Cheerios and thumbtacks: tribalism in a cereal bowl

What I always love about Jearl Walker's work is that it looks at the world, sees something peculiar, and says "why is that?" And proceeds to investigate.

We often hear, "Everything happens for a reason." What we should also hear is, "And that reason is physics."

So it is with The Cheerios Effect. Watch and learn.

The Cheerios Effect


There's a whole book filled with this kind of serendipity:

The Flying Circus of Physics by Jearl Walker

I highly recommend it.