A Moment of Science

We love a clean home, but no one really likes to do the cleaning. And it doesn’t help when you find out the composition of dust.

Is a coin toss always 50/50? What are the odds of getting heads twice, or even a hundred times in a row?

If you're a lizard, anyways.

Are you ready for a rotational paradox?

How it is possible to measure a building's height using only a barometer? It's a question that has plagued Physics students for years.

Rivers don't like to make sharp turns.

Sticks and stones may break your bones, but words can never hurt you. Right?

Can you imagine having taste buds on your legs?

What causes apples and other fruit to brown?

Scientists were wrong about something?!

What happens when a community of fish becomes trapped in total darkness for hundreds of thousands of years?

Are vampires real? Meet the vampire bat!

Do you have an abnormally low heart rate? You might have this common treatable condition.

Bees love honey, but did you know that some bees crave flesh?

Did "cavemen" truly make homes out of caves? It turns out, our ancestors were constantly on the move.

Cows, like people, have preferences, and those preferences impact behavior, especially when it comes to grazing.

We all assume that we remember things that have happened to us with great accuracy--after all, we were there!

There are a few camouflage survival strategies, but there's no perfect solution to blend into the background.

In 2020 amateur fossil hunter Justin Reynolds and his eleven year old daughter Ruby were walking along a beach near their home in Somerset, England when Ruby spotted something interesting.

Learn about confirmation bias with a simple experiment

Octopuses have three hearts, each one crucial to maintaining the robust blood pressure that allows them to be active hunters and powerful swimmers.

Spiders have eight eyes, horseshoe crabs have ten, and, daddy longlegs only have two. Or do they?

Microwave ovens are wonderful, revolutionary cooking devices. But there are some things that you cannot, or should not, do with microwaves.

Egg whites are often touted as a health food, filled with more proteins than fat-rich yolks. Surprisingly, though, those proteins are also the secret to some of the most decadent creations like pillowy meringues, airy soufflés, and all manner of delicate cakes.

Hollywood's version of the snake in the movie "Anaconda" was pure fantasy--a 100 foot long giant with an appetite for B-movie actors

Does doing math make you anxious? A Moment of Science has more on why that might be.

There are stories and myths about dragons from everywhere--from Europe to China to Australia to the Americas. Couldn't there be some reality behind the myth?

If you want to get strong, you're supposed to eat spinach like Popeye. But how powerful is that leafy green really?

We know from ancient skeletal remains that around one million years ago, hyenas of the Chasmaporthetes genus prowled the US and Mexico. But they also stalked the tundra—a fact we’ve learned from just two fossilized molars.

Let's say that ninety percent of the people who take a certain drug report that it works like a charm, but you know one person who says it didn't work. Would you try that drug?

When traveling by plane what makes our ears pop, and what is it exactly that pops?

A team of scientists have created the Purple Tomato, featuring skin of deep amethyst, like a plum, and insides a vivid violet. But why would they want to?

In an ideal universe you could scarf carton-loads of super vanilla swirl ice cream every night after dinner without remorse. In the real world, however, there's a price to pay for such indulgence, and ice cream seems to be the worst offender in terms of calories.

What was your favorite field trip as a kid? The zoo? The modern art museum? For a group of New Zealand students, it’d be hard to beat one memorable excursion: their 2006 visit to a beach in Kawhia Harbor.

In shallow water off the Greek Island Zakynthos, you can see what appears to be the remains of an ancient city. But is it really?

Mammals, birds, and reptiles are so different from one another. How could they all evolve from a common ancestor?

Have you ever wondered whether your dog understands at least some of what you say to them? Scientists have too.

You find a perfect, yellow banana in the store, but the next day at home it has brown spots. What happened?

Here's an at-home experiment you can try: take a can of "classic" Coca-Cola and a can of Diet Coke, and without opening either one submerge them in water.

These polka-dotted predators are no laughing matter. Learn all about hyenas with A Moment of Science.

Everyone knows that white reflects heat and black absorbs it. Does that mean you shouldn't wear black though?

There's an urban legend that teeth dissolve in a glass of soda. How harmful is it really?

The great astronomer Carl Sagan used to say that if he were transported anywhere in the solar system he would know which planet he was on just by looking around.

The typical toddler averages about four ear aches per year. But when's the last time you had an ear infection?

Diamonds are only occasionally brought to the surface. But because carbon is plentiful, science fiction, such as Neal Stephenson’s novel The Diamond Age, has sometimes imagined a world where scientists find an easy way to make lots of diamond artificially.

People like to ride horses, so why not zebras?

Some nanotechnology theorists and science fiction aficiondos imagine a more ominous possibility. What if one of these tiny robots were given the ability to self-replicate?

It’s dinnertime in the North Sea, and you’re a hungry porpoise. Sadly, there’s no oceanic grocery store. What’s a famished sea creature to do?

