Every month, there’s more cool science than we can cover. Here’s June’s best that nearly slipped through.
The science of the scissors feint. With the World Cup on, Japanese researchers studied what makes soccer’s scissors feint work. They used high-speed cameras on players of varying skill levels. Key finding: raw speed isn’t everything. The best players manage distance to defenders while maintaining body speed, coordinate knee flexions for explosive acceleration, and keep minimal foot lift with a pronounced trunk lean. Makes their movements faster and harder to read.
Separately, scientists fired this year’s Adidas Trionda World Cup ball through a wind tunnel. They found a “drag crisis” — at a certain velocity the ball suddenly speeds up because airflow shifts from smooth to turbulent. That’s why goalkeepers keep misjudging it.
A complete Herculaneum scroll decoded. The Vesuvius Challenge team has fully “virtually unrolled” scroll PHerc. 1667. It’s a philosophical treatise on ethics and moral progress. The final column names Aristocreon — a nephew of Stoic philosopher Chrysippus — dating it to the 2nd century BCE. They also recovered the title and author of a third scroll. The 660-plus scrolls were buried under volcanic mud in 79 AD and long thought unreadable.
Boron buckyballs. Scientists created a boron version of the famous carbon buckyball structure.
Poop physics. And yes — someone studied why poo has that distinctive coiled shape. Physics of feces, officially a field of study now.
