Capsules

Surface Tension

The tendency of a liquid surface to contract to the smallest possible area, because a molecule at the surface has fewer neighbours to attract it than…

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Aug 4, 2026

Nitrogen Fixation

Air is nearly eighty percent nitrogen and almost nothing can use it. Breaking the bond that holds the molecule together is what makes proteins and…

The Ideal Gas Law

One equation relating the pressure, volume, temperature and quantity of a gas. It is an approximation that no real gas obeys exactly, it is accurate…

Hypothesis

The Alkaline Vent Hypothesis

The proposal that life began in alkaline hydrothermal vents on the ocean floor, where mineral chimneys provided compartments and a natural proton…

Hypothesis

The RNA World Hypothesis

The proposal that early life used RNA for both heredity and catalysis, before DNA and proteins divided those jobs between them. It solves a genuine…

Spectroscopy

Every element absorbs and emits light at a unique set of wavelengths. Reading those wavelengths identifies what something is made of without touching…

Osmosis

Water moves across a membrane from where solutes are dilute to where they are concentrated. It requires no pump and no energy input, it generates…

Enzyme Catalysis

Enzymes speed up chemical reactions by factors that reach ten to the power of seventeen, at body temperature and neutral pH, without being consumed.…

X-ray Crystallography

A technique for determining the arrangement of atoms in a solid by firing X-rays at a crystal and reading the pattern they scatter into. It has…

Ocean Acidification

The ocean absorbs roughly a quarter of the carbon dioxide released by human activity, and dissolved carbon dioxide makes seawater more acidic. The…

Theory

Protein Folding

A protein is manufactured as a linear chain of amino acids and only works once it has folded into a specific three-dimensional shape. How the chain…

Contested

Graphene

Graphene is a single layer of carbon atoms arranged in a hexagonal lattice, one atom thick. Its measured properties are extraordinary and not in…

Radiocarbon Dating

Radiocarbon dating measures how much carbon-14 remains in something that was once alive, and converts that into an age. Developed by Willard Libby in…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviewsJun 22, 2026

Theory· Scientific

Chemical Bonding

Chemical bonding is the theory of how atoms join together to form the molecules and materials that make up the world. The forces that hold atoms…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviewsJun 22, 2026

Water Is H2O

Water is made of molecules, each consisting of two hydrogen atoms joined to a single oxygen atom, the composition captured in the familiar formula…

Theory· Scientific

Stellar Nucleosynthesis

Stellar nucleosynthesis is the theory explaining where the chemical elements come from. It holds that the stars are the furnaces in which almost all…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviewsJun 20, 2026

byCapsule0 votes0 reviewsJun 12, 2026

Radioactive Decay

Radioactive decay is the process by which unstable atomic nuclei spontaneously break down, releasing energy and particles and transforming into other…

Theory

Crystallography

Crystallography is the science of crystals: how their atoms are arranged in orderly, repeating patterns, and how that hidden order gives crystals…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviewsJun 12, 2026

Debunked

Alchemy

Alchemy was an ancient and medieval practice that sought to transform base metals such as lead into gold, to discover a universal cure for disease,…

byCapsule0 votes0 reviewsJun 11, 2026