Heat has always been something we thought we understood. From baking bread to running engines, the idea seemed simple: heat spreads out smoothly, like water soaking through a sponge. That simple ...

As the world battles rising inflation, a cost-of-living crisis, climate change and more, it’s clear that the fossil-fueled status quo is not working. Fossil fuels may have seemed like the crutch we ...

Scientific American is part of Springer Nature, which owns or has commercial relations with thousands of scientific publications (many of them can be found at www ...

The joy of turbocharging sometimes brings with it as many problems as benefits. From space constraints regarding necessary supporting components to traction issues to a dreaded increase in underhood ...

The action of the “Drinking Bird” is stopped when it is covered with a large bell jar. It resumes its motion when the bell jar is removed. The demonstration can be used to illustrate the expansion or ...

MR. FREDERICK SMITH described in NATURE of January 28 (p. 294) a simple heating machine, which he constructed with a nickel disk, so that when heated before a magnet it began to revolve. A similar ...

For 200 years, scientists believed heat always spreads the same way—smoothly, like ink dissolving in water. But at the nanoscale, where the world of tomorrow’s chips and energy devices lives, heat ...

AT the last soirée of the Royal Society, a beautiful experiment was shown by Mr. Shelford Bidwell, illustrative of the fact that nickel ceases to be magnetic at a certain definite temperature. A piece ...