Speaker 1: Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
Speaker 1: name is Robert Lamb and it is Saturday. We are
Speaker 1: back with another Vault episode. This is going to be
Speaker 1: part two of our two parter Oil and Troubled Water.
Speaker 1: This one originally published eight three, twenty twenty three. Let's
Speaker 1: dive right in.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
Speaker 1: name is Robert.
Speaker 3: Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And after a little bit
Speaker 3: of an interval, we are back with part two in
Speaker 3: our series on pouring Oil over Troubled Waters.
Speaker 1: That's right to refresh. In the last episode, which I
Speaker 1: guess was over a week ago. At this point, we
Speaker 1: discussed several interesting mentions from ancient and medieval writings, in
Speaker 1: particular about the interaction between oil and water. We went
Speaker 1: over some of the basics about this of you know,
Speaker 1: the all idea that oil and water don't mix, and
Speaker 1: that oil in water or oil mixed around with water
Speaker 1: can create kind of this novel appearance that captivates our imagination,
Speaker 1: and we also discussed how it may have been added
Speaker 1: to stormy seas to calm them down, and it may
Speaker 1: have been used in some capacity by free divers to
Speaker 1: somehow smooth or clear or illuminate the waters they're diving
Speaker 1: in so as to better see what they're looking for.
Speaker 3: Now, that was an issue last time that I was
Speaker 3: really confused by, because it wasn't even clear to me
Speaker 3: exactly what these ancient authors were claiming. They were saying
Speaker 3: that in some sense a diver might like swim underneath
Speaker 3: the water with some oil in their mouth, and then
Speaker 3: when they needed to see better, they would like spit
Speaker 3: the oil out into the water, or I think you
Speaker 3: said in some other sources people just talked about like
Speaker 3: putting oil over their eyes before they went diving, and
Speaker 3: I couldn't understand from the original verus. We looked at,
Speaker 3: like what even the alleged method of action was there.
Speaker 3: You finally have some answers on this, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I don't know that I'll be able
Speaker 1: to bring one hundred percent clarity to the issue. I
Speaker 1: think there's still gonna I think there may still be
Speaker 1: a certain amount of like historical telephone game going on
Speaker 1: with some of these. But I did find a great
Speaker 1: deal of clarity on this in a twenty twenty one
Speaker 1: book that I picked up titled Neither Letters nor Swimming
Speaker 1: The Rebirth of Swimming and Free Diving by John m McManamon.
Speaker 1: So this is an interesting book which it's a little
Speaker 1: harder to get your hands on this one, but it's
Speaker 1: worth picking up if you're interested in the history of
Speaker 1: diving and swimming in general. Oil comes up multiple times
Speaker 1: in the book, sometimes just in general observances of waters
Speaker 1: that were known to contain oil naturally in the ancient world.
Speaker 1: Ancient writers mentioned a spring at Carthage. There's the Laparous
Speaker 1: River in southern Turkey or what is now southern Turkey,
Speaker 1: and there's also a lake an the Opia that were
Speaker 1: singled out, all noted for oil that could either be
Speaker 1: extracted for use. In the case of Carthage, I think
Speaker 1: they used it with livestock or just waters that had
Speaker 1: a quote unquote naturally lubricating effect on the swimmer. Hmmm,
Speaker 1: sounds great now, This idea of lubricating yourself for a swim.
Speaker 1: This was This was pretty interesting to me because I
Speaker 1: swim several days a week, but I never oil myself
Speaker 1: up beforehand, and I don't see anybody else doing it either.
Speaker 3: I mean wait, I was gonna ask, is that even
Speaker 3: a thing anybody does? I don't think so.
Speaker 1: I mean, you see cases, certainly, there are cases of
Speaker 1: people lubricating their body with lotions and oils afterwards, or
Speaker 1: you know, something to that effect. But I mean, it
Speaker 1: may be I don't know if it's anything that has
Speaker 1: ever explored and say, competitive swimming. If it is, I'm
Speaker 1: not aware of it off the top of my head.
Speaker 1: But there are various mentions of oil lubricated swimmers in
Speaker 1: ancient texts. The idea that before you entered the water
Speaker 1: to swim, you'd want to rub your naked body down
Speaker 1: with oil, okay, And the reasons for this is, you know,
Speaker 1: seems to vary. So one account, during the Corinthian War
Speaker 1: in the three eighty nine BC, the Athenian forces used
Speaker 1: swimming infantry against Spartan forces near this place in Egypt, Habitus.
Speaker 1: Apparently the waters there were quite cold, so they rubbed
Speaker 1: themselves down with olive oil beforehand, and they drank a
Speaker 1: lot of alcohol before they got into the water. Now
Speaker 1: McManamon points out that, okay, the oil might have provided
Speaker 1: some insulation that actually helped protect them against the cold,
Speaker 1: but the drinking would have been counterproductive.
Speaker 3: Drinking doesn't actually make you warmer. It might make you
Speaker 3: feel warmer temporarily, but right, yeah, it doesn't help.
Speaker 1: The General Hannibal is also said to have ordered his
Speaker 1: soldiers to oil themselves down against the cold at the
Speaker 1: Battle of Trevia River, the first major battle of the
Speaker 1: Second Punic War in two eighteen BCE. So, in general,
Speaker 1: there seems to be this idea that like, okay, you
Speaker 1: can protect yourself against the cold by covering yourself with oil,
Speaker 1: and then perhaps that would work in the water as well.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 1: Now, on the subject of ancient free diving pearl divers,
Speaker 1: in particular in the Persian Gulf and in the waters
Speaker 1: between India and Sri Lanka, mcmaamon writes that there's a
Speaker 1: lot we don't know about their practices in the ancient world,
Speaker 1: and then they were often working with kind of sketchy
Speaker 1: ideas concerning the nature of oysters. So he mentioned this
Speaker 1: idea that you see written in some of these old
Speaker 1: texts about how oysters have leaders, and you have to
Speaker 1: take out the first oyster first. You have to find
Speaker 1: the leader, take it out first, and then the rest
Speaker 1: will follow.
