When you're driving on land, speed is measured in either miles per hour (mph) or kilometers per hour (km/h). These measurements are straightforward because you can see stationary landmarks and ...

Imagine living sometime around the early 1600s. You're standing on the deck of a wooden ship. The wind's biting, the sky's endless. And your captain's yelling, "Drop the log!" Back then, before sonar ...

The improved clinch knot has long been the standard for tying lures to fishing lines. In fact, it's so universal among anglers that it's sometimes called the fisherman's knot. It's easy to learn, ...

The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. In 1876, Peter Guthrie Tait set out to measure what he called the “beknottedness” of knots. The Scottish mathematician, whose research ...

Tying the strongest fishing knot isn’t only about the knot itself. The line you choose matters every bit as much, and thanks to remarkably advancements in the recent decades, you have choices when it ...