Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology? With
Speaker 1: tech Stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hello there, everyone,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech stuff. My name is Chris Poulette
Speaker 1: and I am the tech editor here at how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com. Sitting across from me, as he often does,
Speaker 1: staring off into space because he's trying not to smirk
Speaker 1: at me, is senior writer Jonathan Strickland. Checked chicken E
Speaker 1: check Chicken E one, two three. Okay, then I'm a
Speaker 1: little okay, all right, let's start well off with a
Speaker 1: little listener mail. This is your mail comes from Joseph Business.
Speaker 1: Hi there, Chris and Jonathan. This is Joseph from Dorchester, Ontario. Again.
Speaker 1: I had an idea and I thought it would be
Speaker 1: cool for you guys to cover in a blog post
Speaker 1: or podcast, which you've probably already guessed from the title
Speaker 1: of my email, fiber optics. I'm sure you get ten
Speaker 1: emails a day asking for a podcast on fiber optics,
Speaker 1: but I look through the list several times and wasn't
Speaker 1: able to find a podcast on the topic. I have
Speaker 1: a special interest in this type of data transport, because
Speaker 1: I have heard that my my town might be getting
Speaker 1: some fiber optic lines installed in the near future. I've
Speaker 1: also seen television shows about installing fiber optic lines along
Speaker 1: the Pacific coast of North America to link up to
Speaker 1: Canada and the to link up Canada and the USA
Speaker 1: with the Central and Southern America's but they didn't really
Speaker 1: cover exactly how they would work. Of course, everyone knows
Speaker 1: more or less how fiber optics work, especially since they
Speaker 1: have almost made the width of the human hair a
Speaker 1: standard unit of measurement. However, I and I am sure
Speaker 1: many of your listeners would like to know exactly how
Speaker 1: they work, as well as if they are really as
Speaker 1: good as they are touted as being. Maybe you could
Speaker 1: also talk about other comparable technologies that we can look
Speaker 1: forward to. Uh, and I'm going to truncate the rest
Speaker 1: of his email. He goes on a little bit more,
Speaker 1: talks about how great we are, But you guys know
Speaker 1: that already we all know how great we are, So
Speaker 1: let's just right into fiber optics. Okay, so the width
Speaker 1: of a human here. Hey, I think someone's knocking on
Speaker 1: our ceiling. Um. Oh, what a feeling when all right,
Speaker 1: let's let's try that again. So fiber optics. Yes. In short,
Speaker 1: it's a long thin wire of glass yep. And it
Speaker 1: has a couple of different coatings on it that allow
Speaker 1: light to pass through this this long wire of glass. Um,
Speaker 1: and it can go pretty far away without any degradation.
Speaker 1: And then you have a something on the other end
Speaker 1: that detects the light. That's the very basic system of
Speaker 1: a fiber optic line. Yeah. Now it has to be
Speaker 1: a very very special glass. You couldn't just basically melt
Speaker 1: down your window panes and stretch them out. No, that
Speaker 1: would be a very bad idea, and it would get
Speaker 1: cold at night, yeah, um, and things could get inside
Speaker 1: and bats other monsters that begin with be beholders berserker.
Speaker 1: Oh no, I don't want any berserkers in the bedroom anyhow,
Speaker 1: scom No. No, No, it's a it's a very very
Speaker 1: optically pure glass. It has to be made in a
Speaker 1: very controlled environment in order for it to be extremely pure.
Speaker 1: And the reason why it needs to be extremely pure
Speaker 1: is because the light that is carrying the signals has
Speaker 1: to be able to to reach as far as it can.
Speaker 1: Now that's the thing I mean regards there there are
Speaker 1: a number of different ways to transmit information in a
Speaker 1: fiber optic line, but without having a very pure medium,
Speaker 1: in this case, the the extremely pure optical glass. Um,
Speaker 1: it's not going to get very far without help, right,
Speaker 1: So let's uh, let's talk a little bit about fiber
Speaker 1: optics in general, and then we should talk about the
Speaker 1: the process of making a fiber optic line, which is
Speaker 1: actually pretty fascinating. Yeah, it really is. So a fiber
Speaker 1: optic is made up. Fiber optic line is made up
Speaker 1: of three parts. You've got the core, which is the glass. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's what the light passes through. Around the core,
Speaker 1: you have the cladding, and the cladding is a reflective coating.
