As a police officer, I was involved in many pursuits, investigated serious accidents and later became a researcher. Here's what I've learned about how police make decisions in a pursuit.
As gas from your stomach comes up your food pipe, it makes the surface of the upper part of your oesophagus rattle and vibrate. It is a bit like windows that rattle during a windy storm.
It’s a good idea to wash your hands after you go to the toilet, after you blow your nose, before you help prepare food and before you eat.
Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash
Simply closing your eyes will protect your eyes from sunlight. But looking straight at it can cause serious damage.
One of the ways we work out what proto-language might have been like is by looking at languages which have developed from nothing in recent times. One of the best examples is Nicaraguan Sign Language.
Unsplash/Jo Hilton
In the space of a few short years, deaf Nicaraguan school children created their own language. This example may give us a clue about how spoken language developed over thousands of years.
This is the story of how seeds came together bit-by-bit over a really long time, as plants evolved.
Chemicals poured down the sink or pumped into the atmosphere can eventually end up in the groundwater, which means less available fresh water for us to use.
Flickr/Kamil Porembiński
While making small volumes of pure water in a lab is possible, it’s not practical. The reaction is expensive, releases lots of energy, and can cause really massive explosions.
There’s a very good reason for those leg hairs.
Flickr/Hamish Irvine
Believe it or not, I have studied the hairy legs of spiders for years and can give you some definitive answers on this.
Your tongue has special parts, bundled together as taste buds, that pick up flavour. But your other senses also help your brain work out how something tastes.
Flickr/Jessica Lucia
The reason we have seasons is because, during its journey around the Sun, the Earth is tilted.
An artist’s impression of Kepler-22b, a planet known to comfortably circle in the habitable zone of a sun-like star. It is the first planet that NASA’s Kepler mission has confirmed to orbit in a star’s habitable zone - the region around a star where liquid water, a requirement for life on Earth, could persist.
NASA/Ames/JPL-Caltech
Josh Calcino, The University of Queensland and Jake Clark, University of Southern Queensland
Life could exist in another solar system in a different part our galaxy. Or in another galaxy far away. We don't have the perfect technology yet to study such far away places but we're still trying.
“I feel like he never hears me…”
LightField Studios/Shutterstock
Ants have something similar to blood, but it's called haemolymph. Some insects use it in unusual ways. When threatened by a predator, blister beetles can squirt haemolymph from their knees.
Some dogs may associate car travel with trips to the beach or park – while others only remember trips to the vet.
Linda Colquhoun/flickr
Travel can come with danger, so dogs have mostly evolved to avoid being over-adventurous. That said, dogs may see some kinds of travel as a chance to find things they want -- like food or a mate.
One important reason for the Spartans’ obsession with fighting was the constant possibility they would need these skills in war and also at home, in Sparta itself.
Shutterstock
From about age seven, Spartan children learned to fight and practise obeying orders. They also staged pretend battles. Boys and girls were trained separately.
Our eyes don't grow much at all – but when we're very young, we still need to learn how to see.
Mountains keep growing and growing and growing for many millions of years until they are so heavy that they can no longer grow taller, only wider.
Photo by Jeff Finley on Unsplash
When I was little, geologists worked out Earth's surface was made of pieces, like a giant puzzle. Those pieces, called “tectonic plates”, move and bump into each other and mountains form.
Not many people realise ants can make their own medicine.
Flickr/Pimthida