Would you be surprised to learn that human beings aren't the only animals to behave superstitiously? The psychologist B.F. Skinner showed that you can even form a superstitious belief...in a pigeon.

One thing we at A Moment of Science love is having the opportunity to explain the science behind things you see every day in the world around you.

One infamous feature of COVID-19 is the phenomenon of “long COVID.” Researchers hadn’t previously looked for long persisting forms of colds or the flu.

Ants must have a variety of survival strategies. How do ground-nesting ants cope with rain?

Set aside the question about the chicken and the egg, what about the woodpecker and tree fungus?

It makes sense that if you live in a neighborhood where you can walk to places to do errands and such, that would be good for your health.

Everyone has a center of gravity. Every object has one, too. It’s the point in our body where all weight is evenly balanced.

Pigpen's condition might seem a bit farfetched, but scientists are finding that we might all be more like Pigpen than we imagine. Only, instead of dust, we carry our own cloud of bacteria.

Our lifelong food preferences are largely shaped by the foods we're exposed to early on in childhood.

Pareidolia is a term from psychology that refers to the tendency in people to perceive a meaningful pattern in a vague stimulus.

"Auto" means "self" and kinetic means "motion." When you see a tiny point of light moving, it's often because you are moving yourself--or, rather, your eye is.

What's brown, has eight legs and flies?

Ever notice when you're having a bad day it always seems to get that much worse?

If you see an object blowing down the street, you will infer that it is light. That will be your conclusion even if you can’t determine what the object is.

When you cry for emotional reasons, your eyes act differently. So what happens next?

Aging is a complex process involving accumulating damage to the cellular mechanisms of life. Anti-aging researchers want to understand and combat this process to give us healthier and longer lives.

A species of howler monkey isn't dying its fur, but they are changing color.

Cows and humans aren't the only ones who produce milk. There are also some insects and spiders that produce a milk-like substance to feed their young.

When water leaked into containers of dormant queen bumblebees, the scientists assumed they’d need to hold a state funeral. But amazingly, the regal insects lived, despite drowning!

Scientists are saying that as the climate warms and temperatures rise, we might lose more crops to insects.

Did you know that ancient bricks are magnetic?

These days, pandas have bamboo for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. But that wasn't always the case.

Although we all get angry at times, for some people anger turns to aggression, while for others it doesn’t. The reasons for this have to do with how we regulate our emotions.

Human mothers secrete milk to feed their babies. So do other mammals. Biologists now know that many other kinds of animal mothers also secrete milk-like nutritious substances to feed their offspring.

Fruit flies might not have manners when they invade your home, but they do have culture.

Making their way through polluted water, fish become disoriented, as sights, smells, and sounds crowd the waters. Chemical and noise pollution, and reduced water clarity, interfere with the senses, as well as the fishes’ natural instincts.

These days, you can hear about self-driving cars when you turn on the news, or you can browse store shelves for high-tech gadgets. But in the mid-nineteenth century, there was one go-to place for the public to view scientific achievement: the Great Exhibition.

A simple exercise to do at home with A Moment of Science

Would you drink a mixture of acetaldehyde, ethyl acetate, acetone, acetic acid, and a few of the compounds known as hexenals, which give fresh-cut grass is characteristic odor?

Swimming in a school has a lot of benefits for fish, from social opportunities to avoiding predators to finding more food.

Researchers have heard orangutans make the noise after the danger has passed—a sign that they’re communicating about the past, and the first evidence that primates other than humans have that ability.

Craving dessert? Today’s episode considers some particularly sweet science: the importance of eggs for baking a cake.

It’s a tough world out there, so really, what’s a gull to do?

If the air temperature gets close to our body temperature, something more is needed to keep the skin cooler than the inner body. We sweat.

By human standards, some animals’ eating habits are strange, and even disgusting. One example is coprophagy—eating poop.

Water molecules attract each other. The molecules at the surface of a body of water make a film under tension. That film is strong enough to support a needle or a small insect like a water strider.

Researchers reported that they discovered a tiny spider in the Peruvian Amazon rain forest that has a behavior that’s surprisingly similar to the web-slinging superhero.

One mirror is not enough to see yourself as others see you. When you look at a bathroom mirror you see an image of yourself with left and right reversed.

If you look at a map of Scotland, you may notice a line cutting straight through the country. This line, called the Great Glen Fault, is the result of a long geological history that has in turn impacted the history of Scotland itself.

A cool, dry cotton fiber springs back after being bent. A warm, damp cotton fiber doesn't. Moisture and temperature make the difference.

Blue jays, poison dart frogs, and peacocks—each of these animals is distinct for their same vibrant color. But have you ever seen a blue spider?

Why a mix of red light and green light looks yellow, in this Moment of Science.

Evolutionary biologists thought it was a general rule among mammals that males are bigger, but that's not always the case.

