Curious Cases Folgen

It has been said that you can't start a fire without a spark, but as Hannah and Dara are about to discover, that's not true!Welcome to the fiery phenomenon of spontaneous combustion, when something can ignite all on its own: no matches, no sparks, no external flame. It happens when certain materials heat themselves up internally through chemical or biological reactions, and if that carried on unchecked and the material gets hot enough, it can eventually ignite itself.This process can occur in various everyday items such as piles of hay or grass clippings, oily rags and in certain instances lithium batteries; but there are also several useful chemical substances that autoignite when they come into contact with air - as Hannah, Dara and a wary BBC fire officer witness in the studio...So how can we stop things regularly bursting into flames? How scared should we be about oiling floorboards and our increasingly battery-powered life? And is spontaneous human combustion really a thing? Our investigators are on the case. To submit your question to the Curious Cases team, please email: curiouscases@bbc.co.ukContributors: - Andrea Sella, Professor of inorganic chemistry at University College London - Emanuel ‘Big Manny’ Wallace, former science teacher now a science content creator - Matt Oakley, fire investigations officer at Surrey Fire and Rescue Service - Roger Byard, Emeritus Professor of pathology at the University of Adelaide and a senior specialist forensic pathologist at Forensic Science SA (FSSA)Producer: Lucy Taylor Executive Producer: Alexandra FeachemA BBC Studios Production

Are you a lucky person? Do the cards just fall well for you? Whether it's always finding a parking spot when you need one or chance encounters that change your life's trajectory for the better, some people seem to have more luck than others. Hannah and Dara explore the world of probability and psychology to figure out if some people are luckier than others, and if there's anything we can do to turn things around. You can send your everyday mysteries for the team to investigate to: curiouscases@bbc.co.ukContributors David Spiegelhalter - Emeritus Professor of Statistics in the Centre for Mathematical Sciences at the University of Cambridge Richard Wiseman - Professor of the Public Understanding of Psychology University of Hertfordshire Maia Young - Professor of Organization and Management at UC Irvine, California US Edward Oldfield Producer: Emily Bird Executive Producer: Sasha Feachem A BBC Studios Production

It turns out that the whole world wobbles. Everything has a natural frequency - the rate at which it moves when disturbed - be it a cup of tea, a building or a human organ.Even more incredibly, if an external force matches an object's natural frequency, it causes it to absorb that energy and vibrate with increasingly large waves; and that can have consequences, from helping a spider find its lunch to making a bridge collapse. On the trail of good and bad vibes and everything in between, Hannah and Dara investigate whether the famous 1940 collapse of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge in the USA was really down to resonance, explore examples of resonance in nature, and find out what this mysterious vibration can do to the human body: from the pressures of repetitive tractor-driving, to absorbing the reverberations of certain instruments...To submit your question to the Curious Cases team, please email: curiouscases@bbc.co.ukContributors: - Helen Czerski, Professor of Physics at University College London - Wanda Lewis, Emeritus Professor of Civil Engineering at Warwick University - Phillip Moxley, Senior Research Associate at the University of Southampton - Sana Bokhari, sound therapy practitionerProducers: Lucy Taylor & Emily Bird Executive Producer: Alexandra FeachemA BBC Studios Audio Production