Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
Speaker 2: 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 2: That's right to refresh. In the last episode, which I
Speaker 2: guess was over a week ago, at this point, we
Speaker 2: discussed several interesting mentions from ancient and medieval writings, in
Speaker 2: particular about the interaction between oil and water. We went
Speaker 2: over to some of the basics about this, and you
Speaker 2: know the old idea that oil and water don't mix,
Speaker 2: and that oil in water or oil mixed around with
Speaker 2: water can create kind of this novel appearance that captivates
Speaker 2: our imagination. And we also discuss how it may have
Speaker 2: been added to stormy seas to calm them down, and
Speaker 2: it may have been used in some capacity by free
Speaker 2: divers to somehow smooth or clear or illuminate the waters
Speaker 2: they're diving in so as to better see what they're
Speaker 2: 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 said.
Speaker 3: In some other sources people just talked about like putting
Speaker 3: oil over their eyes before they went diving, and I
Speaker 3: couldn't understand from the original sources. We looked at, like,
Speaker 3: what even the alleged method of action was there? You
Speaker 3: finally have some answers on this, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I don't know that i'd be able
Speaker 2: to bring one hundred percent clarity to the issue. I
Speaker 2: think there's still gonna I think there may still be
Speaker 2: a certain amount of like historical telephone game going on
Speaker 2: with some of these. But I did find a great
Speaker 2: deal of clarity on this in a twenty two only
Speaker 2: one book that I picked up titled Neither Letters nor
Speaker 2: Swimming The Rebirth of Swimming and Free Diving by John
Speaker 2: m mcmanumon. So this is an interesting book where it's
Speaker 2: a little harder to get your hands on this one,
Speaker 2: but it's worth picking up if you're interested in the
Speaker 2: history of diving and swimming in general. Oil comes up
Speaker 2: multiple times in the book, sometimes just in general observances
Speaker 2: of waters that were known to contain oil naturally in
Speaker 2: the ancient world. Ancient writers mentioned a spring at Carthage,
Speaker 2: There's the Laparous River in southern Turkey or what is
Speaker 2: now southern Turkey, and there's also a lake in Ethiopia
Speaker 2: that were singled out, all noted for oil that could
Speaker 2: either be extracted for use. In the case of Carthage,
Speaker 2: I think they used it with livestock or just waters
Speaker 2: that had a quote unquote naturally lubricating effect on the swimmer. Mmm.
Speaker 2: Sounds great now, this idea of lubricating yourself for a swim,
Speaker 2: this was this. This was pretty interesting to me because
Speaker 2: I swim several days a week, but I never oil
Speaker 2: myself up beforehand. And I don't see anybody else doing
Speaker 2: it either.
Speaker 3: I mean, I was gonna ask, is that even a
Speaker 3: thing anybody does? I don't think so.
Speaker 2: I mean you see cases, certainly, there are cases of
Speaker 2: people lubricating their body with lotions and oils afterwards, or
Speaker 2: you know, something to that effect. But I mean it
Speaker 2: may bee. I don't know if it's anything that has
Speaker 2: ever explored, and say, competitive swimming. If it is, I'm
Speaker 2: not aware of it off the top of my head.
Speaker 2: But there are various mentions of oil lubricated swimmers in
Speaker 2: ancient texts. The idea that before you entered the water
Speaker 2: to swim, you'd want to rub your naked body down
Speaker 2: with oil, okay, And the reasons for this is, you know,
Speaker 2: seems to vary. So one account, during the Corinthian War
Speaker 2: in the three eighty nine BC, the Athenian forces use
Speaker 2: swimming in against Spartan forces near this place in Egypt, Habatus.
Speaker 2: Apparently the waters they were quite cold, so they rubbed
Speaker 2: themselves down with olive oil beforehand, and they drink a
Speaker 2: lot of alcohol before they got into the water. Now,
Speaker 2: McManamon points out that, okay, the oil might have provided
Speaker 2: some insulation that actually helped protect them against the cold,
Speaker 2: 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 2: The general Hannibal is also said to have ordered his
Speaker 2: soldiers to oil themselves down to protect against the cold.
