Last summer, the Discovery Channel temporarily suspended airing its hit survivalist show Man vs. Wild. The producer admitted that the protagonist would get help from staff or spend nights in hotels — all along claiming to rough it alone in the world’s most inhospitable places. Yet, Man vs. Wild was not the first high-profile case of possible “frontier fakery.” In August 1913, Joseph Knowles, a former Boston Post illustrator, one-time trapper, hunting guide and Navy man, went into the Maine woods on a solitary retreat. Starting out with nothing, not even clothes, Knowles thrived for tw...

Light behaves like waves or particles, but it doesn’t know what it will do in advance.

Surfaces that mimic the back of an African beetle can collect water from fog.

Time-lapse snapshots of molecules show that they change shapes less often than theory predicted.

Neutrons can produce 3-D scans of a magnetic field, even inside a solid.

Musical theorists see inuitive links between musical chords and geometries.

A new type of electronic component could shrink computer chips and make them more powerful. (p. 13)