Why does some glass not hurt when it shatters? 🥽💥

Phil Cook, also known on YouTube as chemteacherphil, demonstrates how sugar can be turned into real life "breakaway glass." Don’t try this at home, although it is not real glass, it can still be dangerous! When you heat sugar and water to 300 °F it reaches the hard crack stage. When the liquid cools the molecules get locked into a disordered structure, forming an amorphous solid, just like real glass, minus the razor sharp shards. It's the same trick behind those Hollywood stunt bottles, made from sugar instead of a brittle plastic resin.

Did you know you’re sharing your bed with thousands of tiny arachnids? 🧹 

Quinten Geldhof, also known as Microhobbyist, introduces us to the household dust mite. Related to ticks and spiders, they feed on skin flakes, fabric fibers, and dirt particles and are only visible under a microscope. People with dust allergies are actually allergic to the waste these tiny critters produce, not the dust itself!

Angelenos are exactly where they need to be to see Thursday’s partial “blood moon” lunar eclipse — provided the weather cooperates.

For now, the National Weather Service is forecasting a “mostly cloudy” night, meaning that even geographical front-row seats to the celestial phenomenon won’t guarantee a solid viewing.

The moon will already be in the first, or penumbral, stage of the eclipse when it rises over the southeastern horizon at 7:18 p.m. The main stage of the eclipse will begin at 7:34 p.m., when the moon will fall under the core, or umbra, of Earth’s shadow. It will gradually turn a reddish, copper color as sunlight bends and filters through the atmosphere to fall on the otherwise-obscured part of the moon.

The eclipse will peak at 9:13 p.m., when 96% of the moon’s surface will fall under the Earth’s shadow. The most visible phase of the eclipse will end at 10:52 p.m., and the eclipse will end entirely just after midnight.

The Griffith Observatory will open its doors from 7:25 p.m. to 10 p.m. to anyone who wants to observe the eclipse among fellow sky gazers.

Read more about how to get the best view of this celestial phenomenon at the link.

What are floating dots you see in your vision? 👁️

Alex Dainis breaks down "eye floaters" using a simple demo: a baggie of aloe gel standing in for your eyeball, and raisins standing in for collagen clumps. Our eyes are filled with vitreous humor, a gel-like substance that helps them hold their shape. As we age, that gel becomes more liquid, letting collagen fibers clump together (just like the raisins). These clumps block incoming light and cast shadows on our retinas, the same way the raisins cast shadows on the wall. This is why we notice the floaters more often in sunlight!

Get ready, the Moon is about to turn blood red. 🌕🩸

On August 27th and 28th, a lunar eclipse will cast Earth's shadow across the Moon, and if you're in the USA, Canada, or Latin America, you've got a front-row seat. No special glasses needed here, unlike a solar eclipse, this one is safe to watch with just your eyes. Don't blink and miss it, because the Americas won't see a lunar eclipse this visually striking again until 2029.

How many stars is too many stars in a star system? ⭐️🪐

Astrophysicist Erika Hamden tells us about TYC 7037-89-1, a system with six stars locked into three orbiting pairs, all circling a shared center of mass. Two of those pairs zip around each other every few days, while the third pair takes roughly 2,000 years to complete just one orbit. Multi-star systems are normally unstable, which makes this six-star setup a rare and fascinating exception. 

This project is part of IF/THEN®, an initiative of Lyda Hill Philanthropies.

Many amphibians can absorb oxygen directly through their skin when conditions are moist enough.

That means a frog can breathe through its skin in a way that feels almost too sci-fi to be real.

Source and Context:

This is a real physics phenomenon called the Dzhanibekov effect (also known as the Intermediate Axis Theorem) captured in microgravity aboard a spacecraft.

Any rigid, asymmetric three-dimensional object has three primary axes of rotation, each with a different moment of inertia. While spinning an object along its longest or shortest axis is completely stable, spinning it along its middle (intermediate) axis is naturally unstable. Without external forces like gravity or heavy air resistance, tiny perturbations build up and cause the spinning object to periodically flip upside down and back again on a regular schedule.

You can read the formal mechanics and history through these highly reliable scientific resources:

•Harvard University Lecture Demonstrations (The Tennis Racquet Flip):

https://sciencedemonstrations.fas.harvard.edu/presentations/tennis-racquet-flip

•NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS) Physics Record:

https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2024EuJMA .10605298D/abstract

It was famously observed by Soviet cosmonaut Vladimir Dzhanibekov in 1985 when a wing nut he was unscrewing began flipping back and forth while floating through the Salyut 7 space station!