Speaker 2: At the Battle of Trevia River, the first major battle
Speaker 2: of the Second Punic War in two eighteen BCE. So
Speaker 2: in general, there seems to be this idea that like, okay,
Speaker 2: you could protect yourself against the cold by covering yourself
Speaker 2: with oil, and then perhaps that would work in the
Speaker 2: water as well.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 2: Now, on the subject of ancient free diving divers, in
Speaker 2: particular in the Persian Gulf and in the waters between
Speaker 2: India and Sri Lanka, McManamon writes that there's a lot
Speaker 2: we don't know about their practices in the ancient world,
Speaker 2: and then they were often working with kind of sketchy
Speaker 2: ideas concerning the nature of oysters. So he mentioned this
Speaker 2: idea that you see written in some of these old
Speaker 2: texts about how oysters have leaders and you have to
Speaker 2: take out the first oyster first. You have to find
Speaker 2: the leader, take it out first, and then the rest
Speaker 2: will follow.
Speaker 3: Okay, decapitation strike against the oyster brigade.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's also talk about you need to watch your
Speaker 2: fingers because the oysters may sever the fingers, and mcmamon
Speaker 2: casts a lot of doubt on this. I mean, I
Speaker 2: know that there are concerns with certain types of free diving,
Speaker 2: and you know, foraging for various shells and creatures. There
Speaker 2: are particular creatures where you do have to potentially worry
Speaker 2: about a you know, finger getting caught or snagged or whatever.
Speaker 2: But in this case McManamon seems to write that it
Speaker 2: was not really But basically it all drives home just
Speaker 2: how alien the environment was into which these people were venturing.
Speaker 2: Just think about just how limited you were as you
Speaker 2: gazed down into the water, as you dived into the
Speaker 2: water and tried to find whatever you were looking for.
Speaker 2: So in this particular case they would have likely used grafts,
Speaker 2: which makes sense. And in the case of India and
Speaker 2: Sri Lanka in particular, there's apparently evidence that they made
Speaker 2: condemned criminals do the work. And I think in general
Speaker 2: it was considered dangerous work and some writings reflect this.
Speaker 2: Whatever the case, the clearer the diving conditions, the better
Speaker 2: to see what you're doing as you go down there
Speaker 2: and to and try and venture into the oyster kingdom.
Speaker 2: So mcmamon writes, quote, if the sea was choppy, the
Speaker 2: crew would spread oil on its surface to settle it down.
Speaker 2: Modern fishermen use a similar method to improve surface visibility,
Speaker 2: pouring shark oil at times mixed with sand to settle waters.
Speaker 2: So this is the idea that we've discussed already. We're
Speaker 2: going to continue to discuss. The idea here, I believe
Speaker 2: is that friction of the oil on the water surface
Speaker 2: keeps the surface from ruffling or breaking, at least for
Speaker 2: a short period of time.
Speaker 3: The question of the mechanism of how oil colmbs 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 2: Yeah, but in general, it sounds like the idea that
Speaker 2: is being expressed here is like if you can make
Speaker 2: the more you can make the surface of the water
Speaker 2: like glass, supposedly through the application of some oil, the
Speaker 2: better you can see down into where you're about to
Speaker 2: 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 2: That's my understanding, Yes, Okay. Now the author also discusses
Speaker 2: a legendary free diver from Italian traditions by the name
Speaker 2: of Cola Pasha Cola the fish in Italian, a Mediterranean
Speaker 2: hero whose exploits holding his breath were apparently comparable to Coculon,
Speaker 2: to BeO Wolf, to King Oloffe and others. I often
Speaker 2: don't think about this, but yeah, you have a lot
Speaker 2: of heroes who can really hold their breath for a
Speaker 2: long time, and you can take that into the modern area.
Speaker 2: I mean, look at Indiana Jones right then he holds
Speaker 2: his breath on that submarine or does he get in
Speaker 2: the submarine?
Speaker 3: Oh wait, I know what you're talking about now. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Anyway, in this particular case, this is an oral tradition
Speaker 2: that was written down by medieval chroniclers during the twelfth century.
Speaker 2: He said to have had various adventures and was said
Speaker 2: to spend so much time in the water that he
Speaker 2: would die if he stayed on land for too long.
Speaker 2: So more fish than man in some ways. It's certainly
Speaker 2: a tall tale, to be sure, but writings about him
Speaker 2: do contain some insight into the use of oil in
Speaker 2: free diving. Quote. While diving, Cola followed the ancient and
Speaker 2: releasing oil into the water column in order to see better.
Speaker 2: Sicilian fishermen still use that technique, especially when they are
Speaker 2: hunting octopi in the profound Abyss of the Straits of Messina.
