Deceptor vans? How does a TV detector van work? Surely a TV, being a receiver, emits very little electromagnetic radiation and so is indistinguishable from any other electrical appliance. Do TVs emit their own special signal? Or are detector vans simply bogeymen used to scare us into paying our licence fee?
Bouncing rice: When I was eating rice recently a grain of rice fell into a glass of fizzy lemonade and sank to the bottom of the glass. It then went up again and down, and kept on doing this for about ten minutes. Why?
Troublesome tin: Why does corned beef come in that uniquely shaped tin which is impossible to open when the key is missing (as it often is)?
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Ironed out: What are the physical and/or chemical processes that take place when the creases in clothes are removed by ironing? Is the process independent of the type of material ironed?
Colourless: Why is static on a colour television only black and white?
Making waves: Why does a boat鈥檚 wake last so long in a fluid as 鈥渞unny鈥� as water? If you go to the Lake District and climb Cat鈥檚 Bells you can look down on Derwent Water and watch the ferries. Each wake is many times the length of the boat producing it and lasts for a long time.
Blowing bubbles: Why is it that when you have a bubble bath, all the bubbles disappear when you use ordinary soap? Is it possible to stop this from happening?
Sucked in: I often clean paint brushes in white spirit and then keep the white spirit in glass jars with plastic lids. After a while, typically a few weeks, I find that the lids have bent inwards. They have not simply softened and sagged as they are quite hard. The effect is quite marked, with a depression of over 5 millimetres in a lid with a diameter of 7 centimetres.