DID YOU EVER WONDER WHY THE SHOWER CURTAIN STICKS TO YOU?

Ira Flatow has a partial answer to that seemingly simple question. But after 35 years, as the host of NPR’s Science Friday, he has answers to thousands of puzzling queries. He talked recently about it with David P. Schmidt who is an assistant Professor at University of Massachusetts who wrote a paper on the subject titled "A Partial Solution to Why Shower Curtains Billow Inwards”.   According to Schmidt, the problem is really a complex one, for it also may have applications in gas turbines and other engines. He went on to tell us that the spray and the nozzle it shoots out of affect each other dramatically. As the water shoots out the droplets formed break into ever-smaller ones. They often swirl in the warm air too. With many mathematical models he describes some of the patterns the droplets took and how they created a mini horizontal hurricane. This force, on its side, seems to draw the curtain into the center of the shower where you are. Thus the curtain sticking to you.

In his wonderful new book called “Present At The Future” Ira has picked dozens of his own favorites from the past years. He interviews experts on “The String Theory in Cosmology, Dark Matter, Does God Make It Harder To Keep Religious Faith, Sleep and The Discoveries We Still Have To Make, Music and Memory, Jane Goodall and the Existence of Big Foot." And here’s an extraordinary discussion…why do airplanes really stay up there? Most of you thought we always knew the answer. Well with computer simulation it’s not exactly that way.

There are so many mysteries that we open up when we have these answers to questions about science that there may be no end to the program subjects Ira Flatow can investigate with living experts. They explain them so simply.