Speaker 2: Cola reported to the sovereign that he had seen mountains
Speaker 2: and valleys, woods and fields and trees with edible fruit.
Speaker 3: So like another kingdom, just like we have on land,
Speaker 3: but under the waves.
Speaker 2: Exactly, which is something we've discussed before in terms of
Speaker 2: how previous generations thought about the world underwater. And I
Speaker 2: like that there's also kind of a I mean, there's
Speaker 2: a hint of truth to this as well, like he's
Speaker 2: reporting that, hey, underneath the water, there's actually a robust ecosystem. Now,
Speaker 2: whether it's actually woods and fields and trees with edible fruit,
Speaker 2: well obviously not, but there is in a sense this
Speaker 2: rich other world down there that you can imagine a
Speaker 2: free diver being able to attest to.
Speaker 3: So this passage is not just talking about putting oil
Speaker 3: in 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, right.
Speaker 2: And I wish again, I wish I could have one
Speaker 2: hundred percent clarity on this particular angle. I haven't found anything.
Speaker 2: It's worth noting that there are multiple factors that contribute
Speaker 2: to decreased visibility underwater and you have particles in the water,
Speaker 2: You have salinity gradients, temperature gradients, organic particles, just you
Speaker 2: know issues of light and you know where the sun
Speaker 2: is positioned in the sky and how much light you're
Speaker 2: getting in a particular volume of water. Interestingly, I was
Speaker 2: reading that you know sometimes there's a visible layer between
Speaker 2: thermoclines that look like the smoothness of an oil schine.
Speaker 2: So I couldn't help but wonder if that might factor
Speaker 2: into some of this, like things that may be encountered
Speaker 2: underwater that have the feel or look of oil separation. Now,
Speaker 2: another interesting bit here on medieval pearl divers. Mcmanumon has
Speaker 2: some interesting information on oil use from the Arabic world
Speaker 2: of the time, and I'm going to read a longer
Speaker 2: quote here and warning that it is a little bit
Speaker 2: graphic as it includes mention of alleged body modification for
Speaker 2: the purposes of free diving. Quote. Pearl divers attempted to
Speaker 2: eliminate the pain in their ears and block their nostrils.
Speaker 2: They ruptured their own ear drum and knew they had
Speaker 2: succeeded when blood flowed out. They soaked cotton in oil
Speaker 2: and inserted it into their ears. The technique had an
Speaker 2: added benefit on the bottom. As the oil leaked out
Speaker 2: and floated up, it clarified the water column by allowing
Speaker 2: greater light to penetrate. For the nostrils, pearl divers had
Speaker 2: various options. They could plug the openings with small balls
Speaker 2: carved from a tortoise shell and use a cloth soaked
Speaker 2: in oil like the ones used in the ears. Alternatively,
Speaker 2: they could wear a clip over the outside of their nostrils,
Speaker 2: carved from ivory or horn or tortoise shell. The stated
Speaker 2: purpose of blocking the nostrils was to keep water out,
Speaker 2: but it may also have aided in equalizing pressure in
Speaker 2: the sinuses. And years professional free divers still use a
Speaker 2: nose clip, and he also mentions this at a later
Speaker 2: point in the book as well, attributing the oil soaked
Speaker 2: cotton swabs in one's ears as being protective but also
Speaker 2: kind of having this side effect of like, well, and
Speaker 2: as the oil leaks out, you're only going to see
Speaker 2: better down there.
Speaker 3: HM.
Speaker 2: So I think I think all of you, even though
Speaker 2: again not one hundred percent clarity on all this, but
Speaker 2: I think some of these examples are telling. On one hand,
Speaker 2: they provide a little more insight into what some of
Speaker 2: these accounts we're talking about concerning free divers bringing down
Speaker 2: oil in their mouths or even in the around their eyes.
Speaker 2: We also see plenty of examples where humans would have
Speaker 2: had a chance to witness oil interacting with water whilst swimming.
Speaker 2: You know, this idea of Okay, if we had some
Speaker 2: sort of tradition of oiling your body up before you
Speaker 2: go in, then perhaps you're bringing that information with you.
