How can you stop your can of fizzy orange from exploding when you open it, and why do butterflies see a different rainbow to us? Science has the answers.
Every day, we do plenty of things that we barely think about, but that can all be explained using the power of science. Closing and opening a door seems pretty simple, right? Just give it a push or a pull and job done, not much to it. Or is there? What about cooking your dinner? Throw the oven on and sit back with your feet up, no worries. Well, maybe check on it every now and then but that’s it.
While these everyday tasks are pretty mundane, it’s worth remembering that science can help us to understand and explain everything, from the most complicated and amazing quantum mechanics to the light switch you flick when you come in the door.
Since we just saw Interstellar and we were a bit lost on that whole space travel/string theory stuff, let's stick to a few things that are a bit more common to us on an everyday basis.
Your glasses
Slap some lenses in a frame and all of a sudden we can see again, great. If you really need glasses, you’ll know how important that is, but you also might forget about how great the science is that's going on literally in front of your eyes. The lens is specially crafted to essentially bend light so that it brings things in to focus or makes them bigger or smaller. If you use them creatively, you can also make things disappear too.
Your can of fizzy orange
Fizzy orange is Tommy from Love/Hate's drink of choice, but with any can of fizzy soda, the 'pssst' you hear when you flick open the tab at the top of the can can be explained through science. That sound is gas escaping from the drink (we all know they’re carbonated, sure it says it on the can) but why do they sometimes spill over or go flat?
When the drink is being put in the can, extra carbon dioxide molecules are put into the can to keep the drink as fizzy as possible for as long as possible, and they normally stay at the top of the container in the 'head space' between the beverage and the can. Normally when you open it that gas escapes, but sometimes (like when you shake it) those 'spare' molecules go to the side of the can and force the liquid out when opened. Here’s a neat little trick to show off at your next dinner party that solves that problem…just don’t blame us if you get it wrong.
Sitting on a chair
So we've all heard of that Isaac Newton guy, but what did he ever do for us? Well, he defined the laws of physics, which are pretty important, and help to explain a lot. We've all heard about there being an equal and opposite reaction for every action, and an example of that is the balance of forces going on right now as you sit on your chair. You exert a force on it, and it exerts an equal and opposite force on you to keep you seated. If you've ever broken a chair by accident, then you'll know how important those forces are.
Your coffee getting cold
If you're anything like us, you can't function in the morning without a half litre of coffee in you, but a lot of the time it's too hot to drink so you need to wait for it to cool down. Obviously, time is not the thing that cools it, so what is? The answer has to do with energy, specifically heat energy. When something is hot, like your coffee, the molecules are moving around extremely quickly, they break apart and become steam. That's heat energy, but when the molecules slow down, the liquid also loses heat energy and therefore drops in temperature. Besides, entropy sounds way cooler than "my coffee is cold".
Colours
So you chose a blue shirt today, good call. You look great, by the way, but what is colour really? How do we see colours? Well, colours are actually waves of light that travel at different frequencies (imagine how light is broken up in a rainbow) and are picked up by your retina, where you have a number of cones that see in red, blue and green. That information is transferred to your brain, and it tells you that you’re seeing red, or green, or magenta, or yellow.
Fun fact, we’re not, the only ones with those receptors, and different animals see different colours. How does a dog see a rainbow? Well, they can only see around two colours, but what about a mantis shrimp, that has 16 different cones? Plug in your headphones and hit play to find out.
So, the power of science just explained a whole lot of everyday things to you, and if you’ve found that your interest has been piqued, then why not check out all the events that you can go along to during National Science Week, where you can see how science, technology, engineering and mathematics can explain the world around us, and some things even further afield.