Speaker 1: It's that's what allows the light to bounce around inside
Speaker 1: the fiber optic line. So when you shine a light
Speaker 1: down a fiber optic line, it's reflecting off of this
Speaker 1: this coating and moving further down the line until it
Speaker 1: reaches the other end. We can get more into that
Speaker 1: in a minute. And then around the cladding you have
Speaker 1: the buffer coating, which is a plastic coating, and that's
Speaker 1: what that's just protection. It protects the fiber from any
Speaker 1: sort of damage. And these these glass wires are so
Speaker 1: thin that they are actually flexible. You can um use
Speaker 1: these two to to wire a a connection that requires
Speaker 1: cornering and that sort of thing. So if you're careful
Speaker 1: with it, you can actually bend this stuff without having
Speaker 1: to worry about it breaking. Now that doesn't mean that
Speaker 1: it's unbreakable. It is breaking, but if you are careful
Speaker 1: with it, you can actually corner with this stuff, which
Speaker 1: is good because otherwise it would not be nearly as
Speaker 1: useful if you had to do a straight line to
Speaker 1: line kind of connection. Yeah, that's the whole thing with
Speaker 1: the cladding, because you know, light travels in a straight line,
Speaker 1: So if you get to a curve, what are you
Speaker 1: gonna do? The light would just pass? Yeah, otherwise the
Speaker 1: light would just pass right out of the line and
Speaker 1: it wouldn't get to the other end, and you wouldn't
Speaker 1: have any information. Yeah. The clouding functions is sort of
Speaker 1: a imagine yourself in a tunnel if you will, that
Speaker 1: is completely surrounded, uh, like you're walking through a mirrored
Speaker 1: tunnel that you know, in this case, you would be
Speaker 1: the light source and as soon as you get to
Speaker 1: a curve, uh, you would go straight into the wall.
Speaker 1: Bounce off the mirror and then bounce off the the
Speaker 1: opposite side again down the line, so that allows the
Speaker 1: light to continue to travel through the fiber optic line. Right.
Speaker 1: Another way to think about is get like five friends
Speaker 1: together each uh you know, three of those friends are
Speaker 1: holding yours, and you put one of your friends at
Speaker 1: uh you know, at the other end of say um
Speaker 1: uh an obstacle course or whatever, and you set the
Speaker 1: three friends so that each one's in line of sight
Speaker 1: of the of the one person in front of them
Speaker 1: and the person behind them. So you're at the very
Speaker 1: front of the line. You can see one person. Okay,
Speaker 1: you can see your friend. We'll call him Josh. Okay,
Speaker 1: so Josh creepy hands Clark is he's holding a mirror,
Speaker 1: all right, So you have a flashlight and you can
Speaker 1: see Josh. Now, Josh, he has a direct line of
Speaker 1: sight to you. And the next person who is Chuck awesome,
Speaker 1: and Chuck is also holding a mirror, and then uh,
Speaker 1: Chuck can see Josh and can see the person on
Speaker 1: the next step down the line, which will say is
Speaker 1: um Tyler. So Tyler's got a mirror, all right, and
Speaker 1: Tyler can see Chuck and can see Chris, who's at
Speaker 1: the other end. I light up my flashlight aimed over
Speaker 1: at Josh creepy hands Clark, who then tilts the mirror
Speaker 1: in such a way so that the light bounces off
Speaker 1: and goes toward Chuck. Chuck aligns his mirror so that
Speaker 1: he catches that light, and it bounces off and moves
Speaker 1: toward Tyler. Tyler then manipulates his mirror so it catches
Speaker 1: the light and manipulates it toward Chris, and then Chris
Speaker 1: can see the light that I am shining, even though
Speaker 1: we're not in a direct path. Okay, so if I
Speaker 1: turned that flashlight on and off, Chris will see the
Speaker 1: light going on and off. I could actually communicate this
Speaker 1: way if both Chris and I knew Morse code. However,
Speaker 1: since neither of us do know Morse code, or at
Speaker 1: least I don't know Morse code, I would just be babbling, uh,
Speaker 1: complete nonsense, which is okay, granted, part of the course.