Speaker 2: If there is some practice about, you know, calming the
Speaker 2: water at the surface of the water so as to
Speaker 2: better seed down, then that can easily be translated into
Speaker 2: this idea of like we'll bring oil down with you
Speaker 2: and make that clear as well. So, yeah, I think
Speaker 2: there's still some mysteries remaining here, but I think I
Speaker 2: can maybe sort of glimpse the shape of the thing
Speaker 2: 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 2: We may have to come back to this particular book
Speaker 2: in the future. He has a lot of great information
Speaker 2: about like early ideas and developments in the creation of
Speaker 2: like actual goggles and masks that would enable people to
Speaker 2: eventually see under the water with the kind of clarity
Speaker 2: they were clearly reaching for.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, we could do some invention coverage on old
Speaker 3: school diving helmets, which are beautiful.
Speaker 2: Now. I believe in the first episode we warned that
Speaker 2: there would be been from that Ben Franklin would pop
Speaker 2: up in this topic. So let's let's I see him.
Speaker 2: There is Okay, he's here. He does. He frequently pops
Speaker 2: up on the show, especially in our invention episodes. Occasionally
Speaker 2: you didn't know that you were going to have Ben
Speaker 2: Franklin content, but then 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. Uh,
Speaker 3: he was an early American I don't even know what
Speaker 3: what what are? What's the order that you put the
Speaker 3: things he did when you say what he was, he
Speaker 3: was an early American uh statesman, author, businessman, uh, scientist, inventor,
Speaker 3: he kind of did everything.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just kind of a general American polymath and weird guy,
Speaker 2: you know, an Enlightenment thinker that had a great deal
Speaker 2: of curiosity about the world and and entertained those curiosities.
Speaker 3: Now specifically in the domain of science. Benjamin Franklin, I
Speaker 3: think is best known for his experiments with electricity, and
Speaker 3: this would include experiments with the storage and discharge of
Speaker 3: electrical potential in what we now call a battery after
Speaker 3: Franklin's terminology, like the Franklin battery was made by putting
Speaker 3: together a series of a pre existing invention called a
Speaker 3: Leiden jar, and he could He's like, oh wow, you
Speaker 3: can really like stack these things up and really pack
Speaker 3: a punch with the energy you're storing. One of these
Speaker 3: battery experiments I know we've talked about on the show
Speaker 3: before because of its weirdness, was the electrocution of a
Speaker 3: turkey for a holiday dinner, which he then said was
Speaker 3: to be roasted upon an electric jack after it was electrocuted.
Speaker 3: But for some reason, Franklin believed that this would make
Speaker 3: the meat especially tender and succulent if he used electricity
Speaker 3: from one of his batteries to kill the thing, but
Speaker 3: he ended up badly shocking himself while attempting this. But
Speaker 3: on the broader subject of electricity, Franklin's electrical research also
Speaker 3: entailed work in support of the hypothesis that lightning was
Speaker 3: in fact a form of electricity, was a type of
Speaker 3: electrical discharge and Franklin was not the first person to
Speaker 3: make this connection, but did important work investigating it. The
Speaker 3: most famous anecdote here, of course, is the one the
Speaker 3: kite and key experiment, which is in a way of
Speaker 3: disputed historical status. Franklin apparently never described himself doing this
Speaker 3: experiment in any of his letters, though I think he
Speaker 3: sort of described the experiment in some writing as a
Speaker 3: kind of hypothetical, like this is an experiment one could do,
Speaker 3: though after his death people did say that he himself
Speaker 3: had carried it out. If he did do it, it
Speaker 3: would have been probably in June of seventeen fifty two. However,
Speaker 3: Franklin was correct about lightning being a form of electrical discharge,
Speaker 3: and this led to his advocacy of the use of
Speaker 3: sharpened iron lightning rods to protect buildings during storms. And
Speaker 3: this is kind of a tangent, but one I got
Speaker 3: interested in while reading about Franklin's lightning rod research for
Speaker 3: this episode, I wanted to share a paragraph I came
Speaker 3: across from an article from the Franklin Institute, which is
Speaker 3: a museum of Benjamin Franklin's life and work in Philadelphia,
Speaker 3: where they write quote Franklin began to advocate lightning rods
Speaker 3: that had sharp points. His English colleagues favored blunt tipped
Speaker 3: lightning rods, reasoning that sharp ones attracted lightning and increased
Speaker 3: the risk of strikes. They thought blunt rods were less
Speaker 3: likely to be struck. King George the Third had his
Speaker 3: palace equipped with a blunt lightning rod. When it came
Speaker 3: time to equip the colony's buildings with lightning rods, the
Speaker 3: decision became a political statement. The favored pointed lightning rod
Speaker 3: expressed support for Franklin's theories of protecting public buildings and
Speaker 3: the rejection of theories supported by the king. The English
Speaker 3: thought this was just another way for the flourishing colonies
Speaker 3: to be disobedient to them. And I thought this was
Speaker 3: funny because it's an eighteenth century example of a pure
Speaker 3: scientific question, just like what's the ideal shape of a
Speaker 3: lightning rod? Where really all we should care about is
Speaker 3: what is the correct answer of this question? Being politicized? Now,
Speaker 3: which answer you favor has political connotations, and there is
Speaker 3: political pressure to think a certain way about it.
