Physical Science

Physical science is the study of the physical world around you. Learn about everything from electricity to magnetism in this section.

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Voltage is how we measure the difference in electric potential energy. Learn about what voltage is from this article.

By HowStuffWorks.com Contributors

Did you ever wonder how to measure how fast sound travels in the air? Read this article to learn how to measure sound travel in the air.

By HowStuffWorks.com Contributors

Thanks to the Faraday cage, we can control electricity and make it safer for our computers, cars and other inventions.

By Chris Pollette & Nathan Chandler

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You want to learn how to read the electric power meter in your home to see if the meter reader sent by the electric company was accurate. This article will teach you how to read a power meter.

By HowStuffWorks.com Contributors

Nuclear waste epitomizes the double-edged sword of modern technology. It's a toxic and radioactive byproduct of nuclear medicine, nuclear weapons manufacturing and nuclear power plants.

By Nathan Chandler

Kaleidoscopes have been fascinating people since the early 19th century. Whether you think of kaleidoscopes as toys or as works of art, no matter how often you look inside, you'll never see the same thing twice.

By Melanie F. F. Gibbs

Who wants to reduce our complicated universe down to its simplest building blocks? A bunch of particle physicists, that's who. Why is the Higgs boson critical to that goal?

By Jonathan Atteberry & Sascha Bos

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Who made it possible to light up your home at night? Thomas Edison, right? Yes, but without the work of Nikola Tesla, we would be living in a different world.

By William Harris

Criminals always leave traces behind after a crime is committed. In fact, footprints, tire tracks and tool marks are often more prevalent than fingerprints at a crime scene. What can impression evidence tell an investigator?

By John Fuller

One of the most influential ideas in forensic science history is known as Locard's exchange principle. This simple, yet groundbreaking idea forever changed the way we fight crime. But who was Edmond Locard, anyway?

By John Fuller

Imagine walking through a field and stumbling upon scads of corpses, all in various states of decomposition. It's not the setting for your next nightmare, but rather a very real discipline of forensic anthropology.

By Tom Scheve

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The Fibonacci sequence has been a numerical sequence for millennia. But what does it have to do with sunflower seeds or rabbits?

By Robert Lamb & Jesslyn Shields

In the comics, radiation exposure turned an average man into a pea green and angry Incredible Hulk. But in reality, what can radiation do to those exposed? Is it always a villain?

By Debra Ronca

Light travels pretty rapidly, but when it comes to faraway galaxies, that light takes a while to reach our telescopes. In fact, the light you see might actually be from billions of years ago.

By Kate Kershner

The Large Hadron Collider isn't just a one-trick (Higgs) pony. Find out what else has happened where hundreds of millions of particles may collide any given second.

By Nicholas Gerbis

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When something as important as the Higgs rocks our world, we want to know every last thing about it, including what it looks like. So?

By Kate Kershner

Of all the superheroes we have in the universe, supersymmetry might be the one that will save us from total annihilation. Not because it fights bad guys, but because it just might explain how the tiniest parts of the cosmos work.

By Kate Kershner

Has this ever happened to you? The meteorologist calls for a massive snowstorm, but the flakes fail to arrive. Chaos theory can shed light on why forecasts fail (and why our orderly world may not be so orderly after all).

By William Harris

Seven ounces a ray! No, that's a lie. Measuring the weight of light is not as straightforward as that. So what's the more complicated explanation?

By Kate Kershner & Yara Simón

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Atoms: the building blocks of life and the universe. We're all made of these microscopic bits of matter, but how many does it take to make a complete human being? And exactly what kinds of atoms do we have inside us?

By Laurie L. Dove

How effective is fighting a wildfire with controlled fire?

By Oisin Curran

In 1957, Hugh Everett first wrote about the multiverse - different realms where every choice spawns a separate universe in which another version of ourselves does something different. It sounds crazy, but here are some reasons it might be true.

By Patrick J. Kiger

When speed is everything and light marks the universe's speed limit, lasers are bound to be the answer. At least, that's what NASA and a bunch of Wall Street types are betting on.

By Nicholas Gerbis

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It's an odorless gas that's present in a variety of home products, cosmetics, car exhaust and even humans. But is it bad for us?

By Michelle Konstantinovsky

Two mathematicians have solved a decades-old math problem by harnessing the power of a virtual supercomputer.

By Patrick J. Kiger