Speaker 3: Okay, it's a decapitation strike against the oyster brigade.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's also talk about you need to watch your
Speaker 1: fingers because the oysters may sever the fingers, and mcmammon
Speaker 1: casts a lot of doubt on this. I mean, I
Speaker 1: know that there are concerns with certain types of free
Speaker 1: diving and foraging for various shells and creatures. There are
Speaker 1: particular creatures where you do have to potentially worry about
Speaker 1: a you know, finger getting caught or snagged or whatever.
Speaker 1: But in this case McManamon seems to write that it
Speaker 1: was not really a concern. But basically it all drives
Speaker 1: home just how alien the environment was into which these
Speaker 1: people were venturing. Just think about just how limited you
Speaker 1: were as you gazed down into the water, as you
Speaker 1: dived into the water and tried to find whatever you
Speaker 1: were looking for. So in this particular case, they would
Speaker 1: have likely used grafts, which makes sense. And in the
Speaker 1: case of India and Sri Lanka in particular, there's apparently
Speaker 1: evidence that they made condemned criminals do the work, and
Speaker 1: I think in general it was considered dangerous work and
Speaker 1: there's some writings reflect this. Whatever the case, the clear
Speaker 1: the diving conditions, the better to see what you're doing
Speaker 1: as you go down there too and try and venture
Speaker 1: into the oyster kingdom. So mcmatamon writes, quote, if the
Speaker 1: sea was choppy, the crew would spread oil on its
Speaker 1: surface to settle it down. Modern fishermen use a similar
Speaker 1: method to improve surface visibility, pouring shark oil at times
Speaker 1: mixed with sand to settle the waters. So this is
Speaker 1: the idea that we've discussed already, or were going to
Speaker 1: continue to discuss. The idea here, I believe is that
Speaker 1: friction of the oil on the water surface keeps the
Speaker 1: surface from ruffling or breaking, at least for a short
Speaker 1: period of time.
Speaker 3: The question of the mechanism of how oil culmbs the water,
Speaker 3: if it does, is something I'm going to get into
Speaker 3: in a paper that I'll discuss in a minute here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but in general, it sounds like the idea that
Speaker 1: is being expressed here is like, if you can make
Speaker 1: the more you can make the surface of the water
Speaker 1: like glass, supposedly through the application of some oil, the
Speaker 1: better you can see down into where you're about to
Speaker 1: send your divers, who again are free diving without masks, etc.
Speaker 3: Okay, So in this case it would be a question
Speaker 3: of being able to look down into the water from
Speaker 3: the surface and see through it better.
Speaker 1: That's my understanding.
Speaker 3: Yes, okay.
Speaker 1: Now The author also discusses a legendary free diver from
Speaker 1: Italian traditions by the name of Cola pache Cola, the
Speaker 1: fish in Italian, a Mediterranean hero whose exploits holding his
Speaker 1: breath were apparently comparable to Coculon, to BeO Wolf, to
Speaker 1: King Olaff and others. I often don't think about this,
Speaker 1: but yeah, you have a lot of heroes who can
Speaker 1: really hold their breath for a long time, and you
Speaker 1: can take that into the modern area. I mean, look
Speaker 1: at Indiana Jones right then he holds his breath on
Speaker 1: that submarine or does he get in the submarine?
Speaker 3: Oh? Wait, I know what you're talking about now. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Anyway, in this particular case, this is an oral tradition
Speaker 1: that was written down by medieval chroniclers during the twelve century.
Speaker 1: He said to have had various adventures and was said
Speaker 1: to spend so much time in the water that he
Speaker 1: would die if he stayed on land for too long.
Speaker 1: So more fish than man in some ways. It's certainly
Speaker 1: a tall tale, to be sure, but ridings about him
Speaker 1: do contain some insight into the use of oil in
Speaker 1: free diving. Quote, while diving, Cola followed the ancients and
Speaker 1: releasing oil into the water column in order to see better.
Speaker 1: Sicilian fishermen still use that technique, especially when they are
Speaker 1: hunting octopi. In the profound abyss of the Straits of Messina,
Speaker 1: Cola reported to the sovereign that he had seen mountains
Speaker 1: and valleys, woods and fields and trees with edible fruits.
Speaker 3: Like another kingdom, just like we have on land, but
Speaker 3: under the waves.
Speaker 1: Exactly, which is something we've discussed before in terms of
Speaker 1: how previous generations thought about the world underwater. And I
Speaker 1: like that there's also kind of a I mean, there's
Speaker 1: a hint of truth to this as well, Like he's
Speaker 1: reporting that, hey, underneath the water, there's actually a robust ecosystem. Now,
Speaker 1: whether it's actually woods and fields and trees with edible freed, well,
Speaker 1: obviously not, but there is in a sense this rich
Speaker 1: other world down there that you can imagine a free
Speaker 1: diver being able to attest to.
Speaker 3: So this passage is not just talking about putting oil
Speaker 3: on the surface, but actually releasing oil down underneath the
Speaker 3: water when you are down there and again that helping
Speaker 3: to see, but this passage doesn't say why that would
Speaker 3: work if it did.
Speaker 1: Right, And I wish again, I wish I could have
Speaker 1: one hundred percent clarity on this particular angle. I haven't
Speaker 1: found anything. It's worth noting that there are multiple factors
Speaker 1: that contribute to decreased visibility underwater. And you have particles
Speaker 1: in the water, you have salinity gradients, temperature gradients, organic particles.
Speaker 1: Just you know, issues of light and you know where
Speaker 1: the sun is positioned in the sky and how much
Speaker 1: light you're getting in a particular volume of water. Interestingly,
Speaker 1: I was reading that you know sometimes there's a visible
Speaker 1: layer between thermoclines that look like the smoothness of an oilchine.
Speaker 1: So I couldn't help, but wonder if that might factor
Speaker 1: into some of this, like things that may be encountered
Speaker 1: underwater that have the feel or look of oil separation.
