Periodic Flow
Making up 78% of the Earth's atmosphere, this element is paradoxically essential to all life, yet cannot be used directly by most living organisms in its pure atmospheric form.
What is Nitrogen?
Despite its country being one of the most visited tourist destinations on Earth, many people are surprised to learn that this relatively modest city is its capital rather than the far more famous Barcelona.
What is Madrid, Spain?
This satisfying sweet treat is often given out in "fun size" on Halloween, but it would take the average person over an hour to walk off, despite being just two bites.
What is a Snickers Bar?
This board game, invented in 1935 during the Great Depression, tasks players with buying and trading properties until their opponents are financially ruined.
What is Monopoly?
Botanically a fruit but treated as a vegetable, this cool, watery garden staple is a key ingredient in tzatziki and a unique Gatorade flavor.
What is a Cucumber?
Despite being the second most abundant element in the entire universe, this gas is surprisingly scarce on Earth, and scientists have been warning for decades that we may eventually run out of it entirely.
What is Helium?
This South American capital, nestled between the Andes Mountains and the Pacific coast, is the largest city in its country and one of the most visited destinations on the continent.
What is Santiago, Chile?
Despite their often derogatory prefix, these pervasive pollutants have been found in human blood, lungs, and even placentas. Researchers believe that nowhere on Earth has been left untouched.
What are Microplastics?
This British author is best known for his dystopian novel, often assigned in high school, describing the oppression of a totalitarian surveillance state.
Who is George Orwell?
Running against this type of opponent is considered an uphill battle, as they already hold the office, the name recognition, and the fundraising advantage.
What is an Incumbent?
This element's symbol, Pb, derives from the Latin word Plumbum, a word so associated with this element's use in ancient Roman pipes that it permanently entered the English language as the root of a common plumbing term.
What is Lead?
This capital city sits on two continents simultaneously, divided by a famous strait that has made it one of the most strategically contested cities in all of human history.
What is Istanbul, Turkey?
This "little" gland, sitting at the base of your brain, no bigger than a pea, controls virtually every hormone in your entire body.
What is the Pituitary Gland?
This Woman's Tennis legend famously won Wimbledon in 2004 at the age of 17, and had grunts upwards of 100 decibels; louder than a lawnmower, motorcycle, and small aircraft.
Who is Maria Sharapova?
Philosophers from Aristotle to Kant have debated whether morality should be judged by intention, outcome, or this word meaning the specific conditions surrounding any given act.
What is Circumstance?
This Element got its symbol from the German word Wolfram and has the highest melting point of any known metal.
What is Tungsten?
This capital city, home to just 130,000 people, holds the distinction of being the world's northernmost capital of a sovereign state and runs almost entirely on geothermal energy pulled directly from the volcanic island it sits on.
What is Reykjavik, Iceland?
Often reported as a mere footnote in the news cycle, these periodic celestial explosions discharge energy equivalent to billions of nuclear warheads, enough to disable power grids across entire continents.
What are Solar Flares?
This Japanese aesthetic philosophy, with no direct English translation, finds profound beauty in imperfection, impermanence, and incompleteness.
What is Wabi-Sabi?
Mountain climbers who ignore early signs of altitude sickness are warned they may do this to hypoxia long before they ever reach the summit.
What is Succumb?
Named after the country where it was discovered in 1939, this element is so radioactively unstable that its longest-lived isotope has a half-life of just 22 minutes, and scientists estimate no more than a few ounces of it exist naturally on Earth at any given moment.
What is Francium?
This capital city shares its country with a far more economically vibrant southern metropolis, a rivalry rooted in a decades-long division that only ended in 1975 when the north's forces completed one of the most dramatic military victories of the Cold War era.
What is Hanoi, Vietnam?
Though contained entirely within your digestive tract, the ecosystem living inside your body contains more individual organisms than there are stars in the Milky Way.
What is the Gut Microbiome?
This cognitive bias, extensively studied by Daniel Kahneman, describes the human tendency to weigh potential losses far more heavily than equivalent gains, a quirk that influences everything from investing to relationship decisions.
What is Loss Aversion?
Early mobile phones, Victorian era diving suits, and the original Apple desktop computer are all frequently cited by design historians as examples of functional technology, but undeniably, this.
What is Cumbersome?