Learning & everyday wonders
Follow an everyday “why” into a wider world of science, history, language and daily life.
23 articles to choose from
Start with a small question, then explore a diagram, a comparison, a deeper explanation or the sources. Follow your curiosity as far as you like.
Choose a question and follow it into the article and its sources.
1–18 of 23 articlesPage 1 of 2
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.
Six divisions for daylight, and six for night. How did Japanese clocks keep time when the units stretched and shrank with the seasons?
The Moon does rotate. Its two motions are precisely in step.
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.
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.
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.
The spaces between short and long signals follow rules of their own. Place International Morse code’s intervals of 1, 3, and 7 units on the same timeline, and the information carried by silence becomes visible.
A planet’s age, a mineral’s age and evidence for water are different records. Follow Solar System materials, the Moon’s origin and tiny zircons to investigate how a watery planet took shape.
Rock patterns, dividing membranes, shared ancestry and rising oxygen tell different stories. Learn to read their evidence while exploring life’s unresolved origins and the world transformed by microbes.
A PATH INTO ANOTHER WORLD
These related questions lead beyond this room’s catalogue.
Take your comparison skills into a current debate. Separate the efficiency of an individual AI task from total electricity demand.
How does a calculated probability relate to the experience of playing? Change the drawing rules and explore what the same number can mean.
Follow the information reaching your eyes into films and games. Compare the conditions that shape how motion is presented.
Take what you have learned about light into the pleasure of making things. Compare colour on a screen with colour on a printed page.
Move from the molecules of living things to the pleasure of eating. A pairing of dashi ingredients opens a path into how taste works.