No one can question the impact of science on human civilization, and the importance of experimentation in science is equally undeniable. Some experiments confirm what we already know, others suggest a ...

We tend not to dwell on the fact that we exist in three dimensions. Forwards-back, left-right, up-down; these are the axes on which we navigate the world. When we try to imagine something else, it ...

If you’ve ever whacked the bottom of a ketchup bottle to get that tasty tomato goop flowing, you’ve put some serious physics to work. Ketchup is a non-Newtonian fluid. So are toothpaste, yogurt, ...

changes in the topology of the field by breaking and reconnecting the magnetic field lines. This process occurs in (magnetohydrodynamic) "sawtooth" oscillations in tokamak plasmas, in sun spots, and ...

If you enjoyed this article, I’d like to ask for your support. Scientific American has served as an advocate for science and industry for 180 years, and right now may be the most critical moment in ...

Physics, especially the part about forces and motion, often feels like a maze of confusing concepts and formulas. If you’ve ever stared at a problem about an object moving or a force acting and ...

One summer day a young Martin Chalfie walked out of a lab after a particularly frustrating experiment. He thought—quite erroneously—that the life of a scientist was not for him. After teaching high ...

Physical-collapse theories have long offered a natural solution to the central mystery of the quantum world. But a series of increasingly precise experiments are making them untenable. How does ...

Science is a subject built on doing. Students learn chemistry through titrations, biology through dissections, physics through motion experiments, and earth science through field observations. That ...