why is it that in a bowl of mixed nuts, the
small nuts end up at the bottom and the
Brazil nuts on top? The same kind of
segregation by size takes place in many
different mixtures, from corn flakes to the
soil. It turns out that objects in a mixture
are pulled downward through gaps in the
mixture by gravity — and small gaps are
more common than large gaps, so small
objects more frequently sink than large
ones.Coconuts Coconuts are the largest and most
important of all nuts. They are the stone of a
drupe, the fruit of Cocos nucifera, large (to
100 ft/30 m) tree-like palms that are more
closely related to the grasses than to other nut
trees. They’re thought to have originated in
tropical Asia, but their hardy fruits apparently
floated to many parts of the world before
humans began to transport them. They were
largely unknown to Europe until the early