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Speaker 1: Welcome to Brainstuff from hastaff marks dot com where smart happens.

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Speaker 1: I am Marshall Brain with today's question, how do mood

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Speaker 1: rings work? Mood rings were first seen as an extremely

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Speaker 1: popular fat in the late nineteen seventies, and they resurface regularly.

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Speaker 1: The idea behind a mood ring is simple, wear it

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Speaker 1: on your finger and it will reflect the state of

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Speaker 1: your emotions. The ring stone should be a dark blue

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Speaker 1: if you're happy, and it supposedly turns black if you're

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Speaker 1: anxious or stressed. While mood rings cannot reflect your mood

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Speaker 1: with any real scientific accuracy, they actually are indicators of

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Speaker 1: your body's involuntary physical reaction to your emotional state. Let's

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Speaker 1: see how that works. The stone in a mood ring

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Speaker 1: is either a hollow glass shell filled with a thermotropic

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Speaker 1: liquid crystal solution or it's a clear glass stone sitting

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Speaker 1: on top of a thin sheet of liquid crystals. These

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Speaker 1: liquid crystal molecules are very sensitive. They change position or

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Speaker 1: twist according to changes in temperature. This change in molecular

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Speaker 1: structure affects the wavelengths of light that are absorbed or

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Speaker 1: reflected by the liquid crystals, resulting in an apparent changing

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Speaker 1: color of the stone. For example, as the temperature increases,

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Speaker 1: the liquid crystal molecules twist slightly in one direction. This

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Speaker 1: twist causes the liquid crystal substance to absorb more are

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Speaker 1: the red and green portions of the visible light and

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Speaker 1: reflect the blue part. This causes the stone to appear

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Speaker 1: dark blue. When the temperature decreases, the molecules begin to

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Speaker 1: twist in the other direction and reflect a different portion

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Speaker 1: of the spectrum. The metal ring conducts heat from your

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Speaker 1: finger to the liquid crystals in the stone. The color green,

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Speaker 1: which signifies average on the mood Ring color scale, is

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Speaker 1: calibrated to the surface temperature of a typical person about

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Speaker 1: eighty two degrees fahrenheit or twenty eight degrees celsius. If

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Speaker 1: your temperature varies far from that norm, then the liquid

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Speaker 1: crystals in the stone alter enough to cause a change

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Speaker 1: in the color reflected. If you take the mood ring off,

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Speaker 1: it will normally change to black unless the ambient temperature

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Speaker 1: in the room is eighty two degrees fahrenheit or higher.

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Speaker 1: Here are the mood ring colors and the mood they represent.

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Speaker 1: The colors are listed according to the change in temperature

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Speaker 1: they represent, with dark blue being the warmest and black

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Speaker 1: being the coolest. Dark blue means supposedly happy or romantic

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Speaker 1: or passionate. Blue means calm or relaxed blue, green means

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Speaker 1: somewhat relaxed. Green means normal or average. That's the skin

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Speaker 1: temperature that a person would normally have. Amber means a

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Speaker 1: little nervous or anxious, Gray means very nervous or anxious,

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Speaker 1: and black means stressed, tensed, or feeling haired. If you

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Speaker 1: take a moment to think about the moods represented by

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Speaker 1: the colors, you'll see a definite correlation between your body's

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Speaker 1: surface temperature and the color of the liquid crystal. When

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Speaker 1: you're in a passionate mood, your skin is usually flushed.

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Speaker 1: This is a physical reaction to an emotion, causing the

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Speaker 1: capillaries to dilate and release heat. This brings about a

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Speaker 1: slight change in the surface temperature of your body. When

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Speaker 1: you're nervous or st us, your skin may feel clammy.

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Speaker 1: This physical reaction to your emotional state causes the capillaries

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Speaker 1: to constrict, causing the surface temperature of your skin to drop.

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Speaker 1: Do you have any ideas or suggestions for this podcast?

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Speaker 1: If so, please send me an email at podcast at

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Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com. For more on this and

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Speaker 1: thousands of other topics, go to how stuff works dot

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