Speaker 1: Now another interesting bit here on medieval pearl divers. Mcmanumon
Speaker 1: has some interesting information on oil use from the Arabic
Speaker 1: world of the time, and I want I'm going to
Speaker 1: read a longer quote here and warning that it is
Speaker 1: a little bit graphic as it includes mention of alleged
Speaker 1: body modification for the purposes of free diving. Quote. Pearl
Speaker 1: divers attempted to eliminate the pain in their ears and
Speaker 1: block their nostrils. They ruptured their own ear drum and
Speaker 1: knew they had succeeded when blood flowed out. They soaked
Speaker 1: cotton in oil and inserted it into their ears. The
Speaker 1: technique had an added benefit on the bottom, as the
Speaker 1: oil leaked out and floated up. It clarified the water
Speaker 1: column by allowing greater light to a train. For the nostrils,
Speaker 1: pearl divers had various options. They could plug the openings
Speaker 1: with small balls carved from a tortoise shell and use
Speaker 1: a cloth soaked in oil like the ones used in
Speaker 1: the ears. Alternatively, they could wear a clip over the
Speaker 1: outside of their nostrils, carved from ivory or horn or
Speaker 1: tortoise shell. The stated purpose of blocking the nostrils was
Speaker 1: to keep water out, but it may also have aided
Speaker 1: in equalizing pressure in the sinuses and ears. Professional free
Speaker 1: divers still use a nose clip, and he also mentions
Speaker 1: this at a later point in the book, as well,
Speaker 1: attributing the oil soaked cotton swabs in one's ears as
Speaker 1: being protective but also kind of having this side effect
Speaker 1: of like, well, and as the oil leaks out, you're
Speaker 1: only going to see better down there.
Speaker 3: Hmmm.
Speaker 1: So I think I think all of you, even though
Speaker 1: again not one hundred percent clarity on all this, but
Speaker 1: I think some of these examples are telling. On one hand,
Speaker 1: they provide a little more insight into what some of
Speaker 1: these accounts were talking about concerning free divers bringing down
Speaker 1: oil in their mouths or even in around their eyes.
Speaker 1: We also see plenty of examples where humans would have
Speaker 1: had a chance to witness oil interacting with water whilst swimming,
Speaker 1: you know, this idea of Okay, if we had some
Speaker 1: sort of tradition of oiling your body up before you
Speaker 1: go in, then perhaps you're bringing that information with you.
Speaker 1: If there is some practice about, you know, calming the
Speaker 1: water at the surface of the water so as to
Speaker 1: better see down, then that can easily be translated into
Speaker 1: this idea of like, well, bring the oil down with
Speaker 1: you and make that clear as well. So, yeah, I
Speaker 1: think there's still some mysteries remaining here, but I think
Speaker 1: I can maybe sort of glimpse the shape of the
Speaker 1: thing a little better.
Speaker 3: Okay, Well, even if the answer is still a bit elusive.
Speaker 3: I think valued effort at digging there.
Speaker 1: We may have to come back to this particular book
Speaker 1: in the future. He has a lot of great information
Speaker 1: about like early ideas and developments in the creation of
Speaker 1: like actual goggles and masks that would enable people to
Speaker 1: eventually see under the water with the kind of clarity
Speaker 1: were clearly reaching for.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, we could do some invention coverage on on
Speaker 3: old school diving helmets, which are beautiful.
Speaker 1: Now. I believe in the first episode we warned that
Speaker 1: there would be Ben Franklin, that Ben Franklin would pop
Speaker 1: up in this topic. So let's let's I see is okay,
Speaker 1: he's here? He dies. He frequently pops up on the show,
Speaker 1: especially in our invention episodes. Occasionally you didn't know that
Speaker 1: you were going to have Ben Franklin content, but then
Speaker 1: he appears.
Speaker 3: That's right. So Benjamin Franklin often known as one of
Speaker 3: the so called founding fathers of the United States. He
Speaker 3: was an early American I don't even know what what
Speaker 3: what are? What's the order that you put the things
Speaker 3: he did when you say what he was? He was
Speaker 3: an early American statesman, author, businessman, scientist, inventor. He kind
Speaker 3: of did everything.
Speaker 1: Yeah, just kind of a general American polymath and weird guy,
Speaker 1: you know, an Enlightenment thinker that had a great deal
Speaker 1: of curiosity about the world and entertaining those curiosities.
Speaker 3: Now specifically in the domain of science. Benjamin Franklin, I think,
Speaker 3: is best known for his experiments with electricity, and this
Speaker 3: would include experiments with the storage and discharge of electrical
Speaker 3: potential in what we now call a battery after Franklin's terminology,
Speaker 3: like the Franklin battery was made by putting together a
Speaker 3: series of a pre existing invention called a Leiden jar,
Speaker 3: and he could He's like, oh wow, you can really
Speaker 3: like stack these things up and really pack a punch
Speaker 3: with the energy youer storing. One of these battery experiments
Speaker 3: I know we've talked about on the show before because
Speaker 3: of its weirdness, was the electrocution of a turkey for
Speaker 3: a hull dinner, which he then said was to be
Speaker 3: roasted upon an electric jack after it was electrocuted. But
Speaker 3: for some reason, Franklin believed this would make the meat
Speaker 3: especially tender and succulent. If he used electricity from one
Speaker 3: of his batteries to kill the thing, but he ended
Speaker 3: up badly shocking himself while attempting this. But on the
Speaker 3: broader subject of electricity, Franklin's electrical research also entailed work
Speaker 3: in support of the hypothesis that lightning was in fact
Speaker 3: a form of electricity, was a type of electrical discharge,
Speaker 3: and Franklin was not the first person to make this connection,
Speaker 3: but did important work investigating it. The most famous anecdote here,
Speaker 3: of course, is the one the kite and key experiment,
Speaker 3: which is in a way of disputed historical status. Franklin
Speaker 3: apparently never described himself doing this experiment in any of
Speaker 3: his letters, though I think he described the experiment in
Speaker 3: some writing as a kind of hypothetical, like this is
Speaker 3: an experiment one could do, though after his death people
Speaker 3: did say that he himself had carried it out. If
Speaker 3: he did do it, it would have been probably in
Speaker 3: June of seventeen fifty two. However, Franklin was correct about
Speaker 3: lightning being a form of electrical discharge, and this led
Speaker 3: to his advocacy of the use of sharpened iron lightning
Speaker 3: rods to protect buildings during storms. And this is kind
Speaker 3: of a tangent, but one I got interested in while
Speaker 3: reading about Franklin's lightning rod research for this episode, I
Speaker 3: wanted to share a paragraph I came across from an
Speaker 3: article from the Franklin Institute, which is a museum of
Speaker 3: Benjamin Franklin's life and work in Philadelphia, where they write,
Speaker 3: quote Franklin began to advocate lightning rods that had sharp points.
