The precious noise-cancelling headphones that every seasoned traveller carries in their bags are actually quite an incredible piece of technology. These headphones work by listening via microphone...
The idea that birth control pills make the user gain weight has been floating around since the first appearance of contraceptive pills on the market in the 1950’s, but hasn’t been true for quite...
A single experiment in 1828 destroyed the theory of Vitalism which held that “organic substances” found in living systems could not be made in the laboratory because they were empowered with a ...
Everyone (well, almost everyone) knows that James Bond liked his martinis “shaken and not stirred.” The science behind this strange request was examined in a study published in the British Medical...
The orange juice market is huge. Unfortunately some processors try to cut corners by extending the juice with sugar, pulpwash and water. But the ruse can be detected by some clever science. ...
The Old Testament offers up some dietary advice about not mixing milk and meat. Milk provides a hospitable environment for bacteria on meat to multiply, so this does make sense. Religious...
In the Middle Ages much of beer brewing was carried out by monks. Water is a source of many disease causing organisms which cannot survive in alcohol. Trial and error demonstrated that beer...
The sensation of itching used to be thought of as a sort of low-grade pain response, which was detected by the same nerves responsible for finding bodily injuries. Recent research, however, has...
You’ve probably heard of the bounce test for dead batteries- simply drop a battery, and if it bounces, it’s dead. It turns out that this isn’t completely true. Conventional batteries have an outer...
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