Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and my name is Julie Douglas.
Speaker 1: And this week we have been super busy on a
Speaker 1: new and exciting product. Do you want to tell everybody
Speaker 1: what this is? Yes, it is something called Stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow Your Kid's Mind, and it's a video series. It's
Speaker 1: being sponsored by B A s F. And we have
Speaker 1: been hard at work along with our video crew here,
Speaker 1: immensely talented video crew, I should say. We've been just
Speaker 1: putting together episodes that are based on experiments out there
Speaker 1: that kids do and then kind of talking about the
Speaker 1: ramifications of the you know, physics or the science behind
Speaker 1: those experiments in our daily lives. And it's been really cool. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: we've put together ten of these puppies in an absurdly
Speaker 1: short period of time, but we're really excited about the
Speaker 1: product because each one is three segments. The first segment
Speaker 1: is that experiment where we do, like sometimes it's something
Speaker 1: as simple as a science lab volcano kind of a thing,
Speaker 1: or rubbing a balloon on your hair making it stick up,
Speaker 1: which was pretty awesome because that's not something I normally
Speaker 1: do to your hair. It's not so In the first segment,
Speaker 1: we conduct these experiments, and then we do two additional
Speaker 1: segments where we really get into the stuff to blow
Speaker 1: your mind kind of territory with these experiments and talk
Speaker 1: about how the properties that are illustrated in the experiment
Speaker 1: relate to you and how they relate you to the cosmos.
Speaker 1: That's what's really going to be exciting about them is
Speaker 1: that we kick off with something potentially a little explosive,
Speaker 1: potentially a little goofy, and then we we try and
Speaker 1: bring you to that wow moment. And we hope we
Speaker 1: do this. We hope the kids really like it that
Speaker 1: they don't throw tomatoes with their iPod screens. But I
Speaker 1: think you know, if your parent watch them and you
Speaker 1: can cheat, you can watch it on your own time
Speaker 1: and then pretend that you knew all this when you
Speaker 1: do the experiment with your kid. We don't mind. So
Speaker 1: we thought we would take some of the elements that
Speaker 1: we talked about and and bring them to you. Guys thought, well,
Speaker 1: this is interesting stuff, like you know, what about roinbows
Speaker 1: and why is the sky blue? And what about the
Speaker 1: aurora borealis and all the other weird things that happens
Speaker 1: with light and uh, liquids and refraction. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: all this information is just gonna drain out out of
Speaker 1: our brains anyway, So as long as it's up there,
Speaker 1: we might as well throw it out a podcast. It
Speaker 1: is fascinating information because we're dealing with On one level,
Speaker 1: we live in a world of light. We have our
Speaker 1: sun beaming all this light to the earth. Light is
Speaker 1: the means by which we visually sense the world around us.
Speaker 1: But everything is not quite what it seems. We perceive
Speaker 1: things in a certain way and then we end up
Speaker 1: accepting that that is reality. But there are a number
Speaker 1: of ways that we can sort of see through the
Speaker 1: behaviors of light and gain a little more insight exactly
Speaker 1: what's going on. But before we do that, I want
Speaker 1: to talk about sunlight itself, because you know, we all
Speaker 1: take it for granted. It's beaming down gives us a
Speaker 1: nice sunburn or I don't know, warms up sunburn. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: warms us up on the cold day. Um okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not the seventies. It doesn't really give us a
Speaker 1: nice sunburn. Hopefully it doesn't. I think that we should
Speaker 1: talk about the photons and how they emerge from the sun. Right,
Speaker 1: what we think of light, or it's easy to think
Speaker 1: of light is instantaneous, you know, you flip in the
Speaker 1: light switch and then light is there. But sunlight is
Speaker 1: traveling from the Sun to the Earth. These photons that
Speaker 1: make up light are traveling through space and they are
Speaker 1: bombarding us, bouncing off of us. In fact, when they
Speaker 1: hit us. It turns out that we know how long
Speaker 1: it takes for the stream of light to actually hit
Speaker 1: the Earth. We know this because we know the distance
Speaker 1: from the Earth to the Sun. We know the speed
Speaker 1: of light, so it only takes eight minutes and twenty
Speaker 1: seconds for us to reach us after traveling what ninety
Speaker 1: million miles or something. But I think it is absolutely fascinating.