Speaker 3: His English colleagues favored blunt tipped lightning rods, reasoning that
Speaker 3: sharp ones attracted lightning and increased the risk of strikes.
Speaker 3: They thought blunt rods were less likely to be struck.
Speaker 3: King George the Third had his palace equipped with a
Speaker 3: blunt lightning rod. When it came time to equip the
Speaker 3: colony's buildings with lightning rods, the decision became a political statement.
Speaker 3: The favored pointed lightning rod expressed support for Franklin's theories
Speaker 3: of protecting public buildings and the rejection of theories supported
Speaker 3: by the king. The English thought this was just another
Speaker 3: way for the flourishing colonies to be disobedient to them,
Speaker 3: And I thought this was funny because it's an eighteenth
Speaker 3: century example of a pure scientific question, just like what's
Speaker 3: the ideal shape of a lightning rod? Where really all
Speaker 3: we should care about is what is the correct answer
Speaker 3: of this question being politicized? Now, which answer you favor
Speaker 3: has political connotations, and there is political pressure to think
Speaker 3: a certain way about it.
Speaker 1: Well, who is right? Is it the American way or
Speaker 1: the British way?
Speaker 3: It seems in a way they were both wrong. But
Speaker 3: it seems like the English had the better. The blunt
Speaker 3: lightning rods were better overall, according to modern research. I
Speaker 3: looked up there has been modern research on this, so
Speaker 3: I found a paper by more Awlick and Risin in
Speaker 3: the Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology in the year
Speaker 3: two thousand and three, where they say, quote, an examination
Speaker 3: of the relevant physics shows that very strong electric fields
Speaker 3: are required above the tips of rods in order that
Speaker 3: they function as strike receptors, but that the gradients of
Speaker 3: the field strength over sharp tipped rods are so great
Speaker 3: that at distances of a few millimeters, the local fields
Speaker 3: are often too weak for the development of upward going streamers.
Speaker 3: In field tests, rods with rounded tips have been found
Speaker 3: to be better strike receptors than were nearby sharp tipped rods.
Speaker 3: Though it gets kind of complicated, so they say, overall,
Speaker 3: if you're trying to attract your lightning strikes to these rods.
Speaker 3: The blunt ones are better. But as they explained in
Speaker 3: the paper, Franklin's idea was that the purpose of a
Speaker 3: sharp tipped lightning rod was not to attract lightning, but
Speaker 3: to prevent lightning by allowing thunderclouds to sort of silently
Speaker 3: and gently discharge electricity down to the rod, without actually
Speaker 3: allowing a violent lightning strike to occur at all. Of course,
Speaker 3: it was later recognized that a lightning rod could be
Speaker 3: useful by providing just a conductive pathway to the ground,
Speaker 3: rather than simply letting the lightning find its own way
Speaker 3: to the ground through the structure of the building, which
Speaker 3: would be a lot more destructive. So the authors of
Speaker 3: this paper say that lightning rods don't actually discharge thunderclouds gently.
Speaker 3: Franklin was wrong in thinking that would happen, they say,
Speaker 3: quote it is now recognized that the sole function of
Speaker 3: a lightning rod is to be the receptor or interceptor
Speaker 3: of strikes for a lightning protection system that conducts lightning
Speaker 3: discharges to the earth without damage to the structure on
Speaker 3: which the system is mounted. So I would say Franklin
Speaker 3: was correct about the nature of lightning being electrical. He
Speaker 3: was correct that lightning rods were a good idea. He
Speaker 3: was incorrect in part about how they worked. They don't
Speaker 3: actually gently discharge lightning without a strike occurring. And he
Speaker 3: was probably incorrect about the ideal design parameters because the
Speaker 3: blunt rods, it seems, are better. But also, if you'll remember,
Speaker 3: it seems like the English were also wrong because it
Speaker 3: said that they thought the blunt rods were less likely
Speaker 3: to be struck, and they're actually better because they're more
Speaker 3: likely to be struck. So I thought that was interesting.
Speaker 3: But anyway, we should come back to a different scientific question,
Speaker 3: the one of today's episode. This was a different question
Speaker 3: that captured Franklin's attention, and so I want to cite
Speaker 3: a twenty thirteen historical science paper by Wang Stieglitz, Mardin,
Speaker 3: and Tam in the Biophysical Journal published in the year
Speaker 3: twenty thirteen called Benjamin Franklin, Philadelphia's favorite son was a
Speaker 3: membrane biophysicist. So here's the biographical context. In the year
Speaker 3: seventeen fifty seven, the American House of Assembly in Philadelphia
Speaker 3: sent Benjamin Franklin as an envoy to King George the
Speaker 3: second of Great Britain, and Franklin was traveling on one
Speaker 3: of a fleet of ninety six ships that set out
Speaker 3: to cross the Atlantic, departing from New York Harbor. Early
Speaker 3: in their journey, the fleet hit some bad weather. There
Speaker 3: were high winds and heavy waves, and the paper doesn't
Speaker 3: mention this, but I will say I've read in other
Speaker 3: sources that Franklin was very interested in storms and would
Speaker 3: sometimes chase storms on horseback. So I kind of wonder
Speaker 3: if he was out on deck observing the bad weather
Speaker 3: with joyful curiosity while everybody else is vomiting. I don't know,
Speaker 3: but whatever he was doing, he at some point made
Speaker 3: an observation. He looked out at the rest of the fleet,
Speaker 3: and he observed that a couple of the ships in
Speaker 3: the fleet appeared to be sailing much more smoothly than
Speaker 3: the rest. Everybody else is pitching back and forth violently
Speaker 3: in the waves, and a couple looked like for some
Speaker 3: rea and they weren't. They were just kind of cruising
Speaker 3: along smoothly. And Franklin mentioned this to the captain of
Speaker 3: his ship, and the captain said to him, apparently thinking
Speaker 3: that he was stupid for even asking this question, the
Speaker 3: captain said, the cooks have, I suppose, been just emptying
Speaker 3: their greasy water through the scuppers which has greased the
Speaker 3: sides of those ships a little, as if this was obvious,
Speaker 3: and explained it totally, because, as we talked about in
Speaker 3: the last episode, it had long been common knowledge among
Speaker 3: sailors that oil or grease would calm the waves.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, now Ben Franklin has been tipped off
Speaker 1: and is on the case right.
