#interesting-facts

In Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass , Alice (of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland fame) discovered that a mirror was a doorway to a parallel universe, where everything is reversed—and anything might happen. While mirrors aren’t really an entry to another world, they are very curious objects.  A mirror seems to reverse left and right—making newspaper headlines and T-shirt slogans read backward, and flipping the image of your face and body. But a mirror doesn’t flip top and bottom—we don’t appear in a full-length mirror with our head at the bottom, feet and floor at the top.

Ah, summertime. Season of cookouts, fireworks, road trips, and mirages . . . like that cool, shimmering pool of water on the highway ahead on a scorching-hot, drought-dry day. Mirages can be even more spectacular in Earth’s coldest regions. Take a trip to the Arctic, and if conditions are just right, you may see an upside-down iceberg, seemingly hanging in the air above the sea.

What do a clear (clean) soap bubble and a dark (dirty) oil spill have in common?

Remember Superman’s X-ray vision? His eyes shot X-rays at a door; the beams bored through, and he could see what his enemies were up to on the other side. Only doors made of lead could foil Superman.  Lead is a good shield against X-rays. That’s why we wear heavy lead aprons at the dentist’s office. But Superman’s X-ray eyes came from the imagination of his creator. Eyes can’t shoot beams of light. Our eyes see when light from other sources, like the Sun, is reflected back from an object.  However, X-rays are indeed a kind of light—a kind that is invisible to us. X-ray light has a lot more energy than visible light. That’s how it can penetrate wooden doors—or skin and muscle.

When an animal’s eyes glow green or yellow in the headlights, it’s a sign of good night vision. A special layer of cells in the back of the eye reflects light back like a mirror. Some of that light is reabsorbed by the eye, letting a deer, raccoon, or opossum see better in the dark. But human eye-glow doesn’t lead to anything but weird-looking birthday photos—Mom, Dad, and little Billy leaning over the candle-studded cake, all with gleaming red eyes. If a camera steals your soul, perhaps a flashbulb replaces it with something demonic.

Ever take a swim in the ocean, and notice that your hair and your swimsuit both look darker? As you walk back to your beach chair, you notice your wet feet leave dark footprints in the sand. As you dry off, your towel darkens, too.  But it’s not just seawater that does the trick. Pelting raindrops can turn your plain white shirt into a polka-dotted mess. Rinse off the sidewalk with a hose, and you’ll see the white cement turn gray. You can even use the narrow stream of a hose to write your name on the driveway.  Many porous objects—paper, fabric, tree bark, soil, hair—darken as they are doused in (clear) water. How come?

Where do rainbows come from? William Wordsworth, an English poet who published his first sonnet in 1787, wrote: My heart leaps up when I behold A rainbow in the sky . . . Something about seeing a rainbow gives us a shivery feeling. The bands of color, dipping down from the sky, are so beautiful and rare. People once thought rainbows were signs from the gods. It’s not surprising. A rainbow appears in the sky, seemingly out of nowhere. Then, just as mysteriously, it vanishes.

How are shadows formed?  In Peter Pan by J. M. Barrie, Peter loses his shadow when Nana the dog grabs it as Peter escapes out a window. Finding the shadow, Nana’s owner, Mrs. Darling, rolls it up and puts it in a drawer for safekeeping. Real shadows are more ephemeral. Try to grab a shadow, and your hand will simply pass into its shade. Try to jump on your own shadow, and it jumps with you, ever connected to your feet.

Bright yellow flames on the birthday candles studding an iced cake. Dusky blue flames circling the burner of a gas stove. Dancing yellow-orange flames crackling over wood in the fireplace, with flashes of red, green, and blue. Fire comes in a rainbow of colors, some rarely seen outside a science lab.

On a sunny day, the sky is blue, the clouds white, and the Sun a normal, if a bit boring, yellowish-white. But at sunset, white clouds and blue sky turn pink and orange and purple, and the Sun glows orange red.

Why is the sky blue? The sunlight that lights up the daytime sky is white. So why isn’t the sky a brilliant white?