Speaker 1: But it wouldn't even spell out words. But you could
Speaker 1: if both people knew Morse code, which that's kind of
Speaker 1: the basis in a very it's a very simple, yeah,
Speaker 1: a very simplified version of what is happening in a
Speaker 1: fiber optic system. You know, there are there are two
Speaker 1: different types of UH fiber optic lines. One is the
Speaker 1: single mode, which has a small our core and it
Speaker 1: uses in a laser light, an infrared laser to transmit information. Yes, laser.
Speaker 1: I knew you were going to do that. And the
Speaker 1: other one is the multimode fiber, which has a larger core,
Speaker 1: but it uses uh l ED s yes, a light
Speaker 1: emitting diode YES to to transmit information. And uh there
Speaker 1: there actually is a you can use a plastic chord
Speaker 1: version which also uses an LED, but it it uses
Speaker 1: the visible spectrum red light. But that you know, that
Speaker 1: doesn't seem to be nearly as common as the glass
Speaker 1: core fiber optic lines. Now, when we're talking about things
Speaker 1: like infrared light, that's light that has a shorter wavelength
Speaker 1: than visible light. Yeah, all right, And in general, the
Speaker 1: shorter the wavelength of light, the further it will go
Speaker 1: on a fiber optic line on its own without degrading,
Speaker 1: because light signals will degrade over distance. Uh And in general,
Speaker 1: the distance that most companies use to measure a degrading
Speaker 1: effect is the kilometer. So you say, how many you
Speaker 1: know how how much of a percentage of the light
Speaker 1: will you lose after a kilometers worth of cable. Oh,
Speaker 1: we should also mention that these these individual fiber optic
Speaker 1: threads are often bundled together in a jacket to make
Speaker 1: a cable. So you actually have hundreds or even thousands
Speaker 1: of these fiber optic lines all bundled together, which isn't
Speaker 1: really It sounds like a lot, but if you think
Speaker 1: about it, if they're all essentially the diameter of a
Speaker 1: human hair, you can bundle thousands of these in a
Speaker 1: reasonably small cable and use that to transmit an awful
Speaker 1: lot of bandwidth. And I have to agree with Joseph,
Speaker 1: the human hair measurement is really annoying for those of
Speaker 1: us who are follically challenged. Well you know, and also
Speaker 1: depends on the hair. In my case, it's an imaginary number,
Speaker 1: so like event twelve or like in um, but minus
Speaker 1: in diameter. But that's the thing. If if the glass
Speaker 1: inside the core of a fiber optic line is not
Speaker 1: pure enough, the signal is going to start degrading even
Speaker 1: faster um. And there is something that you can do
Speaker 1: about that. Uh. Therefore, four parts to a fiber optic system. Um,
Speaker 1: the transmitter and the receiver, well, I mean those that
Speaker 1: would be the guy with a flashlight and the guy
Speaker 1: looking in my other very simple example, and then you
Speaker 1: get the fiber. Okay, again that makes sense. That's the
Speaker 1: actual cable. But in the cases when you have very
Speaker 1: very long connections, like I don't know, if you're trying
Speaker 1: to connect North America to South America, to use our example,
Speaker 1: you stop. You're going to get more emails about that.
Speaker 1: I love the Canadians, I love them. You you like
Speaker 1: taunting them. I have to tell you, Okay, apart from
Speaker 1: my wife, some of the most beautiful women I've ever
Speaker 1: seen were in Toronto. That is no joke. Okay. So guys,
Speaker 1: if you're looking for like beautiful women, Toronto toe Okay.