Speaker 3: Right, He's like, oh, I need to get me some
Speaker 3: of that rancid cooking grease. Figure out what's so special
Speaker 3: about it. So the authors of the paper here they
Speaker 3: go over some of the things we talked about in
Speaker 3: the previous episode that since ancient times, authors have mentioned
Speaker 3: this here and there, this practice of pouring oil, sometimes
Speaker 3: olive oil, on top of the sea to calm the
Speaker 3: waters during storms. Remember that, though we don't have Aristotle's
Speaker 3: original writing on this subject, the Roman historian Plutarch attributed
Speaker 3: a view to Aristotle that quote, the oil produces calm
Speaker 3: by smoothing the water's surface so that wind can slip
Speaker 3: over it without making an impression. So when the captain
Speaker 3: told Franklin this He's like, oh, yeah, they emptied their
Speaker 3: nasty grease into the water after they're done cooking, and
Speaker 3: it's greasing the side of the ship and the water
Speaker 3: around it, so that's making the waves calm. Franklin suspected
Speaker 3: that this explanation was wrong. He doubted that greasing the
Speaker 3: outside of the ship would actually calm the water around it,
Speaker 3: but the observation captured his curiosity, especially since it reminded
Speaker 3: him of experiences playing with wax in his father's soap
Speaker 3: factory when he was ten years old, and he observed
Speaker 3: the same phenomenon several more times during voyages across the ocean,
Speaker 3: so he decided at some point that he should make
Speaker 3: experiments to better understand this. He finally got around to
Speaker 3: it twelve years later in seventeen sixty nine during another
Speaker 3: visit to Great Britain. So Franklin was staying in an
Speaker 3: area called Clapham Common in South London, and together with
Speaker 3: a friend of his name, Christopher Baldwin, Franklin made his
Speaker 3: way to a local pond and started just dumping oil
Speaker 3: in it. To quote from Franklin's own description of his
Speaker 3: experiments at the length being at Clapham where there is
Speaker 3: on the common a large pond which I observed to
Speaker 3: be one day, very rough with the wind. I fetched
Speaker 3: out a cruet of oil. And just to note, a
Speaker 3: cruet is like a small flask or carafe with a
Speaker 3: stopper on top, which you might use to store olive
Speaker 3: oil or vinegar or lemon juice at a dining table.
Speaker 3: Sort of. You can think of it as like, you know,
Speaker 3: you taco bell sauce packet, but a rigid caraf.
Speaker 1: Okay, that's good that we know how much oil, because
Speaker 1: I think, as we discussed in the first episode, like
Speaker 1: there's there's this one tale where it sounds like it's
Speaker 1: a magic potion's worth of oil. Other cases it sounds
Speaker 1: like you're talking about like a dumping out all the
Speaker 1: kitchens excess oil. So there's always this question of, like,
Speaker 1: how much oil are we talking about here?
Speaker 3: This is going to be a fairly small amount of oil.
Speaker 3: I think I've seen it described in the tablespoon range. Okay,
Speaker 3: but so Franklin says, I fetched out a cruet of
Speaker 3: oil and dropped a little of it on the water.
Speaker 3: I saw it spread itself with surprising swiftness upon the surface,
Speaker 3: and there the oil though not more than a teaspoonful.
Speaker 3: Oh okay, so he says, a teaspoonful here produced an
Speaker 3: instant calm over a space several yards square, which spread
Speaker 3: amazingly and extended itself gradually till it reached the lee side,
Speaker 3: making all that quarter of the pond, perhaps half an acre,
Speaker 3: as smooth as a looking glass. The oil layer was
Speaker 3: so thin as to produce the prismatic colors for a
Speaker 3: considerable space, and beyond them so much thinner as to
Speaker 3: be invisible except in its effect of smoothing the waves
Speaker 3: at a much greater distance. So this is a very
Speaker 3: simple experiment, simply pouring oil out over the surface of
Speaker 3: a pond in windy weather. But out of this very
Speaker 3: simple experiment Franklin got several interesting observations. So one is
Speaker 3: that a tiny container of oil spreads out over a
Speaker 3: shockingly vast area on the surface of the water. And
Speaker 3: the second thing was it seemed true in the parts
Speaker 3: where the oil spread, the water no longer rippled in
Speaker 3: the wind, but became, in his words, as smooth as
Speaker 3: a looking glass, smooth as a mirror. But what if
Speaker 3: the effect was just something about this pond in particular
Speaker 3: Franklin knew that you should repeat an experiment under different
Speaker 3: circumstances to see if you get the same result or
Speaker 3: a different one, So he wrote quote after this, I
Speaker 3: contrived to take with me whenever I went into the
Speaker 3: country a little oil in the upper hollow of my
Speaker 3: bamboo cane, with which I might repeat the experiment as
Speaker 3: opportunities should offer. And I found it constantly to succeed.
Speaker 3: So I'm thinking of him a little bit like Gendalf
Speaker 3: sort of wandering through the shires, stupefying the Hobbits by
Speaker 3: pouring oil on the water out of his staff.
Speaker 1: I guess so. But this makes me I ask all
Speaker 1: sorts of questions about his cane. Did he always have
Speaker 1: a secret compartment in his cane for some sort of
Speaker 1: a flask or vial of some substance? And if so,
Speaker 1: what usually goes in there? Is this like you have
Speaker 1: a little bit of alcohol? Or is there is this?