Speaker 2: Well, who is right? Is it the American way or
Speaker 2: 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 Moore, 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 but that the gradients of the
Speaker 3: field strength over sharp tipped rods are so great that
Speaker 3: at distances of a few millimeters, the local fields are
Speaker 3: 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 ways. 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: reason they weren't. They were just kind of cruising along smoothly.
Speaker 3: And Franklin mentioned this to the captain of his ship,
Speaker 3: and the captain said to him, apparently thinking that he
Speaker 3: was stupid for even asking this question, the captain said,
Speaker 3: the cooks have, I suppose, been just emptying their greasy
Speaker 3: water through the scuppers, which has greased the sides of
Speaker 3: those ships a little, as if this was obvious, and
Speaker 3: explained it totally, because, as we talked about in the
Speaker 3: last episode, it had long been common knowledge among sailors
Speaker 3: that oil or grease would calm the waves.
Speaker 2: All right, Well, now Ben Franklin has been tipped off
Speaker 2: 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. They're
Speaker 3: nasty grease into the water after they're done cooking, and
Speaker 3: then and it's greasing the side of the ship and
Speaker 3: the water around it, So that's making the waves calm.
Speaker 3: Franklin suspected that this explanation was wrong. He doubted that
Speaker 3: greasing the outside of the ship would actually calm the
Speaker 3: water around it. But the observation captured his curiosity, especially
Speaker 3: since it reminded him of experiences playing with wax in
Speaker 3: his father's soap factory when he was ten years old.
Speaker 3: And he observed the same phenomenon several more times during
Speaker 3: voyages across the ocean, so he decided at some point
Speaker 3: that he should make experiments to better understand this. He
Speaker 3: finally got around to it twelve years later in seventeen
Speaker 3: sixty nine, during another visit to Great Britain. So Franklin
Speaker 3: was staying in an area called Clapham Common in South London,
Speaker 3: and together with a friend of his name, Christopher Baldwin,
Speaker 3: Franklin made his way to a local pond and started
Speaker 3: just dumping oil in it. To quote from Franklin's own
Speaker 3: description of his experiments at the lanth Being at Clapham
Speaker 3: where there is on the common a large pond, which
Speaker 3: I observe to be one day very rough with the wind,
Speaker 3: I fetched out a cruet of oil, and just a note.
Speaker 3: A crue it is like a small flask or carafe
Speaker 3: with a stopper on top, which you might use to
Speaker 3: store olive oil or vinegar or lemon juice at a
Speaker 3: dining table, a sort of you can think of it
Speaker 3: as like, you know, you taco bell sauce packet, but
Speaker 3: a rigid caraf.
Speaker 2: Okay, that's good that we know how much oil, because
Speaker 2: I think, as we discussed in the first episode, like
Speaker 2: there's this one tail where it sounds like it's a
Speaker 2: magic potion's worth of oil. Other cases it sounds like
Speaker 2: you're talking about, like, yeah, dumping out all the kitchens
Speaker 2: excess oil. So there's always this question of like, how
Speaker 2: 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 park
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 Gandalf,
Speaker 3: sort of wandering through the shires, stupefying the Hobbits by
Speaker 3: pouring oil on water out of his staff.
Speaker 2: I guess so. But this makes me I ask all
Speaker 2: sorts of questions about his cane. Did he always have
Speaker 2: a secret compartment in his cane for some sort of
Speaker 2: a flask or vial of some substance? And if so,
Speaker 2: what usually goes in there? Is this like you have
Speaker 2: a little bit of alcohol? Or is there is this
Speaker 2: you put some poison in there? I mean, there's so
Speaker 2: 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 2: Or maybe he had it specially. I mean, it's like
Speaker 2: all these options around the table with Benjamin Franklin. I
Speaker 2: can also easily imagine, from what we've read of the man,
Speaker 2: him going into the cane shop and say, look, I
Speaker 2: need to oil down some ponds in the as I
Speaker 2: travel around, and I don't want to just carry it
Speaker 2: on my person. I want to have it secreted away
Speaker 2: within my bamboo cane. I would like to commission such
Speaker 2: a bamboo cane. And they're like, all right, yeah, we
Speaker 2: 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.
