Helen Czerski Quotes

A toaster can teach you some of the most fundamental laws of physics...

[T]onic water glow[s] under ultraviolet... because the ... is fluorescent. ... ink is also acting as an ultraviolet detector...

[A] nugget of physics... isn't just an interesting fact: it's a tool... useful anywhere...

Look at... cyclists; their high visibility jackets... oddly bright... as though they're glowing... It's... the same trick the scorpions are playing...

[S]corpions... have pigments in their that take in light that we can't see and give back visible light... . The blue-green glow is thought to be an adaptation to help... at dusk. ...[I]t can detect its own glow and so... needs to do... better... hiding. It's an effective... signalling system...

[S]imilarity in patterns is... a clue that hints at something... fundamental. ...[A] systematic basis for all such formations... This process of discovery is science: the continual refinement and testing of our understanding, alongside the digging that reveals even more...

If you pour milk into your tea and give it a quick stir... liquids mix in beautiful swirling patterns... not... merging instantaneously. ...If you look down on Earth from space, you... often see... similar swirls in the clouds... where warm... and cold air waltz around... instead of mixing directly. In Britain... they form at the boundary between cold polar air... and warm tropical air... We know these swirls as depressions or s...

We live on the edge, perched on the boundary between planet Earth and the rest of the Universe. ...Every human civilization has seen the stars, but no one has touched them. Our home on Earth is the opposite: messy... full of things... we touch and tweak... The physical world is full of startling variety... But this diversity isn't random. Our world is full of patterns.

So penguins use bubbles, and I think that's brilliant!

And... it changes the ecosystem because the penguins can then survive in conditions they would not otherwise be able to survive in.

They are reducing... drag, which is one of the most complicated problems in , and the penguins just... do it.

So this is brilliant, because it's this wonderful interaction of all sorts of things. It's a physical process. The reason the bubbles come out as the penguin swims up is because the pressure is decreasing, and the bubbles are expanding, so they can come out of the feathers.

[A]s they're starting that swim upwards they... unfluff their feathers and... release... a coat of bubbles... [T]hose bubbles... are inducing . It's just like the same reason a golf ball has dimples, the bubbles are reducing the drag on the penguin and a penguin that is producing bubbles can travel 50% faster... So it stands a much better chance of getting past the leopard seals now, onto the land.

And then they go down, and they go hunting for fish... [I]t comes time to go back up to the surface and hop out onto the ice past the s.

[T]here are these very famous images in of s swimming, and they've always got these trailing bubbles. ...[N]o one really thought about it until a few years ago at the University of Bangor, a couple of fluid dynamicists... had a bit of think, and it turns out that what the penguins do is really... cool! ...They are constantly preening. The feathers are the most important thing a penguin has because they are its insulation and they are a large part of how hydrodynamic it is. How easy it swims through the water. ...Before the penguin goes down to dive, and they can be quite long dives, the penguins all fluff up their feathers and trap gas... bubbles underneath.