topics: |  science | physics

the science inside a house:
the static between radio stations, to the millions of pillow mites that
snuggle up with us every night, from the warm electric fields wrapped around
a light bulb filament, to what really makes the garden roses red.

[How does a fly land upside-down on a ceiling?]
Flies, like most airplanes, lose their lift when they try to go through the
air bottom-side up, and become not flies, but sinks. How does a fly get
around this problem? Watch one closely and you can see what it
does. Proceeding at altitude high in the living room the fly lifts up two of
its front legs as high as they will go in front of it. It's the position
Superman takes when exiting phone booths, and it's ideal for what's to
come. As soon as these two front legs contact the ceiling the fly will
acrobatically tuck up the rest of its body and let momentum rotate it to the
ceiling.