20 Questions We've All Asked Ourselves (But Never Bothered To Find Out)

14. Why Do Boomerangs Come Back?

Have you ever been playing with your friends in the park and thought to yourself: ' do Australians have magic powers?' We think that at least once per day - how else can they survive in that heat, or explain Wallabies and Mel Gibson's film career? Perhaps their most magicest of their magic powers is whatever they do to make a boomerang come back to you when you throw it. How do they do that? Come on, Rolf, spit it out (Too soon?)! Actually, we hate to burst your fart bubble, but there's a reason for this and it's not magic, it's actually a clever mixture of aerodynamics and gyroscopic effects. You see, a boomerang is like two spinning aeroplane wings joined in the middle, and supposedly it has to be thrown almost vertically for it to return, which probably explains why I always fail miserably at it. A boomerang spins end over end and thus the top wing actually goes away from you faster than the bottom wing, making the sideways push on the top wing stronger than the bottom. This makes the boomerang tilt over just as you would if someone pushed you on the shoulder, and in turn its flight pattern begins to curve and come back to you in a fluid cycle. And that is why you can never throw a boomerang at someone (I've tried). The Aussies are still probably magicians, though.

13. Why Are Humans So Scared Of Spiders?

Have you ever been sitting in your living room, probably watching The X-Factor and you quickly see something out the corner of your eye that makes you jump out of your seat? You look, but there's nothing, so you sit back down. But just when your heart rate goes back to normal you see it, a spider, crawling across your floor. It's disgusting, and huge. it's probably going to kill you and vote for the singer you don't want to win! No! Apparently that accounts for about 40% of us, so you're not alone, poor arachnophobe, we might not admit it but we're all a little bit freaked out by those eight legged monsters. Why won't they just leave us alone? And why are we scared of them? We're so much bigger than they are. Apparently our common fear of spiders, as well as many other fears, is inherited through generations of our families, we now have an instinctive fear of angular shapes, fast moving objects, dark colours and the unknown, or pretty much everything a spider is. Plus, it seems our ancestors were a bunch of wusses. Scientists, have argued that this is why we are so scared of them, our great aunts and uncles also once erroneously thought spiders carried disease, so a reputation was developed. Our instinct is to also become wary of motion out of the corner of our eyes, so a spider's shape, speed and movement activate our natural defense senses, which for most, is to crawl into a ball and shriek. So, apparently it's your mum's fault, and your mum's mum, and her mum's mum and ... you get the picture. Wait, did you guys see something run across the floor? Hold me.