Technology
The machines around the house, taken apart and explained.
8 articles
Technology
Why did the Millennium Bridge wobble?
A brand new footbridge opened across the Thames, swayed alarmingly under the crowd, and shut two days later for two years. Nothing was broken and nothing was undersized. The people crossing it were the missing part of the design.
Technology
Why does wifi go through walls but light doesn’t?
Both are the same kind of wave, traveling at the same speed, made of the same stuff. One crosses a brick wall without noticing it and the other cannot get through a sheet of paper. The difference is size.
Technology
Why does your phone die in the cold?
You go outside with a healthy battery and the screen is black within twenty minutes. Bring the same phone indoors, plug in nothing at all, and most of that battery comes back. Nothing was ever spent.
Technology
How does your phone know where it is?
Open a map in a town you have never visited and a blue dot lands on you within seconds. Nobody told the phone anything, and nothing up there answered it.
Technology
How does a chip add two numbers when it cannot count?
A phone works out sums faster than you can blink, and nothing inside it can count to three. So something else has to be doing the arithmetic.
Technology
How does a touchscreen tell your finger from your glove?
Pull a glove on and your phone stops answering. The glass is the same and the push is the same, so something else about a bare hand is doing all the work.
Technology
Why do sunglasses turn a screen black?
Tilt a pair of sunglasses in front of a laptop and the picture vanishes. Nothing has been switched off. The screen is doing something to its light long before it reaches your eyes.
Technology
Why does a lightbulb blow the moment you switch it on?
Bulbs almost never quit while they are quietly glowing. They wait for the flick of a switch, then go with a flash and a small tink. Something about that first instant is rougher on the wire than a whole evening of burning.