Speaker 1: I do you put some poison in there? I mean,
Speaker 1: there's so many questions about this bamboo cane.
Speaker 3: Yeah, what did he have in there when he was
Speaker 3: not wandering the shire? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Or maybe he had it specially. I mean, it's like
Speaker 1: all these options around the table with Benjamin Franklin. I
Speaker 1: can also easily imagine from what we've read of the
Speaker 1: man him going into the cane shop and say, look,
Speaker 1: I need to oil down some ponds in the as
Speaker 1: I travel around, and I don't want to just carry
Speaker 1: it on my person. I want to have it secreted
Speaker 1: away within my bamboo cane. I would like to commission
Speaker 1: such a bamboo cane. And they're like, all right, yeah,
Speaker 1: we can do that for you.
Speaker 3: Right, So then he crosses commissioned secret grease cane off
Speaker 3: of his daily to do list. Well, anyway, so after
Speaker 3: a while he'd observed this effect a lot of times,
Speaker 3: and in trying to interpret the results, Franklin observed a
Speaker 3: distinction between how oil behaves when you drop it onto
Speaker 3: a solid surface versus onto the surface of water. He says,
Speaker 3: if you put a drop of oil on a table
Speaker 3: made of marble, or a table made of wood, or
Speaker 3: on a mirror glass that's lying horizontal, the drop just
Speaker 3: remains in place as a drop. It pretty much keeps
Speaker 3: the same shape. It doesn't spread out. But on the
Speaker 3: surface of water it spreads. There is a dramatically different behavior.
Speaker 3: It's not just a little different like a single drop
Speaker 3: of oil will spread over a vast area. I remember
Speaker 3: he said, the pond in England. It was about a
Speaker 3: tea spoonful, and that went to like a half acre. Wow.
Speaker 3: So Franklin wrote, quote, if there be a mutual repulsion
Speaker 3: between the particles of oil and no attraction between oil
Speaker 3: and water, oil dropped on water will not be held
Speaker 3: together by adhesion to the spot whereon it falls. It
Speaker 3: will be at liberty to expand itself, and it will
Speaker 3: spread on a surface that, besides being smooth to the
Speaker 3: most perfect degree of polish, prevents, perhaps by repelling the
Speaker 3: oil all immediate contact, keeping it at a minute distance
Speaker 3: from itself, and the expansion will continue till the mutual
Speaker 3: repulsion between the particles of the oil is weakened and
Speaker 3: reduced to nothing by their distance. And while of course
Speaker 3: Franklin believed there to be a natural repulsion between oil
Speaker 3: and water, he thought that there was no natural repulsion
Speaker 3: between water and air, so the water and air could
Speaker 3: freely contact one another, and that was why he thought
Speaker 3: it may be stilled the waves. So we'll come back
Speaker 3: to a slightly different explanation of how it stills the
Speaker 3: waves in a minute. But First, there's another interesting consequence
Speaker 3: of this experiment. The concept of a molecule had not
Speaker 3: yet taken root during Franklin's life. Franklin wouldn't have known
Speaker 3: what a molecule was. But the author's right that what
Speaker 3: Franklin had actually created here on the surface of the
Speaker 3: water was a monomolecular layer of oil quote, which eventually
Speaker 3: expanded into a two dimensional gas of oil molecules at
Speaker 3: the air water interface. But what he had done is
Speaker 3: create a layer of oil one molecule thick. That's what
Speaker 3: happens when you allow oil to spread out without boundary
Speaker 3: on the surface of water. And so Franklin never made
Speaker 3: this next step, but later scientists observed that you could
Speaker 3: use exactly this experiment to calculate the height of a
Speaker 3: single molecule of oil, because you already know two things.
Speaker 3: You know the starting volume of oil, and then when
Speaker 3: you drop it on water, you can wait for it
Speaker 3: to spread out completely into a monolayer and then measure
Speaker 3: the area of the oil. So if you know this
Speaker 3: starting volume and then the area that it spreads out to,
Speaker 3: you can calculate the thickness of the single molecule layer.
Speaker 3: Oh wow, if Franklin had thought to do this, and
Speaker 3: they say that he would have been able to mathematically,
Speaker 3: he apparently just didn't. It didn't occur to him to
Speaker 3: do this. He could have come up with the first
Speaker 3: roughly accurate estimate of the size of a molecule in history,
Speaker 3: and he would have been one hundred years ahead of
Speaker 3: the actual first people to do this. So one of
Speaker 3: the later scientists who did make this kind of calculation
Speaker 3: was the British mathematician and physicist Lord Rayleigh, who lived
Speaker 3: eighteen forty two to nineteen nineteen, and he realized that
Speaker 3: the spreading of the molecules of oil across the surface
Speaker 3: of water would illuminate the question of what he called
Speaker 3: molecular magnitudes the size of an oil molecule. So he
Speaker 3: did experiments of putting olive oil in a sponge bath
Speaker 3: to calculate the size of a molecule of triolene, which
Speaker 3: is a main component of olive oil, and he put
Speaker 3: it after his measurements at sixteen point three angstroms and
Speaker 3: Angstrom is one ten billionth of a meter, and this
Speaker 3: calculation was close but was still a little bit off,
Speaker 3: and it was improved by the contributions of a German
Speaker 3: self taught chemist named Agnes Pockels who lived eighteen sixty
Speaker 3: two to nineteen thirty five. She had performed similar experiments
Speaker 3: on her own before Lord Rayleigh, and she had done
Speaker 3: them in her own kitchen at the counter. She was
Speaker 3: not formally trained in science. She was an autodidact, and
Speaker 3: when she saw his paper in eighteen ninety she contacted
Speaker 3: him with her own results, which had been hers. Had
Speaker 3: been accomplished with the help of an instrument that she
Speaker 3: had invented for measuring surface tension, which helped get a
Speaker 3: better calculation of the thickness of the oil, and with
Speaker 3: her method she measured the thickness of a single oil
Speaker 3: molecule or the sorry not just the oil, the trilene molecule,
Speaker 3: the main component of the olive oil. She measured that
Speaker 3: to thirteen angstroms, and this in turn led Raley to
Speaker 3: improve his own measurements, and then later the American physicist
Speaker 3: Irving Langmuir came along to do definitive work on oil
Speaker 3: film chemistry, and when he did that, he did so
Speaker 3: with the help of a surface tension measuring device which
Speaker 3: was similar to the instrument that Agnes Pockles had already
Speaker 3: invented in the nineteenth century. But anyway, why did the
Speaker 3: oil actually calm the waves? What is going on when
Speaker 3: the waves stop rippling in water where there's an oil
Speaker 3: mono layer on top. The authors of this paper suggest
Speaker 3: that the best explanation is the one offered by Lord Rayleigh,
Speaker 3: So I'm going to read from Lord Rayleigh. Here. He wrote,
Speaker 3: let us consider small waves as propagated over the surface
Speaker 3: of clean water. As the waves advanced, the surface of
Speaker 3: the water has to submit to periodic extensions and contractions.
