Watch an animation of what happens inside cookies as they bake in an oven

Cookies were originally used as low-stakes ways to test the temperature of an oven

In 7th century Persia, bakers used small mounds of dough to test the heat in ovens before baking larger cakes. Afterward, they'd add honey, nuts, and other items to the small mounds, creating early cookies.

What makes food crispy, and how science can be used to maximize this property

The fracturing texture experienced when biting into vegetable tempura, fried chicken, pastry crusts, and other foods comes from having a dehydrated, porous surface. When frying food in hot oil, trapped water vaporizes and escapes, creating tunnels and pores in the food as it dehydrates. Breading, particularly with the large, irregular shapes of panko, and leaveners can help create more air spaces.

Acrylamide forms naturally during high-heat cooking through the Maillard reaction

While studies have shown it can damage DNA and potentially cause cancer in mice, humans absorb and metabolize acrylamide at different rates, introducing uncertainty in the research's applicability to humans. Some international health agencies have nonetheless recommended avoiding darker roasts when cooking starchy foods.

Microwave ovens heat food by agitating certain molecules with non-ionizing light

Molecules with resonant frequencies within the microwave range vibrate, producing heat between adjacent matter, just as hands warm when rubbed together. The mesh in front of an oven's door confines the microwaves to the container, while the rotating plate allows different parts of food to travel through regions of maximum vibration.

Freezer burn is the result of moisture leaving ice cream

The ice cream death knell occurs when water crystals melt and then refreeze on the surface of the treat, creating a crunchy (but far from delectable) shell. The best way to prevent this unfortunate outcome is by storing your ice cream in a freezer that’s colder than 0°F.

Barbecue relies on a unique scientific equation

Barbecue's distinct flavor starts with an interaction between the heat source and food, which creates a Maillard Reaction—better known to diners as those crunchy, caramelized bits on the outside.

How to cook food with lasers

Creative Machines Lab at Columbia Engineering have developed a system of software-controlled lasers to cook food with precision, retain moisture with the final-cooked product, brown food within its original packaging, and create an entirely new meal creation process for a consumer. Watch this three-minute video to see for yourself.

Watch the iterative process of successfully printing a slice of vegan cheesecake

3D printing food requires integrating ingredients with a variety of properties, which may not all resist the physical stress of stacking. This means successful 3D printing of food may require rethinking how ingredients are layered and modifying ratios of each, potentially sacrificing taste for structural integrity.

Spontaneous combustion involves an object igniting on its own

Even without matches, sparks, or external flames, exothermic chemical or biological reactions can increase the internal temperature of objects to the point where they reach a threshold temperature that can cause them to catch fire. Running batteries and fermenting bacteria within compressed materials can build this heat and cause combustion.

What's inside an Oreo?

If you look at the ingredient list on your Oreo packaging, you may discover that you don't recognize—or can't even pronounce—some of the listed ingredients, let alone know what they're used for! For instance: Did you know that soy lecithin helps makes oil and water mix? Or that cocoa processed with alkali becomes darker and less acidic? A food scientist breaks down what's inside an Oreo in this seven-minute video.

Bath bombs can produce endothermic reactions that cool water

In bath bombs containing citric acid and sodium bicarbonate, water facilitates the reaction between the bicarbonate and acid, providing energy as the salt dissolves. The loss of energy in the water reduces the average speed of the water molecules, reducing the temperature of the bath.

Explaining the Leidenfrost effect, where water can hover and move against gravity

Water droplets can glide across surfaces whose temperatures are well above water's boiling point. This heat instantly vaporizes the bottom of the droplet, creating a layer of steam that the rest of the droplet rides and bounces upon. This can be seen when sprinkling water on skillets to determine if the surface is hot enough to cook on.

Chemistry-informed advice for cooking pasta, including how to prevent clumping noodles

On a molecular level, pasta dough consists of protein structures that hold starch molecules, and the starches absorb water during cooking, forming a gel that softens the pasta. Pasta should not be rinsed after cooking. Instead, some of the pasta water should be added to the pasta sauce, as the gelatinous starch will help the sauce stick to the pasta.

The history of many kitchen appliances involves unexpected discoveries and applications, including wartime radar turned hamster defroster and replacing an 'ice king' with heat-stealing boxes.

Watch a demonstration of the greenhouse effect in carbon dioxide

Some online experiments involving glass containers of air and carbon dioxide show no temperature differences upon exposure to infrared light because glass blocks that type of radiation. Using plastic bags, carbon dioxide can be demonstrated to absorb infrared radiation, thereby trapping energy and confirming its role as a greenhouse gas.

View thermophiles found in Hot Springs National Park, including nanobacteria and ostracods

Most organisms in this subset of extremophiles live at temperatures between 60 and 80 degrees Celsius (140 to 176 degrees Fahrenheit), which is hot enough to unfold proteins needed for most biochemical reactions. In thermophiles, these molecules, including those needed to replicate DNA during cellular division, are tightly packed and held by stronger bonds to resist changes in shape.

Learn how your body is, scientifically, like a firework with its own slow, controlled burn.

Ads follow you around the internet through cookies

A technology called “cookies” enables advertisers to essentially team up and follow your behavior around on the internet. This video explains why it seems like ads seem to follow you as you go from website to website—as well as data privacy advocates’ war against cookies.

The role of fire in the evolution of humanity's big brains

Roughly 1.5 million years ago, the brain size of our hominin ancestors exploded. To understand why, Richard Wrangham posited the cooking hypothesis, arguing the adoption of fire as a means to cook food had a lasting impact on our ability to digest...

