Everyday questions, answered with physics.
Each film answers one ordinary question and names the principle behind the answer. They play in the browser, with nothing to install.
Films
- Why Is the Sky Blue but Sunsets Are Red? — Rayleigh Scattering: It’s all about how sunlight bullies different colors of light as it travels through our atmosphere.
- How Do Cats Always Land On Their Feet? — Conservation of Angular Momentum: They cleverly twist their body in two halves to rotate without violating a core law of physics.
- How Can a Soccer Ball Curve in Mid-Air? — Magnus Effect: A spinning ball creates a pressure difference in the air around it, forcing it to bend its path.
- Why Does a Magnet Fall Slowly Through a Copper Tube? — Lenz's Law & Eddy Currents: The falling magnet generates its own invisible brakes, creating swirling electrical currents in the metal.
- What Makes Your Hair Stand On End? — Electrostatic Repulsion: It's the same principle that makes lightning: a massive buildup of static charge trying to escape.
- Why Can't Your Hand Pass Through a Table? — Pauli Exclusion Principle: It’s not just solidity; it's a fundamental quantum rule that keeps all matter from collapsing into itself.
- What If You Fire One Particle at Two Slits? — Wave-Particle Duality: A single particle seems to pass through both slits at once, revealing the strangest truth of reality.
- How Can a Magnet Float Endlessly in Mid-Air? — Meissner Effect & Flux Pinning: This isn't simple repulsion; it's a quantum state where magnetic fields are trapped in place.
- How Does an MRI See Inside Your Body? — Nuclear Magnetic Resonance: It's all about using giant magnets to align the protons in your atoms and then listen to their echoes.
- How Does Your Phone Use Quantum Physics? — Applied Quantum Mechanics: From the transistors in its chip to the light from its screen, your phone is a pocket-sized quantum machine.
- How Can You See the Shape of Sound? — Standing Waves & Resonance: By vibrating a plate of sand, beautiful patterns emerge where the sound waves cancel themselves to zero.
- Why Does Wi-Fi Go Through Walls but Light Doesn't? — Electromagnetic Spectrum Interaction: It's all about wavelength: Wi-Fi's long waves don't 'see' the wall's atoms, but light's short waves do.
- Why Can Radio Waves Pass Through Your Body? — Wavelength & Material Penetration: Your body is transparent to some waves and opaque to others, all based on their energy and size.
- Why Does Your Recorded Voice Sound So Weird? — Bone & Air Conduction: You hear two versions of your own voice at once, but a microphone can only ever capture one.
- Why Does Metal Feel Colder Than Wood? — Thermal Conductivity: Your hand is the same temperature, but one material is a much better thief of your body heat.
- How Does GPS Use Einstein's Relativity? — General & Special Relativity: Without correcting for warped time from both speed and gravity, your GPS would be off by miles every day.
- How Do Rockets Actually Reach Orbit? — Rocket Propulsion & Orbital Mechanics: It’s a delicate balance of extreme thrust, Newton's third law, and achieving enough speed to fall around the Earth.