Speaker 3: At the crest of the wave, the surface is compressed,
Speaker 3: while the trough it is extended. As long as the
Speaker 3: water is pure, there is no force to oppose that,
Speaker 3: and the wave can be propagated without difficulty. But if
Speaker 3: the surface be contaminated, the contamination strongly resists the alternating
Speaker 3: stretching and contraction. It tends always on the contrary to
Speaker 3: spread itself uniformly, and the result is that the water
Speaker 3: refuses to lend itself to the motion which is required
Speaker 3: of it. The film of oil may be compared to
Speaker 3: an inextensible membrane, membrane that can't stretch floating on the
Speaker 3: surface of the water and hampering its motion. And under
Speaker 3: these conditions it is not possible for the waves to
Speaker 3: be generated unless the forces are very much greater than usual.
Speaker 3: So if I'm understanding this correctly, it seems to me
Speaker 3: what he's saying is that the oil, because of its
Speaker 3: hydrophobic chemical reaction with the water and with its and
Speaker 3: with itself, it strongly prefers to stretch out into this
Speaker 3: single molecule thick layer. And if this oil really wants
Speaker 3: to become and then stay a layer that's a single
Speaker 3: molecule thick, that means it can't really stretch any thinner
Speaker 3: unless the force of the waves is so strong that
Speaker 3: the oil slick is actually ripped apart, and it repels
Speaker 3: being contracted to become any thicker. Since it resists becoming
Speaker 3: more than a molecule thick, so it resists any wave
Speaker 3: motion at the surface. Though of course, at some point
Speaker 3: waves could become so powerful that they would override the
Speaker 3: hydrophobic chemical forces that caused this phenomenon, So it only
Speaker 3: works up to a certain point.
Speaker 1: And yet you might ask, well, could we stop a
Speaker 1: hurricane with it? This actually is something that I found
Speaker 1: discussed in a paper from two thousand and five. This
Speaker 1: is it's titled A Note concerning the Light Hill Sandwich
Speaker 1: Model of Typical Cyclones. The authors here are Baron Blot, Chorin,
Speaker 1: and Prost Taukashan. These three individuals would be Alexander Chorin,
Speaker 1: a Berkeley computational fluid mechanics expert, Russian mathematician Grigory Baron Blatt,
Speaker 1: and VM Takashian. So they seem to be individuals who
Speaker 1: are very well established in their field here, and I
Speaker 1: looked at this paper and I tried to look at
Speaker 1: the paper that it came before it, that they're kind
Speaker 1: of This is kind of an addendum too. It's very
Speaker 1: technical paper, full of equations and whatnot. But in this
Speaker 1: A Note concerning the light Hill Sandwich Model of Tropical Cyclones,
Speaker 1: they suggest that that oil spread on the surface of
Speaker 1: water could potentially prevent the formation of quote turbulence dampening
Speaker 1: ocean spray troplets. The idea here being that while there's
Speaker 1: a lot going on in a hurricane, quote, flow acceleration
Speaker 1: in an ocean spray that carries large water droplets unquote
Speaker 1: is part of the whole scenario, and if one could
Speaker 1: theoretically curtail flow acceleration by droplets, it might have an
Speaker 1: impact on the storm's overall strength. I'm going to read
Speaker 1: what the authors wrote here on the matter.
Speaker 3: Quote.
Speaker 1: In the present work, we demonstrated that the mechanism of
Speaker 1: turbulent suppression by water droplets in the ocean spray can
Speaker 1: substantially accelerate the flow so that the speeds of wind
Speaker 1: characteristic of the strongest hurricanes can be reached. The complete
Speaker 1: mathematical model, taking into account both thermal effects and Coriola's force,
Speaker 1: can now be constructed in the form that allows effective
Speaker 1: numerical calculations. Note that a model of dust storms taking
Speaker 1: into account the thermal effects was proposed in reference seven. Furthermore,
Speaker 1: the effects of particles on the dynamics of tornadoes can
Speaker 1: be studied by similar meats. Anyway, they get to the
Speaker 1: conclusion here they say, incan illusion. We want to make
Speaker 1: a comment. Since antiquity semen have had barrels of oil
Speaker 1: on the decks of their vessels and thrown the oil
Speaker 1: on the sea surface in critical moments of stormy weather.
Speaker 1: We think that the action of oil was exactly the
Speaker 1: prevention of the formation of droplets. The turbulence was restored.
Speaker 1: After the oil was dropped, the turbulent drag was increased
Speaker 1: and the intensity of the squall was reduced. Possibly hurricanes
Speaker 1: can be similarly prevented or dampened by having airplanes deliver fast, decaying,
Speaker 1: harmless surfactants to the right places on the sea surface.
Speaker 3: Okay, So, a surfactant is a substance that reduces the
Speaker 3: surface tension of water when you or of any liquid,
Speaker 3: I guess when you add it to the water. So
Speaker 3: soap is a surfactant, and it increases the wetting properties
Speaker 3: of water. It causes water to less want to cling
Speaker 3: to itself and more to spread out over whatever.