Speaker 1: So so if you were to turn the sun off,
Speaker 1: it would be eight minutes before you'd really get the
Speaker 1: idea that, whoa, the sun is off, because now the
Speaker 1: light is run out. Yeah, yeah, you'd have a slight
Speaker 1: delay there, right uh, And it would be terrifying. Who
Speaker 1: in the sun off? But here's a really cool thing too,
Speaker 1: that those photons are actually kicking around in the sun
Speaker 1: for about me There are different accounts on this, but
Speaker 1: anywhere from like ten thousand years to you know, twenty
Speaker 1: thousand years before they get to emerge to the surface
Speaker 1: of the Sun and then make that eight minute and
Speaker 1: twenty second journey. And the reason for that is because
Speaker 1: when a photon is in the center of the Sun,
Speaker 1: it's just sort of getting pinball machined around, reabsorbed, emitted, reabsorbed, admitted,
Speaker 1: reabsorbed admitted. So you know that when that photon gets
Speaker 1: the surface, it's like, oh, finally, Yeah, it's like it's
Speaker 1: in the sun. It's kind of like a like a
Speaker 1: boxer before match in the back, just kind of like
Speaker 1: punch in the air, you know, doing a little shadow
Speaker 1: box and like, let's do this, getting pumped up and
Speaker 1: then wham, finally, after after this immense amount of time,
Speaker 1: launched towards the Earth, rips through the atmosphere and then
Speaker 1: slams into like a little solar power on top of
Speaker 1: one of those plastic squirrels that you see people put
Speaker 1: their their lawn that glow and photo that and now
Speaker 1: the journey is ended. Yeah, and then they probably talk
Speaker 1: about all those years I powered the heck out of
Speaker 1: that squirrel. What where I'm gonna end up squirrel, a
Speaker 1: sellar squirrel. But anyway, we thought that was kind of
Speaker 1: cool to share with you guys, and we thought that
Speaker 1: would help to talk a little bit more about these
Speaker 1: other what seemed like optical illusions, rainbows and our blue
Speaker 1: sky above. Well, let's get into rainbows. A scientist by
Speaker 1: the name of Kermit T. Frog once the rainbows or
Speaker 1: visions but only illusions, and rainbows have nothing to hide.
Speaker 1: Do rainbows really have nothing to hide? That pot of
Speaker 1: gold I've yet to find it. Well, yes, that's true.
Speaker 1: And we were discussing earlier if rainbows really did rise
Speaker 1: from a pot of gold, does that mean there are
Speaker 1: two pots of gold, two pots of lepricn gold on
Speaker 1: the earth at any given time to facilitate rainbow. And
Speaker 1: if there's only one pot of gold, the rainbow can't
Speaker 1: have two in here. Here's where I'm gonna shatter that
Speaker 1: the pot of gold question for you all together. Rainbows
Speaker 1: actually appear as halos, not these sort of half arcs
Speaker 1: that we see. Yeah. Yeah, so if you were to
Speaker 1: go above the clouds and look down, you would see
Speaker 1: that rainbow is actually a halo, a circle, a giant one,
Speaker 1: and when we're here in the ground we look up
Speaker 1: the horizon, we're only seeing a portion of that because
Speaker 1: of course we don't have, first of all, the inner
Speaker 1: machinery to try to perceive that, and sort of the
Speaker 1: Earth is kind of in our way, blocking our view
Speaker 1: of that entire halo. You know, occasionally will you'll even
Speaker 1: see an inverted rainbow. Were aware of this. I've heard
Speaker 1: of this. It's crazy, and it's caused by sunlight shining
Speaker 1: through atmospheric ice crystals. It's rarely encountered. At latitudes far
Speaker 1: from the Earth's poles, we have these upside down rainbows
Speaker 1: where the sunlight shines through these tiny ice crystals too
Speaker 1: high altitude clouds, and it creates this. I guess you
Speaker 1: think of it as like a smiley face. It's turning
Speaker 1: the frown at the rainbow upside down. It's beautiful. It is.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about this process. This bending of light, or
Speaker 1: as you have referred to it before, is shattering white
Speaker 1: light seeing what it's made of. So think of it
Speaker 1: this way. White light is a lie and and the
Speaker 1: raindrop or a prism or any kind of prism like device,
Speaker 1: it takes that white light and it breaks it up.