The 17th-century English physicist Robert Hooke was curious about the remarkable properties of cork -- its ability to float, its springy quality, its usefulness in sealing bottles. Hooke investigated the structure of cork with a new scientific instrument he was very enthusiastic about: the microscope.

One of the more mysterious pleasures of a warm summer evening is the spectacle of lightning from distant thunderstorms, flickering silently on the horizon while stars shine overhead. People usually call it heat lightning.

Learn about the role that ethylene plays in ripening fruit with today's A Moment of Science

Over the past 100,000 years, a snail species has done what it normally takes a species millions of years to do: give live birth.

The distant past is poorly known, and paleontologists find fossil evidence for new large animals all the time.

Jabuticaba is a fruit native to Brazil. It’s the size and color of a plum, with a white pulp and several seeds

Perhaps you’ve heard that the average person dreams four to six times each night. But did you know that most of us are unable to recall 90% of our dreams?

The carefree southern sea otters of central California’s coast have had a secret mission: working to fight the devastating loss of kelp forests due to anthropogenic climate change.

Researchers used statistical tools to forecast which characteristics the animals of the future will likely have.

Research suggests there's a link between parenting styles and health effects later in life

As any aficionado will tell you, water can be just as important as the tea leaves themselves when it comes to a good brew.

If the color of the bottles was significant enough to control how they’re recycled, then surely the color was more than cosmetic. So what's the reason why wine bottles are olive-green and beer bottles are amber?

Because of the isolation, New Zealand has evolved a unique set of animals dominated by abundant bird species found nowhere else.

Exposure to music, art, and architecture can have a formative impact on our sense of self.

Fingerprints might be unique to one person, but they aren't unique to one species.

Have you ever made rice that was perfectly fluffy and then the next day, taken it out of the fridge only to find it hard and crumbly?

Normally, when tissue gets injured, cells start replicating and make new tissue. But what about the heart?

In a letter written in 1761, Benjamin Franklin tells how he collected some little squares of broadcloth. Franklin wanted to demonstrate that these colors would absorb different amounts of light from the sun and convert the light to different amounts of heat.

Just like Goldilocks, humans have searched for a place that's "just right" to live in. That's not the same for all species, though.

We usually think of paint as a substance that adds color to things. But, from a physical point of view, paint works by taking colors away.

Tennis players are known for the loud grunts they make during a game. Why do they do it?

In 2019 a team of Swedish and British scientists published a study claiming that whether we chose to own a dog may be influenced by our genes.

Physicists are searching for new materials with better semiconductor properties so that computers can continue to improve.

We just covered why the sky is blue, but there are a few areas without color above us.

It can't be the atmosphere, or dust, or water droplets. So what makes the sky blue?

Water temperature is a major element of quality control in making coffee. Why exactly is temperature important?

Rattlesnakes modulate their rattling frequency to trick other animals into thinking the distance between them is shorter than it really is.

Proboscis monkeys from Borneo and cows do have something in common: they both chew their cuds.

The Atacama Desert in Northern Chile is the driest desert on Earth. The only life there is microbial, and researchers study it to get an idea of what we might find on Mars.

One study proposes that this “sort of a man” described as “shortish, and oldish, and brownish and mossy” could have been inspired by the patas monkey.

Paleontologists constantly search for new species of fossilized creatures from the distant past to expand our understanding of the history of life on Earth.

Mosquitoes always seem to find us, no matter how hard we try to get away. How do they do it?

The next time you're driving during a rain shower, glance back at the rear window. You'll notice that while raindrops batter the front windshield, they seem to avoid the back window as long as the car is moving. How is that possible?

Megachile pluto, commonly called “Wallace’s giant bee” is the world’s largest bee. And perhaps its most elusive.

Do you prefer the jolt of coffee or a more gentle start to your day with tea?

Situs inversus totalis means that all the organs, blood vessels, and nerves in the chest and abdomen are flipped to the opposite side.

Normally you’d just see waves coming in parallel to the shore. But what if there were also waves moving perpendicular to the shore?

A grave in Cyprus from 7500 BC shows a furry feline and human owner buried together. It’s the oldest known site of a tame cat.

How did dinosaurs keep themselves cool?

Did you know it’s possible to have a gene mutation that really does make bumping into furniture or even getting surgery totally painless?

What makes walking uphill so much harder?

Have you ever wondered why giraffes have such long necks?

Scientists think that as many as a billion people around the world could be newly exposed to the diseases spread by mosquitoes within the next fifty years as global temperatures rise.

This small species lives throughout southern China, from high eastern Tibetan mountains to low coastal mountains, preferring forests and shrubby habitats. And its most interesting feature is its tusks.

There’s a big gap between how we act in virtual reality and how we act in real life, as scientists who did an experiment focused on yawning found out.

We've heard a lot about how antioxidants can help prevent disease. Does that mean we should eat as many antioxidant-rich foods as possible?