Speaker 1: So if you were trying to hook up North America
Speaker 1: and South America were talking about hooking up to Toronto, yeah,
Speaker 1: you would need an optical regenerator, which is back to
Speaker 1: this more or less functions, sort of like an amplifier. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's kind of interesting, actually, an optical regenerator. The first
Speaker 1: time I saw that term, now in my mind, I thought, oh,
Speaker 1: this must be a a device in the middle of
Speaker 1: the line that interprets the light and then emits the
Speaker 1: light on its own, like you know, something that's actually
Speaker 1: receiving the light and then transmitting the same message but
Speaker 1: with at full power. That's not exactly what's happening. What's
Speaker 1: really happening is that they introduce certain elements into the
Speaker 1: fiber optic line at a particular distance. It's called doping,
Speaker 1: all right. Now, Doping is the same sort of thing
Speaker 1: in a in a sense that you use with semiconductors
Speaker 1: that let semiconductors do what they do. It's when you
Speaker 1: insert certain impurities in a very controlled fashion to change
Speaker 1: the behavior of that particular substance. Now, in this case,
Speaker 1: the doping creates this, uh, this material that when the
Speaker 1: laser light hits it, it energizes the material which and
Speaker 1: then emits the same light further down the line. Right.
Speaker 1: The molecules of this substance used to coade the line
Speaker 1: function as lasers. This blows my mind. It's fascinating and
Speaker 1: it's really cool. Yeah, I mean this this was one
Speaker 1: of those things that I did not know about fiber
Speaker 1: options before I started to really research this topic for
Speaker 1: the podcast. And uh yeah, it's it's the special coding
Speaker 1: that when it absorbs the light and then emits the
Speaker 1: laser light so that you have a strong signal all
Speaker 1: the way down, so you know, periodic points along the line.
Speaker 1: You introduced this doping to make sure that the signal
Speaker 1: that you put in one end will come out the
Speaker 1: other end. And we should go ahead and say that
Speaker 1: the receivers when they receive a light, they're essentially remember
Speaker 1: that information is in bits, right, zeros and ones. So
Speaker 1: how would you transfer light into zeros and ones? What
Speaker 1: would be the easiest way. The easiest way is to
Speaker 1: turn it on and off. There you go. If the
Speaker 1: lights flickering on and off. I mean we're talking like
Speaker 1: super fast flickering on and off, and you have a
Speaker 1: very sensitive sensor on the other end that can detect
Speaker 1: when it's on and off. That there's your zeros and ones.
Speaker 1: And that's how you can transmit information. And you're doing
Speaker 1: it literally at the speed of light. And all you
Speaker 1: have to do is, you know, plug the cable in
Speaker 1: one end and to the other, and you don't have
Speaker 1: to worry about whether or not it's going to get there,
Speaker 1: because it's gonna get there. Yeah. Well, assuming there's no
Speaker 1: damage to the line. Yeah, exactly, careful call before you dig.
Speaker 1: So here's some here's some other interesting information about fiber optics.
Speaker 1: Reasons why you might want fiber optics as opposed to
Speaker 1: say something like copper wire to carry your information. Copper wire,
Speaker 1: for one thing, is spensive. Copper is not as plentiful
Speaker 1: as we as we would like. So it's uh, it's
Speaker 1: it's a precious commodity really and to you know. And
Speaker 1: the other problem is that you need a lot of
Speaker 1: it if you're going to create information lines. And then
Speaker 1: of course, you know, you have the whole mining, which
Speaker 1: is a pretty uh, pretty invasive. There's yeah, it's also
Speaker 1: that's that's the problem. Also, um it generates heat because
Speaker 1: electricity moving a current moving through a copper wire will
Speaker 1: generate heat, um but which is not a problem with
Speaker 1: optical exactly. And it also generates radio frequencies because electric
Speaker 1: currents can create uh interference. If you're sheathing around a
Speaker 1: copper wire is too weak, you can get these radio
Speaker 1: frequencies emitted as the current is moving through the wire,
Speaker 1: which means that you can get interference if you have
Speaker 1: too many uh, too many connections all in one area,
Speaker 1: or too many wires all in one area. The the
Speaker 1: information moving through why can start causing interference the uh
Speaker 1: for another wire. This is kind of like why you
Speaker 1: get like a let's say you have a cell phone
Speaker 1: and you receive a phone call and you happen to
Speaker 1: have that cell phone next to a speaker that has
Speaker 1: really poor sheathing. That's where you get the did did
Speaker 1: didn't noise? Where that's the interference that's coming through the
Speaker 1: speaker wire because it's generated by the cell phone. Well,
Speaker 1: with optic fiber optics, you don't have that problem. If
Speaker 1: your cell phone goes off next to a fiber optic line,
Speaker 1: there's no interference with that fiber optic line because it's
Speaker 1: not it's not reliant upon radio frequencies. It's not gonna
Speaker 1: affect the behavior at all. Excellent also can hold hold
Speaker 1: more bandwidth than a copper line can. Yep, And so
Speaker 1: you start thinking about this like, okay, wait, it's cheaper,
Speaker 1: it there's no interference, it can carry more information. You're
Speaker 1: not gonna lose your signal as much as you would
Speaker 1: with other forms of transmission. Um it's it doesn't require
Speaker 1: a lot of power. It's great for transmitting digital information
Speaker 1: because again you're talking about zeros and ones. Um, it's
Speaker 1: you know, it's flexible, it's lightweight. What why would a
Speaker 1: company not use fiber optics. Why would it be so
Speaker 1: slow to install fiber optics? I can tell you why.
