Unpacked
These companion pieces take an idea from something we have already published and explore it fully: the theory, how it was found, and where it leads.
26 pieces so farEach one goes deeper into an earlier piece. They read best after it, but you can start anywhere.
- New Goes deeper into The Day My Cricket Ball Refused to Swing How an Old Ball Swings the Wrong Way Arjun learned to swing the ball by tilting the seam. Then he watched a Test match where the bowler did everything the same and the ball went the other way. Here's what happens when the boundary layer turns turbulent on both sides.
- New Goes deeper into Why the Beach Disappears Twice a Day Why the Sea Bulges Away From the Moon Our poem about the tides said the far side of the Earth swells too. Here is the full reason, and what tides are quietly doing to the Earth and the Moon.
- Goes deeper into A Vaccine Is a Wanted Poster for a Germ Why Measles Needs Almost Everyone Vaccinated The vaccine piece said a vaccine shows your immune system a wanted poster. But the poster protects people who never saw it, too. Here's the one-line equation that says how many of us need to look.
- Goes deeper into Product Review: The Human Eye (Four Stars) Your Brain Is Hiding a Hole in Your Eye Our review of the human eye said every eye ships with a blind spot. Here's how to find yours in thirty seconds, and what your brain is doing to hide it.
- Goes deeper into Family WhatsApp Group Confirms 5G Causes Colds One Ultraviolet Photon Beats a Billion Radio Ones The nephew told the family group that a million feathers won't break a window the way one stone will, and got removed. Here's the experiment that proved him right, and won Einstein his Nobel Prize.
- Goes deeper into Charging Your Phone Means Pushing Lithium Uphill Why Fast Charging Slows Down at 80 Per Cent The charging piece pictured lithium being marched uphill into the graphite. So why does the march race to 80 per cent and then crawl? Because the last few seats in a crowded hall are the hardest to fill.
- Goes deeper into The Rajma That Defeated My Grandmother Why Water in Leh Gives Up at 88 °C The rajma in Leh refused to cook at 88 °C. Here's the full science of why, and how explorers once used boiling water to measure mountains.
- Goes deeper into Lightning Strikes Same Building Twice, Ignores Famous Saying Never Shelter Under the Tallest Tree Mr Bhalerao, having given up on the roof, chose the tallest tree in the society garden as his new safe spot. Here's exactly how a bolt chooses where to land, and why that tree is one of the worst places he could stand.
- Goes deeper into Ice Floats, Which Is Lucky for Fish Why the Bottom of a Frozen Lake Stays at 4 °C The ice poem promised that the fish below swim on at four degrees all day. Why four, and not zero? The answer involves two forces fighting inside every drop of cold water, and a lake that flips itself over every autumn.
- Goes deeper into Most of You Was Made Inside a Star Why Stars Stop Making Elements at Iron The stardust poem says stars fuse their way up to iron and stop, "for when it fuses iron, the profit's gone". Here's the single curve behind that line, which also explains nuclear power stations and why a star's death takes less than a second.
- Goes deeper into Man Cracks Knuckles for Decades to Annoy Mother, Science Backs Him Why You Can't Crack the Same Knuckle Twice Mr Joshi has timed it many times: twenty minutes before the same knuckle will crack again. His wife confirms it. Here's what is happening inside the joint during those twenty minutes, and what it has in common with a bottle of soda.
- Goes deeper into How We Found North in a Power Cut The Pole Star Is Only Visiting Ms Kulkarni called Polaris "the only star in the sky that is not going anywhere tonight". The word that matters is "tonight". Over thousands of years, the Earth's axis wanders, and the job of Pole Star passes from star to star.
- Goes deeper into Raindrops Are Not Shaped Like Raindrops Why Rain Doesn't Hit Like a Bullet The raindrop poem says rain "can sting, but never cuts you deep", because drag matches weight long before the ground. Without air, a drop from a cloud two kilometres up would arrive at about 700 km/h. Here's the maths of the brake.