Speaker 1: We're breaking it up with with some droplets and turning
Speaker 1: it into the seven different wavelengths and make it up right.
Speaker 1: So there are seven components of light and you may
Speaker 1: know them as roy g BIV. You probably learned that
Speaker 1: in school. Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet.
Speaker 1: And they all have different wavelengths. So when they've bend,
Speaker 1: they all kind of behave differently, and you've got red
Speaker 1: right and violet book ending the colors and rainbow and
Speaker 1: red is the strongest while violet is just a it's
Speaker 1: a little bit hazier. Okay. I was that roy g
Speaker 1: BIV would be a good name for a leprechn too. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I can see it on his little outfit like his
Speaker 1: like his his name tag, like he's a convention. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm sure it's been done. There's also a really great
Speaker 1: Boards of Canada track called roy g BIV. There. So
Speaker 1: think about that. You think about that prism. You think
Speaker 1: about this rain drops up in the sky acting as
Speaker 1: tiny prisms and refracting that light. And then you know
Speaker 1: that light bouncing off the side of that rain drop
Speaker 1: and then further refracting it and reflecting it. And that's
Speaker 1: why you get this like incredibly cool vision in the sky.
Speaker 1: You know what, other skies may have rainbows in our
Speaker 1: solar system. What if you traveled to Saturn's moon Titan,
Speaker 1: scientists think you might be able to see a rainbow
Speaker 1: because it boths both sunlight and water droplets. So it
Speaker 1: could happen, we can hear. Yeah, yeah, So if you
Speaker 1: travel to Titan, keep a lookout. Okay, so that gives
Speaker 1: us some insight into rainbows. When we come back from
Speaker 1: our break, we're going to ask the question why is
Speaker 1: the sky blue? And we're back, why is it the
Speaker 1: sky blue? I believe it was the magician comedian Night
Speaker 1: Court star Harry Anderson who answered this question by saying,
Speaker 1: if the sky were green, we wouldn't know when to
Speaker 1: stop mowing. That's right, which is a valid commentary on
Speaker 1: the optical world. But it's it's actually a little more
Speaker 1: complicated than that. The reason that the sky is blue
Speaker 1: relates right back to these different wavelengths in light. That's right.
Speaker 1: So atoms, molecules and particles and atmosphere absorb and scatter light. Okay,
Speaker 1: so we're going to talk not specifically like we were
Speaker 1: with the rainbow, but we're talking about that huge expanse
Speaker 1: of blue sky above us. And again we're talking about
Speaker 1: the components of light roy g biv and those different
Speaker 1: wavelengths that scattered throughout the atmosphere, which means that some
Speaker 1: are better spotted by our eyes than others, and this
Speaker 1: is called Raleigh scattering. Shorter wavelengths like blue and violet
Speaker 1: actually scatter a lot more than long ones when particles
Speaker 1: like oxygen and nitrogen molecules are relatively small. Okay, so
Speaker 1: that's why blue and violet are pretty much dominating the
Speaker 1: sky for us, because that's what we're perceiving. It's what
Speaker 1: scatters throughout that atmosphere. But I mean, you probably are
Speaker 1: asking the question, if that's the case, then why don't
Speaker 1: I look up at a sky that's all sort of
Speaker 1: monet you know, blue and purple splot Why do I
Speaker 1: get that one color? And it comes down to the
Speaker 1: limits of our our eyes and the limits of our
Speaker 1: brain to process all of this information. Yeah, because the
Speaker 1: cones in our eye seen overlap in these two colors.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's really again limitations of machinery that we have.
Speaker 1: So it's sort of like our eyes are interpreting this
Speaker 1: information for us. And saying, Okay, this must be this
Speaker 1: one color blue. And I love this idea that almost
Speaker 1: within our brain we have a painter mixing these colors,
Speaker 1: the blue and the purple and white and coming up
Speaker 1: with this blue sky for us. Yeah, that's kind of
Speaker 1: simplifying the process. It's like, what do we have coming in, Well,
Speaker 1: there's a little violet. We're just gonna call it blue,
Speaker 1: you know, simplify things. We've got enough to worry about.
