Topic
Scientific method
3 articles
Chemistry
Why can hot water freeze faster than cold?
A schoolboy making ice cream noticed that his warm mix froze before everybody else’s cold mix, and got laughed at for saying so. Sixty years later the argument is still running, which makes this a rare thing — a question you can genuinely still lose.
Society
Why do you suddenly see something everywhere?
You learn a word on Tuesday and it turns up four times by Friday. Nothing about the world changed in three days. Your filter did, and it will not tell you it did.
History of science
How did one doctor work out that hands were killing his patients?
Two maternity clinics stood in the same Vienna building, a few steps apart. In one of them, mothers died nine times as often. Nobody could see why, and one doctor worked it out anyway.