half won't get rid of its poles. It'll just produce two magnets, each with a north pole that will be attracted to the other magnet's south pole, and vice versa. It's this fundamental property of attraction that makes magnets useful for so many purposes, from...

Jun 10, 2023

Stephen Hawking wanted scientists to 'make black holes' on Earth. Physics says it's possible.

I hope you'll make black holes, Stephen said with a broad smile. We exited the cargo lift that had taken us underground into the five-story cavern housing the ATLAS experiment at the CERN lab, the legendary European Organization for Nuclear Research near Geneva. CERN's director general, Rolf Heuer, shuffled his...

Jul 15, 2023

8 wild stories about J. Robert Oppenheimer, the 'father of the atomic bomb'

J. Robert Oppenheimer (1904 -1967) is infamous for spearheading the development of the world's first atomic bomb — but the physicist's life was far from boring outside the lab. Here are eight intriguing stories about Oppenheimer, drawn from the biography American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer...

Jul 21, 2023

Scientists just made the largest quasicrystal ever — because one of them bet it couldn't be done

By jiggling thousands of metal beads in a tray for a week, researchers have created the largest-ever quasicrystal — a structure that scientists previously considered impossible. First represented in the irregular, non-repeating tile patterns of early Islamic art, quasicrystals are crystals whose atoms fit into an ordered arrangement and yet,...

Jul 21, 2023

Scientists observe metal repairing itself for the first time. Could Terminator robots be on the horizon?

For the first time, scientists have spotted metal healing itself after cracking — an observation that could pave the way for the creation of structures and robots capable of mending themselves. But for those worrying about the rise of real-life Terminator robots — don't: The newly discovered mechanism only works...

Jul 22, 2023

How do sandcastles stay together?

Despite sand's crumbly nature, the world's tallest sandcastle to date — built in Blokhus, Denmark, in 2021 — stood a staggering 69 feet, 5 inches (21.16 meters) high, according to Guinness World Records. But how do sandcastles stay together? It requires the right mix of sand, water and air. Sand...