Everyday Science

Site Name

Everyday Science

Description

For interdisciplinary questions about the world around us, examining reality from an XKCD perspective.

Topics

Topics covered would include:

• Lay science questions about common household objects (e.g. "Why is icing sugar less dense than granulated sugar?", or "why can cheese both harden and soften when left out?") or easily observed aspects of the natural world ("Why is the sky blue?"), especially if they are seemingly simple ideas that need an interdisciplinary examination to answer in detail

• The inner workings of household appliances and gadgets and commonly-encountered objects like street lights (i.e., the sort of things examined on this Youtube channel)

• Designs for simple DIY devices, furniture etc., and the engineering considerations involved (e.g. why diagonal bracing improves the strength of furniture and how to incorporate it in a design, or what materials/thicknesses are required to support a safe load)

• Applied mathematics around the home, e.g. "home economics" questions like "how cheap does X have to be before I should consider substituting it for Y in my recipe?"

Exclusions

These topics or types of posts would be out of scope:

• Questions with a legal or political aspect, even if they have a practical consequence (e.g. "what driving speeds are 'safe'?", "why is the tax code so complex?")

• Questions related to the operation of a business

• Questions about devices that are neither commonly used around a modern household, nor interacted with on a daily basis either by urbanites (city infrastructure) or rural dwellers (farm equipment)

• Questions purely about budgeting, that don't relate to the specific nature of a specific good or service being budgeted for (such questions should go to Accounting, Finance or Mathematics)

• Localized or regional questions that don't require calculation or scientific knowledge to answer (e.g. "Which grocery chain offers the best price on X?"; but e.g. calculating unit prices and factoring in transportation costs for a hypothetical situation would be on topic, and "should I have groceries delivered or pick them up myself?" should work as well)

• Speculative or theoretical questions belong on Scientific Speculation instead; this site would be for understanding actually observed phenomena and solving practical problems related thereto.

Special Features

Probably none.

Overlaps

Overlap with Physics, Cooking, Mathematics and Electrical Engineering all seem possible. Cooking and food-oriented questions in the new site should be focused on the science behind cooking rather than on actually working out recipes and such; similarly, the technical questions should have an explicit layperson orientation. The idea is to sit at the existing intersection of these sites and have a place to marvel at the subtle complexity of the world around us.

Some overlap may also be possible with the new Home Improvement proposal.

posted 8 months ago

8mo ago

Karl Knechtel‭

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