Learn the physics behind everyday life and how things work

Posted on July 5, 2007 at 3:59 pm

If you’re one of those curious people who asks fun questions like “If light is the fastest thing in the universe, what’s the second fastest?” or “Why is it so much easier to iron pants with steam?”, then the How Things Work home page hosted by University of Virginia is your kind of site! It’s a cool web site that tries to teach non-science people physics by looking into everyday objects in our lives.

There are some pretty interesting questions posed by students or sent in by curious people through email and then answered by the teacher of the course (I guess!). After reading through the site for about an hour, I now know why a bird can land on a power line and not become someone’s tasty fried chicken! Also, I was amazed to find out that the amount of energy that a 60 watt light bulb burns in oe second is equivalent to lifting a 24-can case of soda 2.5 feet into the air! That’s a lot of energy!

Another great question which I finally learned the answer to is whether you should defrost your windshield with warm air or cold air! I know that I’ve never been able to figure it out yet and I end up trying one way and if it doesn’t work, then I switch to the other way!! Good stuff to read and show off to some friends!

They also have a RSS feed so you can subscribe in your favorite RSS reader.

Another site that’s similar is http://htw.wiley.com/htw/, but it allows you to search by category or with keywords, so if you’re interested in a particular topic, it’s much easier to view those questions and answers. Hope you learn something new!