Every season of Inquiring Minds ever, ranked from best to worst by thousands of votes from fans of the show. The best seasons of Inquiring Minds!

The Exploration of sunlight. How the sky is like a giant pinball machine and where the sun is located at different times of the day. The explanation of what would happen if there were no air molecules.

Why Is The Sky Blue?

An explanation of lightning, including the amount of energy in a lightning bolt, how lightning is formed, and what we actually see in a streak of lightning. The group also explains about the different ways that attract lightning and how to prevent yourself from these strikes.

How Do People Survive Lightning Strikes?

The discovery of how the density of several elements affects sound, what is needed for sound to be present, and how sound works. The pitch of a person's voice compared to that of a musical instrument is discussed, along with how changing the speed of sound affects the pitch of the voice, and how the pitch can be changed.

Why Does Breathing Helium Make Your Voice So High?

Explains what a satellite is, how it is put into orbit and how it maintains its orbit. The team also talks about how satellite dishes work and how they provide better television signals. The hosts clarifies interrelationships in earth/space systems, and information on the history of artificial satellites.

Why Don't Satellites Fall Out Of The Sky?

The revelation of why certain clothes are dry cleaned, the history of the dry cleaning process, and introduces water as a universal solvent. A demonstration is performed of how like-substances dissolve, and how emulsifiers break up oil-based stains.

How Does The Dry Cleaning Process Work?

The exploration of why hurricanes strike only in late summer or early fall. The hosts also explain what a hurricane is, why it is the most destructive natural force on Earth, and demonstrates how to make a hurricane in the kitchen.

Why Are Hurricanes Seasonal?

The examination of how sound is produced and explains hearing by air conduction, and bone construction.

Why Do Voices Sound Different On Recorders?

The revealation of how a rocket actually gets to the moon, and how it is compared to flying to the moon as vacation.

How Do Astronauts Land On The Moon?

The explanation of atmospheric pressure and its relevance to the weather report and our daily lives. Also explained are pressure instruments and their uses, how isobars are mapped out, and how to read weather charts.

Why Do High And Low Pressure Systems Bring Good And Bad Weather?

The definition of an echo, and the demonstration of how it occurs and its effects in different background. The hosts describe the acoustic challenges presented by most rock concert and presents some strategies to improve the sound.

Why Do Some Rock Concerts Sound So Bad?

How surfactant, the ingredient in shampoo that causes the burning sensation and helps rid the hair of dirt, reacts with the eye's tear film. And a look at amphoteric surfactants, which are found in 'no-tears' shampoo, and their properties.

How Do No Tears Shampoos Work?

A mass spectrometer analyzes the contents of a substance and displays the results on a computer. The human tongue and its ability to recognize four main tastes. The make-up of synthetic imitations and how they are created. Advantages of using artificial flavors rather than their natural counterparts.

How Do Artificial Flavours Fool Our Taste Buds?

Information on how nature creates snow, the components used by snow-making machines to manufacture snow, and natural snowflakes compared to artificial ones.

How Is Snow Manufactured?

The history of the stopwatch and analysis of its accuracy. The starter's pistol, the starting block sensors, and the horn in present-day races are used for timing modern races. How a high resolution video camera and computer technology help to determine the runner's finish time in a race - the finish time is the moment when the person's torso crosses the line.

How Are Athletes Timed In A Race?

The structure of a bullet- proof vest, including the characteristics of an Aramid fiber-energy absorption, stretching ability. How the strength of a fabric depends on how the fibers are woven together.

How Do Bulletproof Vest Work?

The explanation of the parts of the eye, such as the lens and the muscles surrounding it, the iris and its function of letting light into the eye, the retina, lined with light-sensitive cells shaped like rods and cones. How the shape of one's eyeball determines the eye's capacity to see.

Why Do Some People Wear Glasses?

The hosts talk about the two principle sources of salt. Underwater volcanoes and rivers, plus the different levels of salt concentration in rivers and ocean, and also the salt's tendency to absorb water. They also explain how salt reacts with body cells and the kidneys' role as the organs responsible for removing excess salt from the body.

Why Is The Ocean Salty?

The definition of carnivores and herbivores, - their respective diets and eating mechanisms. Human's teeth, digestive systems, and diet in comparison to those of carnivores and herbivores.

What Are The Pros And Cons Of Being A Vegetarian?

Calculating the age of bones from the amount of carbon 14 they contain and the potassium atoms in rocks surrounding bones. Explanations of how bones help determine what the dinosaurs looked like, their habits, and their diet.

How Do We Determine The Age Of Dinosaurs?

Gold's properties, its appeal to human beings and impact on society throughout history. The advantages of gold over other metals, its chemical stability where it does not react with water or air, measures of its purity in carats, and its use in high-tech equipment.

Why Is Gold So Valuable?

What bacteria are and why they are so dangerous. Information on what eggshells and teeth have in common, what fluoride is and how it prevents cavities. The structure and function of living systems such as bacteria, the concept of causative agents, science in personal health, science in society, collaborative efforts of sciences, and environmental costs and benefits.

Why Does Fluoride Prevent Cavities?

How a computer virus causes infections, the three stages of program infection, and routes to protection. A presentation of a comparison of viruses in humans and computers, the characteristics of organisms, organisms and their environment, basic understanding of computer theory, and the binary code.

What Is A Computer Virus?

The explanation of why we can't breathe underwater and how a regulator helps scuba divers. The hosts reveal the dangers of ""the bends""  where nitrogen builds up in the blood, the treatment, and the prevention. The regulation, structure, and function of living systems are also presented. Organisms and their environment, calculation of variables such as temperature, pressure, density, and elevation/depth, and the hosts also explain about the effects of differences in density and energy transfer on the activities of and in the ocean.