Speaker 1: Since wise we're not about the sky. It's really not
Speaker 1: doing much for you. Yeah, this brain is taking up
Speaker 1: a lot of energy as it is. Let's just say blue.
Speaker 1: And then it's so cool to think that every single
Speaker 1: day you get a different shade of this this painterly blue,
Speaker 1: depending on how cloudy is, how much sun there is.
Speaker 1: I find it fascinating. I remember always finding like a
Speaker 1: really blue sky kind of depressing, Like I'm more of
Speaker 1: a cloud guy, like a like a nice cloudy overcast day,
Speaker 1: or even if it's I mean, I like sunlight as
Speaker 1: much of the next guy, and my body needs it.
Speaker 1: But even then I like, I like a sun with
Speaker 1: a little clouds mixing it up, but like a really
Speaker 1: endlessly blue monotonously blue sky is there's something just kind
Speaker 1: of weighs on you. Okay, here's the weird thing, Robert Lamb,
Speaker 1: you wear blue all the time, sky blue. In fact,
Speaker 1: you're wearing it right now. You don't wear the same
Speaker 1: blue shirt every day, but you have like ten of
Speaker 1: that was that verious shell. Yeah, well that's a color
Speaker 1: that looks good at me, I'm told by my wife.
Speaker 1: So but but or maybe that's the thing. Maybe I
Speaker 1: since I wear blue a lot, I'm a little concerned
Speaker 1: when the sky is dressed the same as me. You're
Speaker 1: afraid that someone's gonna a bird, is gonna mistake you
Speaker 1: for this guy, or they just look at that guy.
Speaker 1: He's in the sky addressed the same. They're just a
Speaker 1: couple of twinkies. Alright. So one other quickie for you guys.
Speaker 1: Northern lights of those are those dazzling Arctic and Antarctic displays,
Speaker 1: colorful sheets of light transforming the endless winter skies. Right. Yeah.
Speaker 1: If you catch any of the Discovery BBC co production
Speaker 1: Frozen Planet, there's an episode that deals with the northern
Speaker 1: lights and they use some time laps stuff and just
Speaker 1: fabulous filmography to capture the Northern lights, so definitely check
Speaker 1: that out of you for a visual interpretation of what
Speaker 1: we're talking about. Yeah, and these actually form when solar
Speaker 1: particles are thrown out by explosions on the Sun and
Speaker 1: are drawn by the Earth's magnetic field toward the North
Speaker 1: and South Poles, colliding with atmospheric gases to emit photons
Speaker 1: or light particles. And I just found that pretty cool
Speaker 1: to be recently talked about magnets, magnetic fields North and
Speaker 1: South Pole and how all of this sort of helps
Speaker 1: us to not be bombarded by all of the Sun's
Speaker 1: solar junk. But it's very cool to know that it's
Speaker 1: also part of this again, paint release guy in some
Speaker 1: climes of the world. What is kind of sad about
Speaker 1: the Northern lights is that my family, when I was younger,
Speaker 1: we lived in Canada for a little bit. I think
Speaker 1: I mentioned before. We my dad was a dentist up
Speaker 1: in Newfoundland, Canada, so it's pretty far north, and I
Speaker 1: know on at least one occasion, like we went out
Speaker 1: and made a special trip to glimpse the Northern lights
Speaker 1: and supposedly we saw them, but it didn't really make
Speaker 1: I was like in kindergarten at the time, and it
Speaker 1: didn't make a real impression on me, and I don't
Speaker 1: really have a firm memory of what they may have
Speaker 1: looked like. So I've always done that kind of sad
Speaker 1: because people are like, oh, did you get to see
Speaker 1: the Northern Lights? Like, yeah, I did, And what do
Speaker 1: you think I didn't make an impression. I think you
Speaker 1: need to implant a memory there well, to a certain extent,
Speaker 1: I do you know, And this of course we've done
Speaker 1: all podcasts about memory. But but then I your stories
Speaker 1: about us going to see the Northern Lights. So I
Speaker 1: create this vision of my family standing there, and then
Speaker 1: I see these brilliant time laps videos of the Northern Lights,
Speaker 1: so I kind of throw that in there, and then