Speaker 1: Why Because it costs money to install that stuff and
Speaker 1: you have to send cruise back out to dig up
Speaker 1: the grass again. Bingo. So here's the here's the real issue.
Speaker 1: It's not that fiber optics aren't great or cheap or efficient.
Speaker 1: The problem is that we already have a lot of
Speaker 1: these systems in place using older technology, and it costs
Speaker 1: a lot of money to rip all a lot of
Speaker 1: money and a lot of time to rip all that
Speaker 1: stuff out and replace it with a new system, which
Speaker 1: is why fiber optic lines are pretty still pretty rare
Speaker 1: in the United States. I mean there are different There
Speaker 1: are cities that have a very very you know, strong
Speaker 1: fiber optic presence, like the fiber optics uh from the
Speaker 1: curb all the way to the home. But um, but
Speaker 1: I would say for the majority of the United States
Speaker 1: that's not the case. Yeah, that's that's true. Um, But
Speaker 1: it is it is an option, you know, and it's
Speaker 1: something it's starting to roll out. Yeah, I mean people
Speaker 1: are demanding more bandwidth. So before long you're gonna have
Speaker 1: a lot of companies, a lot of sp s saying
Speaker 1: that fiber optics are definitely a good investment because otherwise,
Speaker 1: I mean, eventually you're gonna have companies say, you know what,
Speaker 1: if they're not going to provide the fiber optics to
Speaker 1: their customers, there's an area of opportunity for us. If
Speaker 1: we move in there and we're willing to build the
Speaker 1: infrastructure that we need, we can steal all those customers
Speaker 1: away because we can provide something that the other company can't.
Speaker 1: So ultimately, I think we will be moving more to
Speaker 1: uh fiber optics infrastructure throughout the United States. UM, I
Speaker 1: still think it's gonna take a while, especially in regions
Speaker 1: where competition is practically non existent. I mean, in my neighborhood,
Speaker 1: that's pretty much the case. You you have your choice
Speaker 1: of one major I s P or nothing, unless you
Speaker 1: want to go uh wireless with y Max, which you know,
Speaker 1: that's a totally different animal because you're not using cables
Speaker 1: at all in that case. But yeah, uh so let's
Speaker 1: I mentioned that we you know, it might be interesting
Speaker 1: to talk a little bit how about how they make
Speaker 1: fiber optic threads. I thought i'd kind of walk through
Speaker 1: them the process because it is pretty cool. Yeah it is,
Speaker 1: and we actually have a pretty detailed right up about that. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a there's a great article on how fiber optics
Speaker 1: work on how stuff Works dot com. So if you
Speaker 1: want to look into this more thoroughly and see some
Speaker 1: really cool illustrations that help you visualize what's going on,
Speaker 1: I highly recommended. All right, But first, what they start
Speaker 1: with is a gas deposition system, a modified chemical vapor
Speaker 1: deposition system m c VD. So you've got these materials
Speaker 1: that are all in liquid format. You gasify them and
Speaker 1: you move them into a tube where they then kind
Speaker 1: of combined and cols, and you use a a it's
Speaker 1: actually in a lathe, so it turns you've got a
Speaker 1: flo aim on that lathe. And it's a fairly complicated
Speaker 1: chemical process. But you're using silicon chloride and germanium chloride
Speaker 1: and uh, eventually this forms um silicon dioxide and germanium dioxide,
Speaker 1: and then together these two chemicals form deposits within the
