This media is in the public domain (free of copyright restrictions). You can copy, modify, and distribute this work without contacting the Smithsonian. For more information, visit the Smithsonian's ...
How does a rat know its position in a maze? The key lies in the hippocampus, where particular neurons called place cells communicate with each other to help the animal sense where it is. A standard ...
This cut, folded, and glued tan paper model is a polyhedron of some complexity. At the top, at the bottom, and on all four sides is a figure with faces that are two irregular pentagons and four small ...
Limestone spheroids, enigmatic lithic artifacts from the ancient past, have perplexed archaeologists for years. While they span from the Oldowan to the Middle Palaeolithic, the purpose behind their ...
For more than a century, scientists have treated chemistry as the master key to building new materials, tuning bonds and charges to coax atoms into useful patterns. A new wave of research is quietly ...
Modern physics began with a sweeping unification: in 1687 Isaac Newton showed that the existing jumble of disparate theories describing everything from planetary motion to tides to pendulums were all ...