Kids often grow out of allergies to milk and eggs

Between 60% and 80% of kids with allergies to milk or eggs outgrow them by age 16. The immune system doesn’t always recognize and respond to baked forms of these allergens, so when kids eat muffins and other cooked food products, their immune system may become more habituated to them and overcome food sensitivities. Aging out of other allergies is less common.

Graphite is a powerful conductor and heat-resistant material

Graphite can withstand temperatures of more than 3,000 degrees Celsius, allowing it to contain molten metal in steel production. Rosalind Franklin identified which carbon compounds become graphite and laid the groundwork for their use in industrial applications.

The chemistry of ancient tacos

This 16-minute podcast explores the chemistry of Mesoamerica's corn tortillas, which involve a 3,500-year-old chemical process called nixtamalization that releases vitamins, including niacin, one of the essential B vitamins. This process also makes the tortillas softer and more delicious. Corn tortillas were a staple in Mesoamerica, and the archaeologist interviewed in this podcast argues cultures like the Aztecs and Maya wouldn't have thrived without nixtamalization.

Temperature is a value that controls how predictable or creative an LLM's output is

In large language models, temperature adjusts the randomness in text generation by modifying how often words with lower probabilities are selected next in the sequence. Lower temperatures produce more obvious outputs while higher temperatures produce more creative responses.

The boiling temperature of water decreases with increasing elevation because the molecules need less energy to overcome the lower atmospheric pressure associated with thinner air.

How fermentation works

Alcoholic fermentation is the process where yeast transforms grape sugars into ethanol, creating wine. Microscopic fungi (commonly known as yeast) metabolize sugars, producing alcohol and carbon dioxide. Fermentation's speed and temperature impact wine's flavor and style: cooler temps suit fruity whites, while warmer ones enhance red's tannins. Fermentation stops when sugars are depleted or by temperature extremes, and sometimes yeast removal yields sweeter wines. Get a quick breakdown of the process with this easy explainer.

Counting calories with a ballerina

Ballet dancer Theresa Farrell meticulously manages her diet to achieve her performance weight goal for the American Contemporary Ballet season in Los Angeles. She tracks calories, relies on pre-packaged meals, and calculates every intake. This regimen allows her to stay focused on training and rigorous dance routines, ensuring she's prepared physically for performances. Watch a day in the life here.

The air around lightning can be five times hotter than the sun's surface

The rapid discharge of electricity—flowing electrons—between oppositely charged regions across a narrow filament can raise temperatures to 30,000 degrees Celsius (54,000 degrees Fahrenheit). If lightning strikes a tree, the speed of the temperature spike can almost immediately turn all its water into pressurized steam, causing it to explode.

A 3D animation brings Pompeii's final day to life

This animation recreates the city from a rooftop vantage point, showing how an ordinary day turned deadly as Vesuvius erupted. The most chilling moment comes when a 900-degree cloud of toxic gas engulfs Pompeii in seconds.

Scientists can determine Earth's past climate conditions by analyzing air trapped in microscopic bubbles within ice cores—columns of compressed snow layers that build up over hundreds of thousands of years.

At the beginning of the 20th century, a group of young men ate standard American food—replete with food additives like borax and formaldehyde—as part of government research to better understand food safety.

To reduce wrinkles in clothing, research recommends gentle wash cycles with more water and tumble drying with smaller loads and longer times.

Radioactive elements can introduce software errors because the ionizing radiation they produce can detach electrons from atoms, and computer code relies on the distribution of electrons.

When you complete a CAPTCHA on a website to prove you are human, you may be unknowingly training algorithms for self-driving cars, whose systems require training data to help identify crosswalks, bicycles, and other outdoor objects.

Up to a million Girl Scouts sell about 200 million cookie boxes every spring, generating $800 million, largely because refusing a child is frowned upon

Bone marrow (soft tissue found inside certain bones) generates roughly 500 billion new blood cells each day

A pickleball's loud 'pop' sound can reach 120 decibels, which is equivalent to a hammer hitting a nail

Objects can be 3D printed with light by projecting 2D computerized tomography (CT) scans onto rotating cylinders of resin, which solidify upon exposure.

All rainbows are 'raincircles' caused by water droplets separating white sunlight into a spectrum of colors, but Earth's surface blocks the bottom half of the circle from our line of sight.

The Brothers Grimm were lawyers before they were storytellers, but became interested in fairy tales as they began investigating how rules and customs had been passed down through cultures.

Netflix profits when you're not watching, and its movies are designed that way—read a detail-rich critical essay exposing lesser-known Netflix takes

Poison ivy is in the same family as mangoes, cashews, and pistachios—and they all produce oily urushiol in their raw, unprocessed state—but they are typically prepared in ways to avoid causing human discomfort.

Domino's Pizza's 30-minute delivery guarantee was responsible for the chain's 1980s surge, but it was discontinued after the company was found liable for delivery driver accidents.

The original copy of the Declaration of Independence is not a pristine document, and even features a smudged anonymous handprint in the bottom left corner.

Double world record holder Hunter Ewen helped conquer his fear of balloons, called globophobia, by training to win Guinness World Record titles for balloon inflation.

Gerrymandering works through two techniques: cracking opposing voters across districts to dilute their power, and packing them into a few to waste their votes in lopsided majorities.

After her fellow cult members tried to kill her with an LSD-infused hamburger, one member of the Manson Family, the murderous cult led by Charles Manson, decided to testify against the group's leader.

Watch a 1934 short film starring jazz legend Cab Calloway, a major figure in the Harlem Renaissance's music scene

Hotels in Cannes, the glamorous city on the French Riviera, hire hawks to ward off seagulls during the city's famous film festival.

Memecoins are a type of cryptocurrency—a form of digital currency with a wide variety of uses—created around popular 'memes,' or viral internet jokes.

View the ten deadliest tornadoes in US history.