THE CATALOGUE / EVERY DOOR IN THE CITY
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31articles
EVERY ARTICLE HAS A PLACE
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1–18 of 31 articlesPage 1 of 2
Six divisions for daylight, and six for night. How did Japanese clocks keep time when the units stretched and shrank with the seasons?
What does “light” describe? Comparing the labels of three soy sauces per 15 mL shows why color and salt content need to be considered separately.
The “up to about 30%” quoted for error recovery does not refer to the area of the paper. Separate the information encoded in the black-and-white pattern from the markers that help a reader find it.
You hear the same Japanese word, yet mark different days on your calendars. Dialect records help reveal a misunderstanding hidden inside an apparently clear arrangement.
In Meiji-era Japan, the day after the second of the twelfth month became January 1. Place the old and new calendars on the same timeline, and you can see what jumped ahead and what continued uninterrupted.
Why is a book’s spine sometimes on the right and sometimes on the left? Follow the direction of the characters, the next line, and the next page, and the book’s shape connects to the order in which you read it.
Two regions have the same area on a sphere. Change only the projection to compare how they look on a flat surface.
From the 2015 discovery of bursting bubbles to the 2017 experiments with living bacteria. A pleasant smell became a question about the movement of matter.
The Moon does rotate. Its two motions are precisely in step.
Our familiar sky is made by sunlight and the very small molecules in the air.
There is more to the surprising number: each heart has a job.
Is a black hole's rumble a recording? Follow the process that translates observations into an audible form, and the choices behind a representation come into view.
East of the standard meridian, solar noon comes earlier. Yet even in Akashi, it does not always fall at 12:00. Separate the difference due to place from the difference due to date to untangle the relationship between clocks and the Sun.
2000 had a February 29, but 2100 will not. Count how the 97 leap days are distributed across 400 years, and a calendar rule that seems full of exceptions becomes a single calculation.
The paper has twice the area, but its height and width are only about 1.414 times as large. Move between a size chart, a folded sheet, and a copier's display to discover the mathematics hidden in A-series paper.
Mirror each character but forget their order, and よりみち becomes ちみりよ. Compare a printing form and its print from the same orientation, then follow the work of assembling shapes, order, and even blank spaces.
One spoonful holds 15 mL, yet it does not always weigh the same. Follow the meaning of a level spoonful, the spaces between grains, and differences between official conversion tables to read recipe numbers more closely.
Follow the secret of combined dashi through three stages: ingredients, compounds, and the system that receives them. Mixing equal portions and assuming that each contributes half its original umami are surprisingly different things.
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