Why Smoke Always Blows in Your Face Around a Fire

Let’s solve some real-life mysteries! Why does smoke always follow you around when you’re camping? Why do earphones tangle in our pockets, and many more...

You look at a plug, and it almost looks as if it was smiling at you. Why do humans see faces in objects? This is a real phenomenon, and its scientific name is “facial pareidolia.” Scientists revealed that we see faces in everyday objects because our brains are accustomed to processing objects for emotional expression.

We do this with real faces, but our brain occasionally applies this conduct to objects too. This mechanism might be developed as a result of the need to assess whether a person is a friend or an imposter quickly. Next time you see a face in an object, remember that it’s a human brain defect.

Why is there a groove on the underside of some mugs? People often encounter small pools of water on the underside of mugs when they open the dishwasher to empty it. This miraculous little groove under the cup makes the water slide when the cup is in the dishwasher.

Some aluminum foil boxes have tabs on the sides. Have you ever noticed them? They’re designed to keep your roll of aluminum foil neat and organized in the box. Push them in, and you’re done! Without pushing those tabs in, the foil roll is more likely to pop out of the box as you use it.

I know, two-colored erasers aren’t that popular anymore. Time for some nostalgia. Do these erasers just randomly have different colors? Nope, there’s a purpose behind it. You might be familiar with its ability to tear the paper to shreds, but that’s not it. The blue side works on more durable pieces of paper that contain writings in pen ink. That is why it has a rough texture compared to the other side. I must admit, though, the use of this is limited.

Here’s a fact about bubble wrap. We know it as packaging and shipping material, but it was originally intended to serve as some kind of wallpaper. In 1957 two inventors were looking for a new wall covering and stuck two bath curtains together. This is how the first bubble wrap was created. The sales however didn’t go as they expected. Luckily, later they realized that this new invention could be used in packaging. An almost failed invention turned into a revolution when it changed its field of use.

Couch and sofa. Do you use these words interchangeably? These two are actually two separate things. A couch is a piece of furniture that has no arms used for lying down. It comes from the French word “couche.” Sofa, on the other hand, originated from the Arabic word “suffah.” It has a wooden bench covered in cushions and pillows. It was designed for 4–5 people to sit on it together. So it’s larger than a couch.

A study reveals that people have an average of $28 in change at their homes that they forgot about. This number can even reach $56 sometimes. Time to take a closer look at the inner part of your couch cushions and pockets of the clothes!

Now, let’s gather around the campfire. The smoke pokes your eye, so you change your seat. What? It found you in your new position. If you also think you’re followed by smoke, it’s not your wild imagination. The smoke really does follow you.

When you sit near the campfire, your body interferes with the fire’s airflow. It blocks the fresh air from moving toward the fire. This creates a pressure difference between your body and the fire. When you change your position, the smoke works its way back to you. The air moves to restore equilibrium through the movement of the wind. How to avoid it? Well, there’re a couple of options.

You can trick the fire by constantly changing your position around the fire, but where’s the fun in that? You wanna have time with friends and eat marshmallows, not run from the smoke. A better option is to sit around the fire, leaving equal space between friends. This makes the air pressure pretty much the same in front of each of you, so the smoke goes up instead of toward one of you.

Toilet paper wasn’t always a round roll. When inventor Joseph Gayetty introduced it as bathroom tissue, he sold it in a flat version, you know, single sheets on a pack. Then another inventor came up with the idea of selling toilet paper in rolls. Voilà!! By the 1880s, it was already popular.

So what’s the mystery behind tangled earphones? As soon as you put them in your pocket or bag, they somehow turn themselves into an enigma in the blink of an eye. To find out why, a group of physicists experimented. They put strings that have different amounts of stiffness in a box. They say that complex knots often form within seconds, and stiffer strings are less likely to get knotted up. It’s related to the length of the cable and the amount of ’agitation’ the cable is subjected to.

Where does the name of the Black Sea come from? Ancient Greeks called it the “Inhospitable Sea.” It was a fair name because it was difficult to navigate there. In time the sea became a safe place for them. So, Greek colonists renamed it as “Hospitable Sea.” There are a handful of hypotheses for why it was eventually called the Black Sea. Due to its depth, the waters look dark.

Interestingly many countries that have a side to the Mediterranean Sea named it white in their own languages. The Greeks, the Bulgarians, and the Turks all called the Mediterranean Sea ‘white’. Contrary to the Black Sea, the Mediterranean Sea’s waters are a lighter color even though those seas had no big depth difference from the Black Sea.

Why does the shower curtain blow in? Sometimes you might feel like your shower curtain is low-key attacking you when you’re just trying to get clean. Surprisingly, even scientists don’t have a clear explanation for this one. One theory claims that temperature differences inside and outside the shower lower the air pressure around the curtain, so it moves toward the water.

There are easy solutions to this problem. You can install a curved shower curtain rod. This will keep the curtain away from the water. It’s less likely for the curtain to get pulled in. If you don’t want to buy new curtains, you can simply buy magnets. Craft stores sell strong magnets, and they’ll do. Then you can mount them at the edges of the curtain to keep it in place.

The top buttonholes on some shirts are horizontal, not vertical, but why? The first clothing designers noticed that the first and the last buttons were the most difficult ones to keep buttoned throughout the day. They changed the hole’s direction to ensure that these 2 would never come undone.

Why is the sky blue? Younger me asked this question to grown-ups. Basically, sunlight reaches our planet’s atmosphere and is scattered in every direction with the help of the gases and particles in the air. It’s related to wave distances. Blue light is scattered more than the other colors since it travels as shorter, smaller waves. That makes our sky blue most of the time in the day.

People go everywhere with their cell phones. Researchers have shown how germs are having a party on an average cell phone. To be precise, more than 17,000 bacterial gene copies are found on the phones of high school students. Hang on; there’s more. Scientists found that cell phones carry 10 times more bacteria than most toilet seats.

Charles Darwin didn’t just study evolution, he was also the pioneer of designing office furniture. He is the one who added wheels to his chair. A couple more decades had to pass before wheels in an office chair became a standard thing.

The gas gauge arrow in some cars indicates which side the gas pump is located on. Imagine you rent a car; before pulling into the wrong side of the gas pump, you can easily detect which gas pump you should go to. Just look down at your gas gauge for the arrow. And there you have it. Anything else you wanna know to feed your curiosity?