Speaker 2: 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 oil,
Speaker 3: all immediate contact, keeping it at a minute distance from itself,
Speaker 3: and the expansion will continue till the mutual repulsion between
Speaker 3: the particles of the oil is weakened and reduced to
Speaker 3: nothing by their distance. And while, of course Franklin believed
Speaker 3: there to be a natural repulsion between oil and water,
Speaker 3: he thought that there was no natural repulsion between water
Speaker 3: and air, so the water and air could freely contact
Speaker 3: one another, and that was why he thought it may
Speaker 3: be stilled the waves. So we'll come back to a
Speaker 3: slightly different explanation of how it stills the waves in
Speaker 3: a minute. But first there's another interesting consequence of this experiment.
Speaker 3: The concept of a molecule had not yet taken root
Speaker 3: during Franklin's life. Franklin wouldn't have known what a molecule was,
Speaker 3: but the author's right that what Franklin had actually created
Speaker 3: here on the surface of the water was a monomolecular
Speaker 3: layer of oil quote, which eventually expanded into a two
Speaker 3: dimensional gas of oil molecules at the air water interface.
Speaker 3: But what he had done is create a layer of
Speaker 3: oil one molecule thick. That's what happens when you allow
Speaker 3: oil to spread out without boundary on the surface of water.
Speaker 3: And so Franklin never made this next step, but later
Speaker 3: scientists observed that you could use exactly this experiment to
Speaker 3: calculate the height of a single molecule of oil because
Speaker 3: you already know two things. You know the starting volume
Speaker 3: of oil, and then when you drop it on water,
Speaker 3: you can wait for it to spread out completely into
Speaker 3: a monolayer and then measure the area of the oil.
Speaker 3: So if you know this starting volume and then the
Speaker 3: area that it spreads out to, you can calculate the
Speaker 3: thickness of the single molecule layer.
Speaker 2: Oh wow.
Speaker 3: If Franklin had thought to do this, and they say
Speaker 3: that he would have been able to mathematically, he apparently
Speaker 3: just didn't. It didn't occur to him to do this.
Speaker 3: He could have come up with the first roughly accurate
Speaker 3: estimate of the size of a molecule in history, and
Speaker 3: he would have been one hundred years ahead of the
Speaker 3: actual first people to do this. So one of the
Speaker 3: later scientists who did make this kind of calculation was
Speaker 3: the British mathematician and physicist Lord Rayleigh, who lived eighteen
Speaker 3: forty two to nineteen nineteen, and he realized that the
Speaker 3: spreading of the molecules of oil across the surface of
Speaker 3: water would illuminate the question of what he called molecular
Speaker 3: magnitudes the size of an oil molecule. So he did
Speaker 3: experiments of putting olive oil in a sponge bath to
Speaker 3: calculate the size of a molecule of triolene, which is
Speaker 3: a main component of olive oil, and he put it
Speaker 3: after his measurements at sixteen point three angstroms and angstrm
Speaker 3: is one ten billionth of a meter. And this calculation
Speaker 3: was close, but was still a little bit off, and
Speaker 3: it was improved by the contributions of a German self
Speaker 3: taught chemist named Agnes Pockels who lived eighteen sixty two
Speaker 3: to nineteen thirty five. She had performed similar experiments on
Speaker 3: her own before Lord Rayleigh, and she had done them
Speaker 3: in her own kitchen at the counter. She was not
Speaker 3: formally trained in science. She was an autodidact, and when
Speaker 3: she saw his paper in eighteen ninety, she contacted him
Speaker 3: with her own results, which had been hers had been
Speaker 3: accomplished with the help of an instrument that she had
Speaker 3: invented for measuring surface tension, which helped get a better
Speaker 3: calculation of the thickness of the oil. And with her
Speaker 3: method she measured the thickness of a single oil molecule,
Speaker 3: or the sorry not just the oil, the triolene 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: monolayer on top. The authors of this paper suggest that
Speaker 3: the best explanation is the one offered by Lord Rayleigh,
Speaker 3: So I'm going to read from Lord Raleigh. Here. He wrote,
Speaker 3: let us consider small waves as propagated over the surface
Speaker 3: of clean water. As the waves advance, 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. So,
Speaker 3: if I'm understanding this correctly, it seems to me what
Speaker 3: he's saying is that the oil, because of its hydrophobic
Speaker 3: chemical reaction with the water, with its and with itself.
