Poetry
These rhyming poems find the beauty, strangeness or weight in a scientific idea, without bending the science to fit the rhyme.
8 pieces so far- Editors’ pickNew Why the Beach Disappears Twice a Day This poem explains why the sea rises twice a day, not once.
- The Moon You See Is One Second Old When you look up, you see the past, from a Moon that is one second out of date to a galaxy whose light set off before there were people.
- Trees Are Made of Thin Air This poem asks where a tree actually comes from, and the answer isn't the soil.
- Most of You Was Made Inside a Star This poem traces where your atoms came from, and why the stars that made them stopped at iron.
- Raindrops Are Not Shaped Like Raindrops Everyone draws the same raindrop. This poem shows the shape that actually falls, and why the rain never hits harder than it does.
- The Octopus Has Three Hearts and Blue Blood The octopus is the most overengineered animal in the sea, with three hearts, blue blood, arms that taste, and eyes wired the sensible way round.
- Salt Is a Metal That Explodes and a Poison Gas The most ordinary thing on the dinner table is made from a metal that bursts into flame in water and a gas that makes you choke.
- Ice Floats, Which Is Lucky for Fish This poem follows the one liquid that breaks the rule almost everything else obeys, and the fish that owe their winters to it.
