Everyday moments hide powerful physics that amaze and inspire 2025
From the rising sun to the formation of ice, all the events happening in our everyday surroundings on a daily basis are full of magical phenomenon based on science. We observe them on a daily basis but do not even notice it. But if we just sit back and watch, then we would be able to realize that science also has a vital role in determining how and why one does something like that. This book shows us the science involved in some of the daily things we all do on an everyday basis and provides us with an idea about what forces are at play around us.
THE SECRET OF RISE AND SET OF SUN
Sunrise and sunset are not merely a beautiful moment; they are also proofs of the rotation of the Earth. The Earth rotates on its axis within 24 hours, and different parts of the world are exposed to sunlight at different times. When your place is moving towards sunlight, then it is sunrise, and when it is moving away from sunlight, then it is sunset.
But the surprising fact is that the sun itself does not “rise” and “set.” That is due to an optical illusion resulting from the rotation of Earth. Reddish-orange color at sunrise and sunset is a result of a phenomenon known as Rayleigh scattering. When sunlight travels through the top layers of Earth’s atmosphere at an angle, the small blue wavelengths get scattered away and the large red and orange colors are retained.
WHY ICE FLOATS ON WATER
Ice floats on the top of water in a glass. Most things, when they become frozen, are heavier. Solids are heavier than liquids but not water. Water is special because of the special shape of water molecules.
The molecules are essentially next to one another and are able to move around in water. When water freezes, the molecules are packed into a crystal lattice that takes up more room, and thus ice floats because it is less dense. Because of this very handy feature, aquatic life is able to survive under frozen cover in winter.
THE PHYSICS OF RAINBOWS
Rainbows are beautiful to behold, but it’s an amazing optical reason why rainbows aren’t light. Sunlight is traveling through raindrops and, in doing so, it’s being bent, reflected, and split into all its many colors. The light is slowing down, bending as it travels over to the water drop. It’s reflecting off the back of the drop and out onto itself after another bend.
The technique disintegrates white sunlight into colour pieces—red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet—to create a spectrum. The deflection angle (typically in the region of 42 degrees for red light) will give the rainbow curve. Every individual possesses his/her own unique rainbow because raindrop and position of the sun vary from individual to individual.
We perceive, hear noise, and stay alert. But have you ever stopped to consider how the noise reaches your ears? Sound is a wave of longitudinal displacement of a material such as air, water, or solid material.
When an object vibrates and makes the surrounding molecules of air vibrate. The vibrations propagate outwards in pressure waves. Your eardrums pick up the waves and send them to your brain so that you can hear them as sound. Sound is faster in solids than gases because particles are closely together in solids, thus it is quicker for vibrations to travel through solids.
WHY DO WE YAWN?
We’ve blamed yawning away due to sleep or boredom for centuries, yet there are a few scientific reasons why we yawn. One of them is that yawning actually cools the brain. When you’re extremely sleepy, the brain gets overheated, and a yawn will draw in more cold air and cool the brain in the process.
Another theory suggests yawning boosts oxygen levels in the blood. When we’re fatigued, our breathing becomes shallow. Yawning allows us to take a deep breath and increase oxygen intake. Interestingly, yawning is also contagious—a phenomenon linked to empathy and social bonding.
STATIC ELECTRICITY: THE SHOCKING TRUTH
Did you ever grab a metal doorknob and receive a small shock of electricity? That’s static electricity. That’s what happens when electric charge becomes unbalanced and comes to rest on the surface of an object. That’s all you’ll have with two things sliding against each other—like carpet and socks.
It receives electrons and is a positive one and it releases electrons and is negative. If you put your finger on a metallic conductor, charges move back and forth in a fraction of a second and leave you with that electricity shock which you sense for a fraction of time.
THE SCIENCE OF SWEATING
The body air conditioner sweats. When your body starts to get warm—due to the sun or physical activity—your head sends a signal for sweat glands to let water onto the skin’s surface. When the water evaporates, it cool your body by taking the heat with it.
Sweat is primarily water but does have salts and other chemicals in it. It ain’t the sweat that smells—it’s germs on your skin that destroy chemicals in sweat and produce stink. This beneficial role keeps us in homeostasis and from overheating.
GRAVITY AND FALLING OBJECTS
No thing, no matter how small it is, such as an apple off a tree or your phone being knocked out of your hand, doesn’t have gravity. Isaac Newton is where gravity was first discussed during the 17th century and is what pulls two masses towards each other. All of the masses travel with gravity, but the one on Earth is the strongest in between because Earth is so huge.
This is as per Newton’s laws, whereby any body falls onto the ground with the same speed regardless of the size as long as air resistance does not exist. A hammer and a feather would both reach the ground at exactly the same moment if both had been placed within a vacuum—a fact verified aboard the Apollo 15 flight to the Moon.
WHY BREAD RISES
Bread making is also a food science procedure and an art. Combining yeast, water, and flour results in the yeast beginning to ferment the sugars and form carbon dioxide as a by-product of the fermentation process. The gas bubbles trap in the gluten network of dough and make dough swell and rise.
It is heated to set and warm the texture hard and give off carbon dioxide as bubbles to create a light-textured loaf. It is a daily demonstration of biology (microbial growth) and chemistry (heat exchange and gas evolution).
MIRAGES: OPTICAL ILLUSIONS IN THE HEAT
If it is hot outside, you’re driving down the road and look down the road and you see water or something shiny-appearing, but when you drive closer in your car, it disappears. What you were absolutely sure that you were looking at was a mirage, an optical illusion due to refraction of light. When the surface is very hot, it heats the air directly above the surface. Light travels more quickly in hot thin air and is refracted upwards into cold air.
Your brain interprets this bent light as a reflection, like reflections off water, thereby creating the illusion. Mirages are not specific to deserts-they will be created anywhere that heat gradients are large enough.
WHY DO LEAVES CHANGE COLOR?
In fall, green leaves are converted into dazzling bright orange, red, and yellow vistas with changes in light, temperature, and plant chemistry. Leaves look green during vegetative growth because they have chlorophyll, a pigment that enables plants to absorb light and produce energy in the form of photosynthesis.
Night and low temperature facilitate the breakdown of chlorophyll, releasing pigments’ colors like carotenoids (yellow, orange) and anthocyanins (purple, red). They were present all along but suppressed by the predominance of green pigment by chlorophyll.
THE ROLE OF FRICTION IN DAILY LIFE
Friction is a force of resistance that shows up when two surfaces meet and rub up against one another. While sometimes the arch-nemesis, it’s also necessary to the day-to-day, daily life. Without it, one would not be able to walk, drive, or even hold something in reach.
Friction generates heat—cold hands rubbed together—and creates grip and traction. But at the cost of gear wear and tear and energy to be overcome in machinery, and thus lubricants are employed to restrict its impact.
CONCLUSION
Science controls all the forces of our daily life consciously or unconsciously. From electricity to gravity, from sunset colors to the fizz in the soda, all such pervasive phenomena are controlled by mind-boggling laws. It is the science behind these that appreciates our life experience but yet enables us to make appropriate judgments in life. Next time you catch a glimpse of a rainbow in front of you, a shiver wind passing by, or while baking a cake—just remember that there is indeed science behind all this.