Speaker 1: Welcome to How Stuff Works Now. I'm your host, Lauren
Speaker 1: vocal Bam, a researcher and writer. Here at How Stuff Works.
Speaker 1: Every week, I'm bringing you three stories from our team
Speaker 1: about the weird and wondrous advances we've seen in science, technology,
Speaker 1: and culture. This week, there's some science that says drivers
Speaker 1: who wait until the last second to merge out of
Speaker 1: an ending lane are actually in the right and unrelated
Speaker 1: researchers have built a humanoid robot that can do push
Speaker 1: ups and cool itself off by sweating. But first, Tex
Speaker 1: Stuff host Jonathan Strickland, via our freelance writer David Ruse,
Speaker 1: debunks a few myths about the care and feeding of
Speaker 1: smartphone batteries. There's a lot of conflicting information out there,
Speaker 1: but we're here to straighten things out. You've probably taken
Speaker 1: note of all the talk about smartphones and lithium ion batteries,
Speaker 1: so we thought we'd take this opportunity to address three
Speaker 1: burning questions. Question one, isn't a bad idea to leave
Speaker 1: your phone plugged in overnight? You might have heard that
Speaker 1: if you leave your phone plugged in for too long,
Speaker 1: it will damage the battery in some way. But assuming
Speaker 1: your charger is in proper working order, there's nothing to
Speaker 1: worry about. Smartphone battery stopped charging once they hit a limit.
Speaker 1: It's as if your phone is already unplugged, so good news.
Speaker 1: As long as your charger is working correctly, you don't
Speaker 1: have to set an alarm for the middle of the
Speaker 1: night so that you don't accidentally overcharge your smartphone into
Speaker 1: the incredible hulk. Question two, should you run your smartphone's
Speaker 1: battery out completely before recharging it. You've probably heard that
Speaker 1: batteries have a limited number of power cycles. This represents
Speaker 1: the number of times a battery can discharge and recharge
Speaker 1: before it loses so much capacity then it's pretty much useless.
Speaker 1: This is true. Batteries experienced stress through usage, similar to
Speaker 1: what you'd see in a mechanical system. Eventually the battery
Speaker 1: wears out, But recharging your phone when it's at say
Speaker 1: capacity doesn't represent a full charge. It's not like you
Speaker 1: lose one cycle every time you plug in your phone.
Speaker 1: That means you don't need to discharge a battery completely
Speaker 1: before recharging it. In fact, that would cause more stress
Speaker 1: to your battery, wearing it out faster. Experts suggest recharging
Speaker 1: your battery when it's between forty and eight capacity. This
Speaker 1: will decrease the amount of stress the battery experiences as
Speaker 1: it discharges and recharges. For some of us, this means
Speaker 1: recharging our phones several times throughout the day. If you
Speaker 1: can't do that, don't sweat it. Most of us replace
Speaker 1: our phones before we've significantly whittled down battery capacity. And
Speaker 1: now question three, how does heat affect battery performance? Not great, bob.
Speaker 1: Heat will reduce a battery's capacity faster than going through
Speaker 1: lots of charging cycles in a short time. That means
Speaker 1: when you fully recharge your smartphone, you'll have fewer hours
Speaker 1: of operation because the battery won't be able to store
Speaker 1: as much energy as it did previous sleep. So don't
Speaker 1: leave your smartphones sitting out in the sun or in
Speaker 1: a hot car, or I don't know, on the stove
Speaker 1: or something. It's better. Next up step, editor Christopher Hasiotus
Speaker 1: and freelancer Jescelin Shields explain how one annoying traffic behavior
Speaker 1: turns out to be for the good of all of us.
Speaker 1: Merging lanes at the last possible second isn't just more efficient,
Speaker 1: it's safer To imagine you're driving down the road, and
Speaker 1: all of a sudden you see a brightly colored sign
Speaker 1: announcing lane closed in one thousand feet. You've got a
Speaker 1: couple of options. One, immediately turn on your blinker and
Speaker 1: wait until someone in the next lane lets you in. Two,
Speaker 1: just stay in your lane and wait for all the
Speaker 1: plaite people to get out of your way. Then zoom
Speaker 1: to the front of the line and merge at the
Speaker 1: last moment, right where the lane closes. Watches people who
Speaker 1: merge hurley rage in your general direction, silent behind their
Speaker 1: glass windows, but faces twisted in fury. To most people,
Speaker 1: the first option seems more courteous and patient, less selfish,
Speaker 1: but study upon study proves the upstanding early mergers among
Speaker 1: us are just creating a single slow line of traffic
Speaker 1: that's not only frustrating for drivers, it's inefficient. That's because
Speaker 1: by merging early, we minimize the amount of usable road,
Speaker 1: leaving a long swath of perfectly good street capacity open
Speaker 1: and unused. What we all should be doing is called
Speaker 1: the late merge zipper system, and by the way, the
Speaker 1: Germans naturally have their own word for it, rice verst
Speaker 1: loose system. In this system, every car in the lane
Speaker 1: that's ending drives all the way up to the front
Speaker 1: of the line and takes turns merging with the other
Speaker 1: lane of traffic. From above, it looks a bit like
Speaker 1: the teeth on a zipper coming together. Because the system
Speaker 1: uses all the available road space for as long as possible,
Speaker 1: it cuts congestion by according to recent studies from various
Speaker 1: US state departments of Transportation and as well as the
Speaker 1: Federal Highway Administration. The late merge zipper system also reduces
Speaker 1: crashes because it keeps all traffic moving at the same
Speaker 1: rate of speed, rather than having some cars going slow
Speaker 1: to merge early while others zoom passed them. So why
Speaker 1: don't we all just zipper merge at the last minute? Already?
