A new literary experience

The science of the everyday can be anything but mundane… and Russ Swan will prove exactly that in his new book. But, he needs your help…

I’m writing a book, and it’s hard. This is mainly because I’ve begun to realise I know less about lots of things than I thought I did. It’s also because, when I start checking up on some of the facts I thought I knew, I find the truth is generally much more interesting and complicated than I had imagined. As a result, many happy but unfruitful hours are spent following new lines of enquiry into everything I thought I already knew but now know I never did.

I’d like to blame the phenomenon known as half-life of facts for this, but that’s a cop-out. This idea, discussed in this column in 2013 (and subsequently picked up on the TV quiz show QI), is that new learning overturns old learning such that about half of everything we know is proved wrong within 45 years. I’m still waiting for news that this fact has itself been overturned. Only 41 years to go. It’s a popular science book, looking at dozens of everyday phenomena (and a few exotic ones) and unravelling what really makes them happen. You will appreciate that this is a significant task, and so to get the project underway it seemed a sensible idea to start with a few easy topics.

On yer bike!

Riding a bicycle, for example. I’ve taught my kids to ride bikes, and thought I was being clever by explaining that there is an invisible and almost magical force that would keep them upright if they just pedalled at a reasonable speed. Everybody knows the gyroscopic effect is what makes cycling possible, right? Just like everybody knows that belief in an invisible force is the right way to learn the truth.

I would like to apologise to my offspring for the unnecessary scraped knees and frustration that resulted from my cack-handed attempts at teaching. I would also like to confirm that they would be better off, when the time comes, taking driving tuition from a professional. Riding a bike, I now understand, has everything to do with balance and steering and almost nothing to do with gyroscopic forces. It seems that everybody else in the known universe understood this, except me.

Even for the topics I do know a bit about, I’m finding myself getting consumed by the detail. Microwave ovens, for example: an everyday technology but with a fascinating back story and a creation myth all of their own, including the melted candy bar in a radar engineer’s pocket. When our last microwave oven died, it gathered dust at the back of the garage for a few years (I’ll never understand how some people think this is junk, rather than raw material and parts for some unspecified future project).

This is what I like to call Important Research For The Book, rather than a distraction to play with the components that make up the magnetron

With my new interest in the inner workings, naturally, the old oven has been recovered and dismantled. This is what I like to call Important Research For The Book, rather than a distraction to play with the components that make up the magnetron. Come on, it’s a magnetron. And it’s on my desk, in pieces. How cool is that? Look how pretty the resonance chambers are!

What do you mean, deadline?

Everything in the universe has a scientific explanation, and in the end it all boils down to physics. Chemistry is physics, when you think about it. Electron shells and valency and the periodic table and all. Biology is basically the application of chemistry in some specialised circumstances, and so is also physics (and the new field of quantum biology only reinforces this).

There is fascinating physics behind satellite navigation, flash memory, music, the Large Hadron Collider, and white water rafting

This observation does not help to focus my attention. There is fascinating physics behind satellite navigation, flash memory, music, the Large Hadron Collider, and white water rafting. And it’s all so gosh darned interesting that I just need to find out more. And if it’s going in The Book, I have to get it right.

My humble tome will be out in the spring, provided of course that I can stop playing with the various toys on my desk.

What am I missing? What are the most fascinating, hilarious, or surprising scientific phenomena behind the things to which most people never give a second thought? I’d love to hear your suggestions and will try to include as many as possible. Tweet me @russswan or leave a comment below.