In the air I’m breathing as I type this, there are pairs of oxygen atoms (each pair is one oxygen molecule) moving at 900 mph bumping into pairs of nitrogen atoms going at 200 mph, and then maybe bouncing off a water molecule going at over 1,000 mph.

It also makes tonic water glow under ultraviolet light, because the quinine in it is fluorescent.

Up on the high plateau, hot desert air had cooled, become more dense, and slithered downslope, just like the winds that faced Scott in Antarctica.

alveoli, the delicate part of the lungs where oxygen and carbon dioxide are exchanged into and out of the blood,

A sperm whale has twice as much haemoglobin as a human, and about ten times as much myoglobin (the protein used to store energy in the muscles).

If you double the temperature you still double the volume (if you keep the pressure constant).

The reason that popcorn pops and other grains don’t is that all the others have porous shells.

the total amount of spin of the egg white stays the same because it had no reason to change. This is known as conservation of angular momentum.

This book is about linking the little things we see every day with the big world we live in.