Topic
Inventions
5 articles
History of science
Why is a keyboard in QWERTY order?
The letters on every phone and laptop are arranged in an order chosen for a machine nobody has used for fifty years. The famous explanation is that it was designed to slow typists down, and that is not what happened.
Chemistry
Why does glue stick?
A liquid goes on, and a minute later two things cannot be separated. The obvious answer involves it seeping into holes and gripping, which cannot be right, because glue sticks perfectly well to a sheet of glass.
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.