Why Do Divers Get The Bends?

Why humans must endure winter, while bears and chipmunks can avoid it by hibernating. We explore the structure and function of living systems, regulation of life processes and behaviour that influences them, and the diversity of adaptations.

Why Do Bears Hibernate, And Not Humans?

The team explain what a stick and a piece of crystal have to do with telling time, and how the clock was invented. They also discuss Newton's law of gravitation, scientific principles and technological design. Force and motion - the mechanical advantage provided by gears, and the relationships among various bodies in the solar system.

Why Do Clocks Run Clockwise?

Why some people have allergic reactions, and others don't. How your immune system works - or doesn't work is discussed. A look at auto-immune disease is discovered. The team focuses on the structure and function of living systems, the immune system, including auto-immune response, and regulation and behaviour of living systems.

What Causes Allergies?

The group focuses on how the earth resembles a giant magnet, and its relation to the natural light show known as the aurora borealis. A discussion of properties of gas, transfer, properties, and characteristics of energy, along with the structure of the earth, earth in the solar system, and earth as a magnet. An explanation of the electromagnetic spectrum and the fundamentals of reflection and refraction.

What Causes The Northern Lights?

The group discusses the evolution of the golf ball, and its advantages. Why a rough ball travels further than a smooth one, the impact of air, and how to make an object more aerodynamic are also explored. Force and motion, technological design, and the process of flight.

Why Do Golf Balls Have Dimples?

Explanations of why smoking is a powerful addiction, how it affects the chemistry of the brain and the ""reward centre,"" the causes of withdrawal symptoms, and attempts to escape addiction.

Why Is It So Difficult To Stop Smoking?

The exploration of heat transfer through conduction, convection, and radiation, the electromagnetic spectrum and wavelengths. Changes in matter, and technological design.

How Do Microwave Ovens Cook Food?

What resonance means and the natural frequency of structures and objects, such as glass. A look at the effects of resonance, and some examples - why resonance is like swinging someone on a swing, attempts to shatter glass, using a professional resonator - a trained singer. The characteristics of sound, states of energy such as heat, light, sound are explained, along with technological application of sound waves, amplitude, wavelength, and frequency. Force, motion, and energy concepts such as resonance and vibrations and the ability of substances to transmit sound, and earthquakes and wave frequencies

Can Voices Really Shatter Glass?

A look at micro organisms, where the team talks about how they work, their need for water, the role of the freezer and refrigerator, different kinds of bacteria - good and bad, and the inevitability of food rotting - nature's way. Living systems dependence on other systems are described, while reproduction and heredity, populations and ecosystems, nature of chemical processes are explored. Chemical change, nitrogen cycle, producers, consumers and decomposers, technological design, science in personal health, and science and technology in society.

Why Does Food Rot?

How a cold or flu virus works, and its effects on your body. The functions of congestion, a sore throat, sneezing, and coughing. The hosts explain why we get sick more often in the winter, washing hands for prevention, a comparison of a cold and flu virus, and the role of a fever, whether medications help. We take a look at the structure and function of living systems, particularly cells, and also the diversity and adaptations of organisms, regulation and behaviour of organisms, and immune response.

Why Does Getting Sick Always Give You The Same Symptoms?

The evolution of the skyscraper and a look at how high buildings can become. The role that steel is described, and how steel frames have played a part, the elevator's role in the ""face for the sky"", the challenge that wind presents, making a building flexible, and what stops us from building skyscrapers that exceed today's tallest ones. The physical properties of earth materials are shown. Mass, energy, and momentum, elastic and inelastic collisions, force and motion, and technological design.

Why Don't Sky Scrapers Fall Over?

How your muscles function everyday, how your body builds muscles using muscle fibres and protein strands, and getting your body into shape.

How Do Body Builders Get Their Muscles So Big?

What antifreeze has to do with hockey rinks, why they paint the ice, and how thick the ice surface is. The hosts also explain about what happens to the ice when another event is held in the arena.

How Do They Keep The Ice Frozen in a Hockey Arena?

What the wings of a plane and the rotor of a helicopter have in common, how the rotor lifts the helicopter off the ground from a standing position, how a helicopter changes direction, and what a helicopter is more difficult to control than an airplane.

How Do Helicopters Fly Without Wings?

What animals need to see in order to stay alive, why some animals' eyes are on the sides of their head, and which species have more than two eyes.

Why Do Animals See The World Differently Than We Do?

How to produce a single wavelength, what neon signs and lasers have in common, what makes a laser powerful enough to cut through steel, and why some lasers are more powerful than others.

Why Is Laser Light So Powerful?

Where soap gets its cleaning power from, why water alone can't get you clean, and where soap scum comes from. Behind the reason why people don't use soap to wash their hair.

How Does Soap Make You Clean?

What happens when a virus invades your body, what a vaccine is, and why we can't create a vaccine to protect us from the common cold.

Why Is There No Cure for the Common Cold?

An experiment on how the immune system reacts to a foreign organ, how T-cells know what belongs in your body and what doesn't, and especially how doctors find a match between patients and organ donors.

How Do Surgeons Transplant An Organ?

How we get electricity from uranium, how a nuclear chain reaction is created, and why nuclear power generation has hazardous side effects.

How Does Nuclear Power Work?

A demonstration on what happens when your body is unable to produce heat as fast as it is being lost, how your body defends against heat loss, and the trick to layering.

What Is The Science Behind Keeping Warm?

An exploration into the answers of obscure questions.

The Best Seasons of Inquiring Minds

The Best Seasons of Inquiring Minds

Season 1

Season 2