ScienceIQ.com

Physics Facts

Does Your Brain Do Flips?

You may not be aware of it, but when you look at the world, the image projected on your retina is upside down. This is due to the optics used by our eyes. Our brain compensates for this upside down ... Continue reading

Normal Sight: Normal ray tracing of light to the retina. Shows image will 'flip'.

With Pinhole: Ray tracing of pin through pinhole; a shadow is cast on the retina.

Bizarre Boiling

The next time you're watching a pot of water boil, perhaps for coffee or a cup of soup, pause for a moment and consider: what would this look like in space? Would the turbulent bubbles rise or fall? ... Continue reading

Without buoyancy, the vapor produced by boiling simply floats as a bubble inside the liquid after the heating has stopped. Surface tension effects cause the many small bubbles produced to coalesce into one large sphere.

Newton's First Law of Motion

Sir Isaac Newton first presented his three laws of motion in the 'Principia Mathematica Philosophiae Naturalis' in 1686. His first law states that every object will remain at rest or in uniform motion ... Continue reading

The story of Isaac Newton discovering the laws of gravity by watching apples falling from a tree is probably just a myth. He did do his work on gravity while at a farm, but that is about as much as can be proven.

How Lasers Work

Light is a fascinating thing. Or things, as the case may be. Electromagnetic energy that our eyes have developed to see, light has the same behavior and properties as all other electromagnetic ... Continue reading

Lasers are really useful tools for making measurements.