Speaker 1: lathe and that ultimately is what makes the glass. Now
Speaker 1: it's not a wire yet. It's it's a sort of
Speaker 1: a cylinder of glass and it has to be basically
Speaker 1: extruded out into a long, thin fiber. Right So what
Speaker 1: they do is they put the cylinder of glass, this
Speaker 1: this very pure glass um into it's kind of like
Speaker 1: a little oven. It heats it up and it makes
Speaker 1: the end of it kind of bead up until it
Speaker 1: grows large enough for gravity to pull it downward. So
Speaker 1: then it starts to droop and it pulls hind it
Speaker 1: a very thin thread of glass. Right now, you feed
Speaker 1: this through a very special system of of of guiding
Speaker 1: devices all the way down into a tractor what they
Speaker 1: call attractor. It's just a simple gear that will pull
Speaker 1: the thread in a very regular way, and it can
Speaker 1: actually react to how thick or thin the thread is
Speaker 1: at any particular time to make certain that you have
Speaker 1: a uniform thickness once it gets to the end. Now,
Speaker 1: when you're putting it through these little guides, the guides
Speaker 1: help shape the wire to make sure it's the right thickness,
Speaker 1: and you use lasers to measure the thickness of that
Speaker 1: wire along the pathway to make certain that you've got
Speaker 1: the right length that those readings are what tell the
Speaker 1: tractor how quickly to turn, and they can turn pretty fast. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it's something like sixteen thirty three revolutions per second.
Speaker 1: I mean that's pretty fast. So it has to be
Speaker 1: pretty precise, yes, precise, in order for it to to
Speaker 1: be you know, the right diameter and the you know,
Speaker 1: the right quality of the glass, they have to be
Speaker 1: very careful how they do this. Yeah, you want the
Speaker 1: diameter to be as precise as possible so that you
Speaker 1: can use the correct wavelength of light through the fiber
Speaker 1: optic line. Otherwise, again, you're gonna have some real problems
Speaker 1: with the signal degrading UM over a shorter distance than
Speaker 1: you had anticipated. So once you're done with this process,
Speaker 1: one cylinder of this stuff can create more than one
Speaker 1: point four miles of fiber optic thread. Because that's how
Speaker 1: we're talking about the thickness of a human hair. So, uh,
Speaker 1: taking a cylinder of glass and reducing it to that thickness,
Speaker 1: obviously the length is going to be quite impressive. And
Speaker 1: one point of our miles is that's long two point
Speaker 1: two kilometers to our friends in Europe and overseas, So um,
Speaker 1: that's your basic rundown of fiber optics. It is a
Speaker 1: really good system for carrying information. Um. And it has
Speaker 1: other applications too. I mean it's used in in well
Speaker 1: a lot of medical applications. Um. And uh, actually I
Speaker 1: believe that my plumber, as he was trying to figure
Speaker 1: out exactly what was clogging the line U to the
Speaker 1: sewer from my house, used fiber optic line to see
Speaker 1: what was going on. As it turned out, there were
Speaker 1: roots growing in my pipes. Radical. Yeah, nice, thank you.
Speaker 1: I was feeling a little rancid there. Apparently you were okay.
Speaker 1: So that was a reference. That was not an inside joke.
Speaker 1: I just wanted to point that out. Punk rock thing, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it is a punk rock thing. Well, hopefully that answers
Speaker 1: your question, Joseph about the fiber optics I think, um,
Speaker 1: you know, I I really enjoyed our article on the site.
