Of course it won’t! The reason we don’t believe that it will is because we can’t see any reason why it should. We don’t believe things unless we have a good reason. But I would expect people who owned expensive cars to be, on average, healthier than people who own old, inexpensive cars or no… Continue reading 16.10 Will driving an expensive car make you healthier?

I suggest that you read post 16.4 before this. You have probably been taught that the sun doesn’t move around the earth. But you can see that it does! What’s happening? Let’s start with what you can see. This is always a good place to start. It’s much better than blindly accepting what somebody else… Continue reading 16.9 Does the sun move around the earth?

This isn’t a true story. I wrote it to show that we should view predictions based on scientific observations with extreme caution. A biologist decided to study the rabbit population on a small farm. So he decided on a reasonably reliable way to assess the number of wild rabbits living on the farm at the… Continue reading 16.8 Predictions: be careful what you believe

Why should we bother to think about writing numbers? You’ve probably been writing numbers, without any problems, since you were about 5 years old. There are two reasons. The first is that writing very large numbers like 1 000 000 000 000 is a pain – there must be a better way of doing it.… Continue reading 16.7 Writing numbers: it’s not as simple as it seems

Before you read this post, I suggest that you read post 16.5. At the centre of every atom there is a dense core called its nucleus. However, some nuclei are unstable and spontaneously disintegrate to form a more stable nucleus, giving rise to a different kind of atom. This process is called radioactive decay. We… Continue reading 16.6 Exponential decay: radioactivity