The shade of a tree
Sheltering under a tree just sounds like common sense, but actually it’s all about photosynthesis. A sun shade helps keep the rays off, but the heat gets absorbed in the shade and some of it comes through, which will warm you up. On the other hand, a canopy of leaves on a tree absorbs the same energy but then uses it to make the sugars it needs to grow. All this means less heat is passed through to you and you end up staying much cooler.
The dribbling teapot
To avoid the frustration of making a pot of tea, pouring a cup and finding half of it has dribbled on to the table, apply a bit of science. The definitive French research on this subject has three solutions. First, pour the tea more quickly, as more speed of the liquid means less dribble. Second, teapots with a sharp lip on the spout, like metal ones, dribble less. Finally, apply a bit of wax to the inside bottom of the spout lip to create a water-repelling surface.
No shocks
The static shock you get when you clamber out of your car is about 30,000 volts of electricity. It sounds a lot, but aside from surprise and pain, it won’t cause any damage. It happens because of your clothes and the material on the car seat. As you swivel around to get out, the motion generates a huge build-up of static electricity. To avoid the shock, before you get up from the seat, place your hand on the metal frame of the door to discharge the static.
Tearless onions
Onions make you cry because a bunch of chemistry starts as soon as you slice them. The result is a gas that floats to your eyeballs and turns on pain nerves, making you cry. To avoid tears you need to stop the gas getting to your eyes. To do this, cut them quickly using a sharp knife and put the onions into a lidded saucepan to trap the gas, or switch on an extractor fan. Otherwise, wear swim goggles.
Clearing the fog
Do not turn your heaters on full blast to demist your car windscreen on a cold morning. Since the car is cold, and the heaters take time to warm up, this won’t help. Instead, turn the air conditioning up high, directed towards the windscreen. This not only cools the air, but dries it as well. Cold, dry air will demist the window more quickly than hot air that’s not yet hot.
Keeping it fresh
Never put bread in the fridge. The flour in bread is almost entirely made up of a chemical called starch, which can take a number of slightly different forms depending on the temperature you keep it at. In a fridge at 5oC, the starch changes and sucks up and locks away some of the water in the bread. So if you store bread in the fridge it may keep longer, but it will taste stale more quickly. Either store it at room temperature or freeze it.
Oxygen and wine
As soon as you open a bottle of wine, the oxygen in the air starts a chemical process that turns the alcohol into vinegar. How quickly this happens depends on things like the colour of the wine and the temperature at which you keep the bottle. But once opened, you have a week at most to drink it. To delay this process, put the bottle in the fridge as the cold slows down the chemical reaction.
Make everything taste better
If you want to give anything you eat a rich, mouth-filling, meaty taste, add a bit of umami. We’re taught that there are four basic sensations of taste – sweet, sour, bitter and salt – but there are at least five. The fifth taste is called umami and is found in tomatoes, cheese, mushrooms, fish, meat and Mar