Speaker 1: Now, I do want to stress that this, this proposal
Speaker 1: here is very much based in mathematical modeling, and you
Speaker 1: have to sort of you have to take it with
Speaker 1: that in consideration. On top of that, we have to
Speaker 1: to mention that, Yeah, there have been various methods that
Speaker 1: have been brought up over the years as possible means
Speaker 1: of dampening hurricanes, or preventing hurricanes, or stopping a hurricane
Speaker 1: and its growth. None of these I think has really
Speaker 1: proven to be effective. We're not actually doing any of
Speaker 1: those things. I mean, there are things we know that
Speaker 1: we could do in the world a large scale to
Speaker 1: prevent hurricanes from becoming worse in the years ahead, and
Speaker 1: we're not necessarily doing all of those either. So but
Speaker 1: you know, nobody wants to change their lives. They want
Speaker 1: they want the really quick means of stopping the hurricane,
Speaker 1: some dynamic idea, something you can drop out of an
Speaker 1: airplane or so forth. But still, I don't know. The
Speaker 1: modeling here is interesting, and it's it's neat to see
Speaker 1: this more modern, like very technical approach to trying to
Speaker 1: figure out the same thing that Benjamin Franklin was pondering
Speaker 1: over and that the ancients in many cases just took
Speaker 1: as fact. You have turbulent seas well, throw a little
Speaker 1: oil in there and that's going to calm things down.
Speaker 3: It would be very interesting if this worked, though, though.
Speaker 3: I just pulled up a New Scientist article that was
Speaker 3: covering this paper that consulted somebody else in the field.
Speaker 3: They consulted Julian Hunt at the University College London, who
Speaker 3: just said, quote, I am very doubtful about this approach.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and again even the authors themselves are are pointing
Speaker 1: out that they're taking the various factors involved in the
Speaker 1: growth of a hurricane and reducing it to this one area.
Speaker 1: So this is not a solution that would seem to
Speaker 1: take everything into account, but just concerning like this one
Speaker 1: aspect of storm strength building up.
Speaker 3: I guess this does raise different questions because if you
Speaker 3: go back to in part one we talked about that
Speaker 3: story from the Venerable Bead about I think the deal
Speaker 3: was a bishop gave a priest, so like King Oswe
Speaker 3: sent out a priest to bring his bride home from Kent.
Speaker 3: And then there was a bishop who gave a bottle
Speaker 3: of oil, almost as if it was a magical potion,
Speaker 3: to the priest and said, hey, you know, when you
Speaker 3: get out on the sea, if there's a storm, you
Speaker 3: pour this oil on the water and it'll calm the storm.
Speaker 3: And so that raises two different interpretations. One could be like, oh,
Speaker 3: is he just talking about the thing that is in
Speaker 3: a way. I mean, I don't know how well it
Speaker 3: would really work on a large scale around a boat,
Speaker 3: but there is at least experimental evidence that you pour
Speaker 3: oil on waters and somewhat will calm waves. Is that
Speaker 3: all that this story is talking about, or should we
Speaker 3: take it in the broader sense of it will actually
Speaker 3: stop the storm, like it will effect to the weather
Speaker 3: coming from above and the winds.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, in so many of these accounts, you're
Speaker 1: dealing with retellings of the thing. And even though even
Speaker 1: though bed was was maybe not too many degrees away
Speaker 1: from from from the actual account, Yeah, it's easy to
Speaker 1: imagine how the story could could be exaggerated, you know,
Speaker 1: the calming of the waters to the overall you know,
Speaker 1: calming of the storm in the same way that perhaps
Speaker 1: an effect that makes the surface of the water more
Speaker 1: like glass so that you can see down into it,
Speaker 1: could I'm and I'm guessing here potentially be you know,
Speaker 1: further exaggerated into making the entire water column illuminated and
Speaker 1: diveable in a way that you can easily find what
Speaker 1: you're looking for.
Speaker 3: In the depths.
Speaker 1: But this is all what I think makes the topic
Speaker 1: so fascinating because it, you know, it seems to be
Speaker 1: this realm where this some it seems on one hand
Speaker 1: that this could not be that this seems like, surely
Speaker 1: this is just fable. But on the other hand, we
Speaker 1: do see you know, some of the science at play here.
Speaker 1: We can see, like why it works at least to
Speaker 1: some degree, so it's it's kind of has a has
Speaker 1: a foot in both worlds.
Speaker 3: Oh yes, I think this has been a delightful ramble
Speaker 3: around the countryside with a bit of oil in our
Speaker 3: bamboo cane.
Speaker 1: Absolutely. All right, Well we're going to go ahead and
Speaker 1: close out this episode and this exploration, but we'll be
Speaker 1: back with more episodes in the future. Here. Core episodes
Speaker 1: of Stuff to Blow Your Mind come out on Tuesdays
Speaker 1: and Thursdays. We have our listener mail episodes on Mondays,
Speaker 1: short form Monster Factor Artifact episode on Wednesdays, and on Fridays,
Speaker 1: we set aside most serious concerns to just talk about
Speaker 1: a weird film on Weird House Cinema. Let's see what
Speaker 1: else do we need to mention? If you're if you
Speaker 1: are a listener in the UK and you're still getting
Speaker 1: these episodes, I don't know how much longer that's gonna
Speaker 1: be the case. So as we've been trying to stress,
Speaker 1: go out there and find the Stuff to Blow your
Speaker 1: Mind UK feed on Apple Podcasts or on Spotify and
Speaker 1: subscribe there. That way you can make sure that you're
Speaker 1: going to keep getting these episodes.
Speaker 3: It's the same thing you get the same episodes as
Speaker 3: published in the other feed. It's just called Stuff to
Speaker 3: Blow your Mind UK. That's all you got to do.
Speaker 3: Just go sign up for that one. Huge thanks to
Speaker 3: our excellent audio producer JJ Posway. If you would like
Speaker 3: to get in touch with us with feedback on this
Speaker 3: episode or any other, to suggest topic for the future,
Speaker 3: or just to say hello, you can email us at
Speaker 3: contact at stuff to blow your Mind dot com.
Speaker 2: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
Speaker 2: more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 2: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're listening to your favorite shows.
Speaker 1: Production is based with ratatatator