Speaker 1: I throw this vision of me justlike standing around day dreaming,
Speaker 1: looking at the ground instead of looking up at the
Speaker 1: brilliance in the heavens. Again, that's the thing that I
Speaker 1: find fascinating, is this idea that our brain is interpreting
Speaker 1: the information that we see and it's not really the
Speaker 1: reality always, right, You've got memory, and then you just
Speaker 1: have the limitations of what we've been given or what
Speaker 1: we have evolved with. And so yeah, I mean this
Speaker 1: guy isn't necessarily blue. There's another quick rainbow. In fact,
Speaker 1: the Babylonian goddess Ishtar wears rainbows is kind of a
Speaker 1: fancy necklace and there's a light off. Yeah, and there's
Speaker 1: a delightful rainbow bridge that connects the Norse realms of
Speaker 1: Vascard and mid Guard, which I think they do something
Speaker 1: with that in the Thor comic books in the Thor
Speaker 1: movie as well. You have to take down some of
Speaker 1: that masculine energy there. What a rainbows about? That's what
Speaker 1: we ride our horses over when we trawl up into war,
Speaker 1: trall up into war. I don't know what I'm saying anymore. Uh, well,
Speaker 1: you know what. That's what happens when you do you
Speaker 1: tend videos back to back. Okay, this is some of
Speaker 1: the stuff that we learned, and we may continue to
Speaker 1: bring some other items that we covered as well to
Speaker 1: you guys, but have a lookout for these videos. Also
Speaker 1: wanted to mention that Matt Frederick, our producer here, created
Speaker 1: the music for that and it's really cool indeed, so
Speaker 1: Keeop a look out for those. We'll throw some links
Speaker 1: stuff on the Facebook and the Twitter for sure, so
Speaker 1: that you can view these and show them to your
Speaker 1: kids yourself. Let's call the robot over give us some
Speaker 1: of that sweet listener mail. Here's one from Madeline. Madeline
Speaker 1: rights and says, Hey, Robert and Julie. Just thought I
Speaker 1: would say thanks for all the great podcast I've been
Speaker 1: listening to them and really enjoying them for a while now,
Speaker 1: and I thought it should finally take the time to
Speaker 1: say thanks. I think you guys pick great topics, always
Speaker 1: very interesting and fun. You two can also be quite funny.
Speaker 1: You made me laugh a lot. I like the random
Speaker 1: bits of personal stories and et cetera that sometimes are
Speaker 1: in your podcast. To you both seem very cool. I'm
Speaker 1: a sixteen year old girl from Michigan. Hey, that's uh
Speaker 1: your homestake. I found your podcast on the Zoom marketplace
Speaker 1: a long time ago and have been enjoying them ever since.
Speaker 1: I liked you guys on Facebook. Just now, oh there
Speaker 1: he goes, Just watch the register. Um. I love your photos.
Speaker 1: It's funny to see the faces of people I've been
Speaker 1: listening to for months. You both look great this. I
Speaker 1: hope you guys keep up with great work. I learned
Speaker 1: a lot of interesting stuff listening to your podcast. I'm
Speaker 1: often thinking about it in the boring moments of school
Speaker 1: for days after. Thanks a lot, Matline, very cool, Thanks
Speaker 1: for listening, Melan. I do think that's interesting that, you know,
Speaker 1: we have so many younger listeners and they all sort
Speaker 1: of make that similar statement of you know, it kind
Speaker 1: of helps enrich my my life as I'm sitting in
Speaker 1: school and we just did a podcast on sloth and
Speaker 1: talked about daydreaming. So if we can help your daydreams
Speaker 1: and make them better than that's awesome. Yeah, indeed, So
Speaker 1: if you want to reach out to us, you want
Speaker 1: to connect with us, you can certainly find us on
Speaker 1: Facebook where we are stuff to Blow your Mind, and
Speaker 1: you can also find us on Twitter where we are
Speaker 1: blow the Mind. And you can also drop us a
Speaker 1: line and blow the mind. At Discovery dot com, be
Speaker 1: sure to ck out our new video podcasts, Stuff from
Speaker 1: the Future. Join how staf Work staff as we explore
Speaker 1: the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow.