The Food Lab: Better Home Cooking Through Science

by J. Kenji López-Alt

Most of us practice science every single day, often without even knowing it. For instance, when I first got married, I noticed that there seemed to be a direct correlation between some of my wife’s bad moods and my propensity to leave the toilet seat up. (Observation.) I then thought to myself, perhaps if I put the toilet seat down more often, my wife’s mood and therefore my own happiness would improve. (Hypothesis.) I tried putting down the toilet seat a few times and waiting to see how my wife reacted. (Testing.) Noticing an improvement in her moods, I started putting the seat down almost every time, only occasionally leaving it up to test the continued validity of my hypothesis. Some folks would call this just being a good roommate/husband. I call it science.