Speaker 1: The problem is, of course, that our driving habits are
Speaker 1: baked in pretty deep. But to help steer us to
Speaker 1: a more rational place, some states are shelling out big
Speaker 1: bucks to actually retrain their drivers to use the zipper merge.
Speaker 1: Colorado and Minnesota have been working on encouraging the late
Speaker 1: merge zipper for a decade, already, followed by Washington, Missouri
Speaker 1: in Kansas, and even earlier this year, Missouri launched its
Speaker 1: own public education campaign. Will this efficient and safe merging
Speaker 1: technique find a place in our traffic habits. Minnesota Radio's
Speaker 1: Bob Collins reflected after his state implemented its campaign, saying
Speaker 1: the zipper merge is going to be this centuries conversion
Speaker 1: to the metric system in the seventies great idea made
Speaker 1: perfect sense and was dead on arrival. However, change could
Speaker 1: be on its way thanks to a generational shift. A
Speaker 1: two thousand thirteen Minnesota survey found that only eight percent
Speaker 1: of senior drivers felt comfortable with the late March zipper system.
Speaker 1: On the other hand, among drivers aged to thirty four,
Speaker 1: a full fort of the young population are okay zipping
Speaker 1: up for common sense and the common good. Finally, this week,
Speaker 1: I'm bringing you a story from our freelance writer Patrick
Speaker 1: Jake Tiger about a robot built to manage the heat
Speaker 1: from its machinery by sweating. It's only gross and or
Speaker 1: hilarious until you start thinking about how efficient biomimicry can be.
Speaker 1: When you physically exert yourself, you break a sweat. You've
Speaker 1: probably noticed this that dripping is a biological mechanism that
Speaker 1: keeps your body from overheating when the water secreted out
Speaker 1: of your sweat glands evaporates, it draws off heat and
Speaker 1: cools you down. Now, if a machine does something strenuous,
Speaker 1: it has to get rid of the resulting heat energy too.
Speaker 1: In the past, engineers have relied upon fans, motors, and
Speaker 1: radiators to cool robotic gadgetry. But those solutions are pretty bulky,
Speaker 1: and when you're talking about robotic gadgetry that mimics living
Speaker 1: creatures movements, bulky equals cumbersome. That's why University of Tokyo
Speaker 1: j s K Lab researchers, who are designing robots with
Speaker 1: muscular and skeletal systems based on the human body, have
Speaker 1: come up with a solution to the heat problem that's
Speaker 1: either ingenious or obvious. They've created a robot that uses
Speaker 1: sweat to cool itself. The robot, named Kenoto, was presented
Speaker 1: at the International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems in October.
Speaker 1: It's a five and a half foot tall, hundred and
Speaker 1: twenty three pound automaton, which is one point seven ms
Speaker 1: and about fifty six ks for our metric friends. It's
Speaker 1: stuffed with circuitry and a hundred and eight motors that
Speaker 1: need to remain relatively cool to function. Optimally. To do that,
Speaker 1: the designers created a system of channels that allow water
Speaker 1: to run through the robot's body and then evaborate out
Speaker 1: from its metal skin. To accomplish that, the engineers three
Speaker 1: D printed a highly permeable aluminum frame with a spongelike
Speaker 1: array of tiny gaps and tunnels through which water can trickle.
Speaker 1: Ken Godo has to be kept constantly hydrated for the
Speaker 1: cooling to be effective, just like you or me, but
Speaker 1: ken Godo only needs about half a cup of water
Speaker 1: per day, far less than a human. To demonstrate how
Speaker 1: well the system works, researchers had the robot do push
Speaker 1: ups for eleven minutes straight, which it managed without overheating.
Speaker 1: The whole thing looks well a lot like you'd expect
Speaker 1: to push up maniac robot to look, which is to say,
Speaker 1: something like a Terminator T eight hundred skeleton, except it's
Speaker 1: ropey muscles are more puffy than sleek, and they gave
Speaker 1: it a face based in classic manga think Samu Tezuka,
Speaker 1: but more Buddha than Astro Boy. For anyone who doesn't
Speaker 1: speak fluent nerd, there's a video on now dot how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com with a visual and of course,
Speaker 1: the j s K Lab isn't just interested in making
Speaker 1: robots that do push ups. Lots of their research is
Speaker 1: bent toward designing bots that are humanoid enough to move
Speaker 1: with ease around space. Is built for humans like the
Speaker 1: homes of the elderly and other people who need help
Speaker 1: with housework or around offices. Do you think how stuff
Speaker 1: Works would buyas a robot that delivers our inter office mail,
Speaker 1: sets up teleconferencing, and microwaves our luncheons. That's our show
Speaker 1: for this week. Thank you so much for tuning in.
Speaker 1: Subscribe now for more of the latest and strangest science news,
Speaker 1: and send us links to anything you'd like to hear
Speaker 1: us cover, plus the name of your favorite local charity.
Speaker 1: We're feeling the weight of our civic duty this week.
Speaker 1: You can send us an email at now podcast at
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Speaker 1: more stories like these, head on over to our home
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