Explore 1,066 ideas for your next speech.
97 topics
Walk across a carpet in dry weather and touch a metal doorknob, and a tiny spark jumps from your finger. Rubbing two materials together does not create electricity from nothing; instead, contact transfers electrons from one surface to the other, leaving one positively charged and the other negatively charged.
Quantum mechanics describes a measurement interaction as well as the system being measured. Everett’s relative-state approach keeps their combined evolution, inspiring a many-worlds interpretation whose meaning goes beyond seeing one result on a detector.
A real mirror need not reflect every wavelength equally. Facing two ordinary mirrors toward each other can magnify small differences over repeated reflections, revealing something about the glass and reflective coating.
Timing light from one place to another seems to need only a clock at each end. But the clocks must first agree on what time it is. Einstein's synchronization procedure makes that requirement explicit by sending a signal out and back and relating the two journeys.
An echolocating bat uses the delay and character of returning sound to follow a target. Its calls can change as it approaches prey, connecting the sound it sends with the information it needs next.
A piano note can keep ringing after the player lifts a finger from the key. On an acoustic piano, the sustain pedal changes what the dampers do, connecting a small foot movement to the sound that remains in the room.
When an ice skater enters a spin with their arms stretched wide and then pulls them tightly into their chest, their rotation suddenly speeds up without anyone pushing them. Pulling mass closer to the axis of rotation reduces the skater's moment of inertia, so conserving angular momentum requires their spinning speed to increase.
An aircraft moving faster than sound produces a pattern of pressure disturbances very different from a quiet sound wave. Across a shock front, air pressure, density, and temperature change sharply. Explore how the airflow around an aircraft creates that abrupt boundary.
A laboratory temperature record and a theoretical temperature limit answer different questions. Extremely hot matter created in particle collisions is measurable indirectly; the Planck temperature points toward a regime where the usual description of physics becomes uncertain.
In 2009, FINA announced new swimwear requirements for 2010, including textile construction and limits on suit shape. The interesting question is how a sport decides which improvements belong to the athlete and which should be restricted by equipment rules.
Catching a moving ball with rigid hands feels different from letting your hands travel with it. The ball still has to slow down, but changing the relative motion and the time available to stop it changes the forces involved.
A Yorùbá talking drum can suggest speech through changing pitch and timing. In this tonal language, those patterns help carry meaning, but listeners also draw on familiar phrases and context. Explore how a drummer turns language into musical signals, and what cannot be conveyed by pitch alone.
12 of 97 topics shown
Find a question that interests you, follow the reading links, and choose what you want to explain. The research, examples, and structure are yours to develop. Learn more about what makes a speech informative.
Start with something you are curious about and consider what your audience would want to understand. You can narrow the collection by subject and suggested length. Those lengths are estimates, so check your timing as you develop and rehearse your speech.
A short introduction, optional questions, and starting readings. You choose the focus and do the research. Save ideas to your free account, share a topic, or copy its reading notes. When you are ready, try a short practice in speaking.app.
Each reading note describes what the linked material offers. Some readings are technical, and some provide only an abstract or overview. Check the original source, its context, and any claims you plan to use. A starting reading list is not an exhaustive review of a subject.