Studying science doesn't mean you have to bury your head in a book or disappear into some remote laboratory. Scientific principals are all around us, affecting us every day.

For instance, ever notice how the cheese on your pizza burns your mouth, but the crust doesn't - even though they are cooked at the same temperature? David Brink, longtime physics teacher at Borger (Texas) high school, explains that different materials have a different specific heat - that is, how much heat they can store per gram. Cheese has a high specific heat, which means it stores a lot of heat and sears your tongue! The crust, however, has a low specific heat and low thermal conductivity and therefore does not store as much to give off and doesn't burn you. Water has a very high specific heat, and so the water-based sauce is probably the greatest culprit of all pizza related burn cases!

Brink has a simple experiment you can try that also deals with temperature. "We use our body as a thermometer all the time to decide whether it's hot or cold outside," he says. But every body's thermometer is a little different, depending on its initial temperature.

Get three pans of water - one very cold (with ice), one very hot (not boiling!), and one just plain tap water. Put one hand in the cold water and the other in the hot. Wait a few minutes, and then plunge them both into the tap water. "The cold hand will suddenly feel hot because you're absorbing heat, "Brink says. "And the hot hand will suddenly feel cold because you're losing heat." So it's not really the actual temperature that matters - it's how it feels to us.

 Here's another age-old question that science can explain: "Why is the sky blue?" The answer involves tiny dust particles, Brink says, and how they scatter the red side of the light spectrum more than they do the blue side of the spectrum. Consequently, when the sun is high in the sky, the red is scattered away from us and we don't see it. But when the sun is closer to the horizon, you can see the red spectrum - and that creates a sunset!

And have you ever admired the little rainbows that show up in soap bubbles? The thickness of the soap film can interfere with various light rays, Brink notes. As the soap film gets thicker, the colors change from one to another through the entire spectrum, creating all the colors of the rainbow.

Brink has one more easy experiment, dealing with heat conduction and insulation, that you can try:

Take a towel and lay it on the concrete floor of a garage on a cold night. Let it sit for 30 minutes, which will allow the towel and the floor to become the same temperature. Now, in your bare feet, step on the towel and then step on the concrete floor. The towel will feel cool because it is an insulator and doesn't pull much heat out of your body, Brink says. But the floor will feel really cold because it conducts heat and pulls it out of your body. "Just like we said before, the more heat you're losing, the colder you are going to feel."

Now, Put your shoes back on, and see if you can find other ways that science applies to your everyday life!