Nature
Exploring "Why" questions about Nature
487 articles
Why are houses in parts of the US seem to be often built from wood when there are always natural disasters (hurricanes, forest fires..etc)? Shouldn’t they logically build them from concrete/bricks?
cost vs risk. it's cheaper to build every house with wood and to insure them than it is to build it from brick/concrete. home manufactures are a business just like any other.
Why do rainbows form on spilt oil on the ground?
It's actually not the oil itself but the oil and water. The uneven mixture creates a prism which reflects the light rays at differing angles.
Why do we always “cut” a globe down the Pacific Ocean to make a map instead of the Atlantic Ocean?
The Prime Meridian (0 degrees longitude) runs through the UK and is usually right in the center of a world map. To the right are the eastern longitudes, and to the left are the western longitudes. Thi
Why can sea mammals drink from the ocean but we can’t?
The reason humans and other land based animals shouldn't drink salt water is because our kidneys can't make our urine saltier than the salt water. This leads to dehydration and eventually death. Whale
Why does it “smell” like winter or rain
Because the particles in the air change. spring smells like pollen. Winter cold will suppress a lot of lighter smells but you get smoke from chimneys.
Why don’t bugs adapt to not hit my windshield?
By percentage, so few bugs are killed in this way that it doesn't create much evolutionary pressure.
Why does the wind typically pick up during the middle of the day and die down in the evenings?
Wind is the phenomenon caused by moving air. Air moves when there's a pressure differential in the atmosphere. One cause of pressure differential is the sun heating up the air and the ground that heat
Why, on the news, is there a large delay for live feeds across oceans but we can play Xbox live with people around the world with seemingly instantaneous response?
Live TV broadcasts use geostationary satellites which orbit 22 thousand miles up. So a satellite feed has to go 22,000 miles from the broadcast truck to the satellite (actually it will be more as the
Why is it that when ants or other bugs fall from the ceiling to the floor they don’t die/can still walk, but me falling from a short height could break my legs?
Square cube law. They don't have nearly the volume per unit of surface area you do. So assuming approximately equal mass per volume, the ultimate force generated by the same fall and stopping with the
why trains that use maglev do not break the conservation of momentum principle?
They don't break it. And yes, the Earth gets pushed in the opposite direction However, the Earth is massive and doesn't budge much. Maglev or not this makes no difference