Ask An Engineer
Ask an Engineer is an MIT initiative to answer engineering’s most persistent questions, from the everyday to the highly complex.
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#149
Do humans emit radiation?
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#148
How did life on Earth begin?
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#138
Is sleep necessary?
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#132
Why do our bodies make boogers?
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#116
Must all organisms age and die?
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#115
What is the impact of follow-through in golf?
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#111
Can medical prostheses advance further, and what are their potential risks?
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#91
How could biotechnology affect sports in the future?
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#69
If I have a high risk of cancer, can my genes be modified to avoid it?
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#64
How do glucometers work?
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#63
Why do we sweat more in high humidity?
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#55
How are thoughts measured?
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#54
What are thoughts made of?
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#48
Is it possible to control someone’s thoughts?
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#33
Could I put a computer chip in my brain to make me smarter?
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#31
How do doctors detect cancer in the human body?
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#28
Why don’t we get cancer of the hair or the fingernails?
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#22
Why do I have to take some medications every four hours but others only once a day?
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#19
What makes nerve gas so dangerous?
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#16
Why can’t machines — or humans — sniff out drugs or explosives as well as dogs?
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#15
Can hearts, livers, and kidneys be grown in the lab for human transplants?
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#14
Why does our hair turn gray — as opposed to green or some other color — as we age?
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#13
How does a random group of molecules form a thinking, breathing human?
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#5
How do medicines know where in the body to start working?
