Why is Canada considering scrapping their F/A-18s instead of selling them to the US Air Force?
Canada is operating legacy Hornets (CF-188 model, which is basically an F/A-18A/B). Those planes are old – they were built in the 80s. Their airframes are nearing their end of…
Why is steel extensively used with concrete?
Concrete is great in compression. You comfortably put 500 times the weight of the concrete on top of concrete with no problem. Unfortunately, concrete totally sucks when it…
If I hack my microwave oven so that it runs with the door off, would this be dangerous?
I did this with a colleague when we were training technicians on microwaves back in the 90s. The unit was 800 watt which was standard back then and…
At what point would a spaceship leaving our solar system become free of it and no longer be a part of the solar systems gravity? Would this effectively increase the speed of the spaceship allowing it to get to another solar system quicker?
The sun’s pull thins as you go. At the heliopause, about 11 billion miles out, the solar wind gives way to what lies between stars — Voyager 1…
If Andromeda is the closest galaxy to us, why have we not started exploring it yet?
A lot of people have already given a sufficient answer but I really like talking about the scale of the Universe. Let me give you some comparisons so…
Why is the Washington Monument built to be 555 feet and 5 inches (555’ 05”) tall? Was it intentional or just a coincidence with all the fives?
Not only is the Washington Monument 555 feet 5 inches tall, it is also 55 feet wide at its base. That’s even more fives! But the reason for…
What is the math behind the Leaning Tower of Pisa?
The math is simple. It is a fight between two forces: the tower’s weight and the ground it stands on. The tower has a center of gravity. This is…
Where was the Luftwaffe during the Operation Overlord of the allied forces in the beaches of Normandy in WW2?
As it happens the Germans put together a formidable air flotilla of almost 500 planes to bomb the Allied invasion fleet but the planes were seized by Hitler…
What are the most mysterious countries?
There’s a country at the edge of Europe that feels like time stopped in the 80s. Literally. People from Transnistria, a breakaway region of Moldova that declared independence in…
How did the Roman aqueducts not have dirty, bug-infested water in them?
None of the other answers I’ve read actually explains how Roman aqueducts delivered relatively clear water. Yes, it was not necessarily germ free, but the addition of wine,…