Lists and Stories

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  Why Do Wolves Howl? There’s nothing quite so interesting as the social interactions in the wolf pack. Wolves live in packs of about 6 to 10 members. Pack formation is possible because wolves are highly social creatures that develop strong bonds with one another. One of the ways in which wolves interact is through...
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  Why Do You Have to Turn Off Electronic Devices on an Airplane? Mobile telephones, tablets, portable video game units, and other electronic devices are ubiquitous 21st-century time killers. We can play games on them, communicate with family and friends on them, and browse the Internet on them. One would think that they would come in very handy to pass the time...
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  Why Does -saur Appear So Often in Dinosaur Names? The suffix -saurus, which appears at the end of the scientific names of various dinosaurs (and in shortened form at the end of the word dinosaur itself) is a Latinized form of the Greek word sauros. Saurus, which literally means “lizard,” appears as a suffix in the names of many dinosaurs because...
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  Why Does a Mushroom Cloud Look Like a Mushroom? A mushroom cloud is the iconic and terrifying result of a thermonuclear explosion, but actually a mushroom cloud can be created by any massive release of heat, such as from a volcano or from something like the 2020 Beirut explosion. Heat rises, and the incredible blast of heat and energy from an...
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  Why Does Cilantro Taste Like Soap to Some People? Whether cilantro tastes fresh and citrusy or horribly soapy largely comes down to genetics. For most people, cilantro (the leaves of the coriander plant) has a pleasing combination of flavors reminiscent of parsley and citrus. But for others—including, famously, the chef Julia Child—the herb is...
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  Why Does COVID-19 Disproportionately Affect African Americans, Hispanics, and Latinos? This article was originally published on July 2, 2020, during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, when much was unknown or partially known about the disease and its impact. As the COVID-19 pandemic has unfolded in the United States and health experts have collected increasing amounts of...
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  Why Does Drinking Give You a Hangover? While we seem to know a lot about alcoholic beverages and their consumption, scientific research on hangovers is surprisingly limited. The current working theories offer only partial explanations or have been contradicted by research. So we don’t really know what causes hangovers, but we have some...
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  Why Does Hair Turn Gray? Hair turns gray as melanocytes—the cells that generate melanin, which gives hair (and skin) its coloration—deteriorate because of age, environment, or disease. Hair doesn’t gray uniformly: it may gray on some parts of the body earlier than on other parts. The age one goes gray is determined in part...
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  Why Does Heat Relax Your Muscles? Exercise is painful. As the cliché goes, “No pain, no gain.” When the body exerts itself, pumping action out of muscles to tear them down and build their mass, it’s left with a soreness. Doctors, coaches, and mothers all recommend heat for tense sore muscles—warm baths, moist towels, hot-water...
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  Why Does “K” Stand for a Strikeout in Baseball? The box score of a baseball game is filled with all kinds of shorthand, which is necessitated by the desire for a concise encapsulation of the contest and by the constraints of print space, since box scores were found only in newspapers for the first century of their existence. As a result,...
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  Why Does Salt Melt Ice? More than 20 million tons of salt are used every year to melt snow and ice in cold northern regions. But how does salt do it? First, it’s important to understand a bit about H2O in the winter. Thirty-two degrees Fahrenheit (0 degrees Celsius) is its freezing point—that is, when water reaches 32 °F,...
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  Why Does the New Year Start on January 1? In many countries the New Year begins on January 1. However, this wasn’t always the case. In fact, for centuries, other dates marked the start of the calendar, including March 25 and December 25. So how did January 1 become New Year’s Day? We can partly thank the Roman king Numa Pompilius....
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  Why Does the Tropic of Cancer’s Location on Earth Move Over Time? The Tropic of Cancer is a line of latitude approximately 23°27′ north of Earth’s Equator. This latitude corresponds to the northernmost declination of the Sun’s ecliptic to the celestial equator. At the summer solstice in the Northern Hemisphere, about June 21, the direct (that is, 90°) rays of the...
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  Why Does the United States Have More Tornadoes than Any Other Country? The United States experiences the most tornadoes of any country in the world: more than 1,000 per year have been reported every year since 1990 in the U.S. This high count of twisters results primarily from the country’s topography, which features a large central core with relatively flat terrain....
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  Why Does Too Much Caffeine Keep You Awake at Night? Caffeine is one of the most popular stimulants in the world and is most commonly consumed in coffee. People turn to caffeine to wake up in the morning and to stay energized throughout the day, but there’s a downside: Too much caffeine can keep you awake even when you’re ready to sleep. The key to...
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  Why Does Water Freeze from the Top Down? We drink water, we swim in it, we wash with it, and we cool things down with it. Because water is so common, many of us fail to notice just how strange it is compared to other substances. When we plop an ice cube or two into our drink during the warmer months, we watch it float above the liquid in...
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  Why Does Your Voice Change as You Age? Your voice changes as you become an adult and may change even further as you age. The pitch of a person’s voice depends largely on how tightly the vocal cord muscles contract as the air from the lungs hits them. A child’s voice is high because the larynx (voice box) is small and the vocal cords are...
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  Why Doesn’t Arizona Observe Daylight Saving Time? Daylight Saving Time (DST) was introduced in countries around the world during the 20th century with the intention of lowering energy consumption and aligning sunlight hours to be more amenable to active work hours in the summertime. When DST was imposed in the United States through the passage of...
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  Why Doesn’t the U.S. Use the Metric System? The United States Constitution states, in Section 8 of Article I, that Congress shall have the power to “fix the standard of weights and measures.” Deciding on a system to regulate how the U.S. measured objects, compared lengths, and weighed itself was without a doubt a high priority for the...
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  Why Don’t Birds Have Teeth? According to most paleontologists, birds branched off of one of the main dinosaur lineages more than 100 million years ago. Numerous dinosaur fossils show that dinosaurs did indeed have teeth, but why are modern birds toothless? What happened to birds between then and now to make them this way?...