- Goes deeper into Sun Promises Five Billion More Years, Apologises for Summer The Sun's Core Is Less Intense Than a Compost Heap In its statement, the Sun said its protons occasionally tunnel through a barrier, and called it Tuesday. Here's the rest of the chain, the ghostly particles it fires through you every second, and the reason the Sun doesn't explode.
- Goes deeper into The Mango That Ripened All the Bananas Why the Grapes Never Ripened Rohan's bananas ripened in the mango box. The grapes beside them, in the same cloud of ethylene for two days, didn't change at all. Mummy said grapes are picked when they're ready, and that's that. Here's why she's right.
- Goes deeper into The Matka That Sweats to Stay Cold Why Humid Heat Can Be Deadlier Than Dry Heat Nani's matka beat the Jodhpur heat by eleven degrees. The one in Mumbai managed two. Your body is a matka too, and the same number that measures a clay pot's limit measures yours.
- Goes deeper into The Octopus Has Three Hearts and Blue Blood Why Octopus Blood Is Blue and Yours Is Red The octopus poem says its blood is blue because "copper lends a bluish shade". Here's why copper and iron give different colours, why your veins look blue when your blood never is, and why an octopus gets out of breath.
- Goes deeper into Why the Monsoon Almost Always Turns Up in June Why the Monsoon Arrives From the South-West The monsoon piece said moist ocean air flows in towards hot land. Then why doesn't it come straight from the south? Because on a spinning planet, nothing travels in a straight line, and the equator flips which way it bends.
- Goes deeper into Your Phone Finds You Using Clocks in Space Your Head Is Older Than Your Feet The GPS piece said satellite clocks run fast by 38 millionths of a second a day, and that engineers simply correct for it. That sounds like an excuse for a broken clock. Here's why it isn't, and how scientists measured time running faster at the top of a staircase.
- Goes deeper into How a Rock Ended Up Running Your Phone How One Atom in a Million Turns Sand Into a Switch The silicon piece ended with nine-nines purity as "a blank page". Here's what chipmakers write on it: a few atoms of phosphorus and boron, placed with extraordinary care, which turn a crystal of rock into billions of tiny switches.
- Goes deeper into Pluto Isn't Sad, and You Shouldn't Be Either How to Weigh Pluto Without Touching It The Pluto speech says early guesses made Pluto as big as Earth, and that it kept shrinking. What finally settled it was a smudge on a photograph in 1978, and one line of algebra any student can do.
- Goes deeper into My Grandmother's Secret Is Bacteria Meet the Bacteria Living in Your Curd A spoonful of old curd turned warm milk into new curd overnight, and a cold windowsill stopped it dead. Here's who was doing the work, and why they work best as a team.
- Goes deeper into My Sister Versus the Thunderstorm Why Thunder Rumbles Instead of Going Bang Meher's thunder came "rolling over the building like furniture being dragged across the floor upstairs". A bang made in a few millionths of a second shouldn't roll for ten. Here's why it does.
- Goes deeper into Trees Are Made of Thin Air The Oxygen You Breathe Came Out of Water The tree poem says a leaf frees oxygen "from water, not the air". It sounds like a mistake. It isn't, and the way we found out involved purple bacteria, rotten-egg gas and a heavy kind of oxygen.
- Goes deeper into Gravity's Terms and Conditions (You Already Agreed) Astronauts Are Falling All the Time and Missing Gravity's terms and conditions said astronauts float because they're falling "with very good aim". That sounds like a trick. Here's the exact aim required, worked out with a cannon Isaac Newton never fired.
- Goes deeper into Guess How Many Times Your Heart Will Beat How to Win the Guess-the-Sweets Jar The heartbeat speech argued that good guessing can be taught. Here's a chance to prove it at the next school fair, with one sum, one number to remember, and a crowd to help you.