Speaker 1: You know, it's excellent. It really is really good. It
Speaker 1: really is. It's one of the stronger, stronger articles. I mean,
Speaker 1: we have a lot of great articles on the site,
Speaker 1: but this one, uh you can tell was there was
Speaker 1: a lot of care and research put into this particular
Speaker 1: aler of one. So um, I was very impressed, So yeah,
Speaker 1: definitely go and check it out if you're if you're
Speaker 1: interested in learning more about fiber objects, you can read
Speaker 1: more about the detailed process of how they build fiber
Speaker 1: optic lines and the different uses and applications. And uh,
Speaker 1: I guess that leads us to our second round of
Speaker 1: listener mail. This listener mail comes from Timothy, who says, Hey,
Speaker 1: John and Chris, I love solving the Rubik's cube, and
Speaker 1: then it occurred to me that I had no idea
Speaker 1: how they work? Could you explain how the Rubik's cube works,
Speaker 1: especially variants like the four by four by four and
Speaker 1: the five by five by five. Love the podcast. Keep
Speaker 1: up the good work, well, Timothy. Better than explaining how
Speaker 1: Rubik's cube works, I would like to recommend to you
Speaker 1: a podcast called The Stuff of Genius because recently The
Speaker 1: Stuff of Genius focused on er No Rubik, inventor of
Speaker 1: the Rubik's Cube, among other puzzles. Um, so check that out.
Speaker 1: Watch that video, and uh, I think, um, you know
Speaker 1: it does and go into real strong detail about how
Speaker 1: the Rubik's cube itself works, But it does give you
Speaker 1: an indication of, you know, where Rubik was coming from
Speaker 1: when he started to design this crazy thing that ended
Speaker 1: up being a huge fad. So uh as for solving
Speaker 1: Rubik's cubes, Oh, dear lord, I was hopeless. I was
Speaker 1: one of those people who would slowly peel the stickers
Speaker 1: off and then put them on the different faces. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well you could have been one of the people that
Speaker 1: took them apart. Yes, I've seen that too. I've seen
Speaker 1: that too. Yeah. Essentially there essentially there's a ball in
Speaker 1: the center and the center pieces are static, they don't
Speaker 1: really move. Some pieces that move around them on channels
Speaker 1: with ball bearings in them that get get the pieces
Speaker 1: where they need to go right, And so it's just
Speaker 1: the four by four by four and the five by
Speaker 1: five by five that was just a larger ball with
Speaker 1: more ball bearings in it, and that's pretty neat. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I've actually seen a really cool video about how to
Speaker 1: solve a Rubik's cube and it talks about the algorithms
Speaker 1: have to follow. Yeah, there's actually several algorithms. Um, Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's several, depending on you have. You have several that
Speaker 1: you follow in order to get certain squares in certain locations.
Speaker 1: And if you follow that series of algorithms, then you
Speaker 1: will always be able to solve the Rubik's cube. Now, Grant,
Speaker 1: the way the guy was flipping this Rubik's cube around
Speaker 1: his hands was like, I was like, you need to
Speaker 1: go slower for the liberal arts majors in the audience. No,
Speaker 1: I'm a liberal. I was a liberal arts major to
Speaker 1: saying that, as you know, slow down people. I don't
Speaker 1: think in three dimensions. I've said this before. Personally, I
Speaker 1: find it puzzling. Ha ha. Well, he's quite the enigma,
Speaker 1: Mr Pilette. So we're going to wrap this up now.
Speaker 1: If any of you have any email that you would
Speaker 1: like to send us, our address is tech stuff at
Speaker 1: how stuff boards dot com. Remember we have a live
Speaker 1: show every Tuesday one pm. That is, you can find
Speaker 1: the link to that on our blog. Which if you
Speaker 1: want to find a blog, where would they go to
Speaker 1: on the blog, Chris, that would be blogs dot how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. Right, that is the direct U r. L.
Speaker 1: I always tell people just to go to houstof works
Speaker 1: dot com and follow the links on the right hand side.
Speaker 1: But if you want to go straight there, blogs dot
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com. Well, and you can also
Speaker 1: check out all the other blogs that are here, not
Speaker 1: just ours. Yeah, there's some good ones. There are people
Speaker 1: who write stuff, and that's good. If you're you know,
Speaker 1: if you're into good stuff, you know there there are
Speaker 1: lots and lots of really good blogs on there, so
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