Relationship between taste and smell

Think of all the wonderful sensations taste can impart to us – the delicious Thanksgiving turkey and gravy, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie! Coffee, chocolate, lush strawberries – the list goes on and on! Receptors on our tongues bind to chemicals in our food and relay the information [...]

When you view short bursts of moving images, you see some interesting effects.

A series of slits moving rapidly past your eye allows you to see images in short bursts. Such rapid but fragmented views of moving objects can make the objects appear to jerk along, change speed, or even move backward.

Copy of the stroboscope [...]

Go ahead – hit it hard!
A simple stack of blocks demonstrates that an object at rest will remain at rest, unless a force causes it to move.

5 or 6 wooden blocks, each about 13 cm (5 in.) long, cut from a relatively smooth-surfaced two-by-four
meter stick

1. Stack the blocks neatly with the large sides parallel to tabletop.2. [...]

Make a lens and a magnifying glass by filling a bowl with water.

In the 1700s, spherical glass bottles filled with water were used to focus candlelight for fine work such as lace making. Round bottles of water, left in an open window, have been known to start fires by focusing sunlight into an intense [...]

Whirling water creates a tornado in a bottle.

Water forms a spiraling, funnel-shaped vortex as it drains from a 2-liter soda bottle. A simple connector device allows the water to drain into a second bottle. The whole assembly can then be inverted and the process repeated.

Two 2-liter soda bottles.
A Tornado Tube™ plastic connector (available from [...]