Speaker 3: It strongly prefers to stretch out into this single molecule
Speaker 3: thick layer. And if this oil really wants to become
Speaker 3: and then stay a layer that's a single molecule thick,
Speaker 3: that means it can't really stretch any thinner unless the
Speaker 3: force of the waves is so strong that the oil
Speaker 3: slick is actually ripped apart, and it repels being contracted
Speaker 3: to become any thicker. Since it resists becoming more than
Speaker 3: a molecule thick, so it resists any wave motion at
Speaker 3: the surface. Though of course, at some point waves could
Speaker 3: become so powerful that they would override the hydrophobic chemical
Speaker 3: forces that caused this phenomenon. So it only works up
Speaker 3: to a certain point.
Speaker 2: And yet you might ask, well, could we stop a
Speaker 2: hurricane with it? This actually is something that I found
Speaker 2: discussed in a paper from two thousand and five. This
Speaker 2: is it's titled a Note concerning the light Hill Sandwich
Speaker 2: Model of Tropical Cyclones. The authors here are Baron Blatt, Chorin,
Speaker 2: and Pros Taukashan. These three individuals would be Alexander Chorin,
Speaker 2: a Berkeley computational fluid mechanics expert Russian mathematician Grigory Baron
Speaker 2: Blatt and VM Takashin. So they seem to be individuals
Speaker 2: who are very well established in their field here and
Speaker 2: I looked at this paper and I tried to look
Speaker 2: at the paper that it came before it, that they're
Speaker 2: kind of this is kind of an addendum too. It's
Speaker 2: very technical paper, full of equations and whatnot. But in
Speaker 2: this a note concerning the light Hill Sandwich model of
Speaker 2: tropical cyclones, they suggest that that oil spread on the
Speaker 2: surface of water could potentially prevent the formation of quote
Speaker 2: turbulence dampening ocean spray droplets. The idea here being that
Speaker 2: while there's a lot going on in a hurricane, quote,
Speaker 2: flow acceleration in an ocean spray that carries large water
Speaker 2: droplets unquote is part of the whole scenario, and if
Speaker 2: one could, you know, theoretically curtail flow acceleration by droplets,
Speaker 2: it might have an impact on the storm's overall strength.
Speaker 2: I'm going to read what the authors wrote here on
Speaker 2: the matter. Quote. In the present work, we demonstrated that
Speaker 2: the mechanism of turbulent suppression by water droplets in the
Speaker 2: ocean spray can substantially accelerate the flow, so that the
Speaker 2: speeds of wind characteristic of the strongest hurricanes can be reached.
Speaker 2: The complete mathematical model, taking into account both thermal effects
Speaker 2: and Coriola's force can now be constructed in the form
Speaker 2: that allows effective numerical calculations. Note that a model of
Speaker 2: dust storms taking into account the thermal effects was proposed
Speaker 2: in reference seven. Furthermore, the effects of particles on the
Speaker 2: dynamics of tornadoes can be studied by similar meats. Anyway,
Speaker 2: they get to the conclusion here, they say, in conclusion,
Speaker 2: we want to make a comment. Since antiquity seamen have
Speaker 2: had barrels of oil on the decks of their vessels
Speaker 2: and thrown the oil on the sea surface in critical
Speaker 2: moments of stormy weather, we think that the action of
Speaker 2: oil was exactly the prevention of the formation of droplets.
Speaker 2: The turbulence was restored after the oil was dropped, the
Speaker 2: turbulent drag was increased, and the intensity of the squall
Speaker 2: was reduced. Possibly, hurricanes can be similarly prevented or dampened
Speaker 2: by having airplanes deliver fast, decaying harmless surfactants to the
Speaker 2: 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 when you or of
Speaker 3: any liquid, I guess when you add it to the water.
Speaker 3: So soap is a surfactant, and it increases the wetting
Speaker 3: properties of water. It causes water to less want to
Speaker 3: cling to itself and more to spread out over whatever.
Speaker 2: Now, I do want to stress that this proposal here
Speaker 2: is very much based in mathematical modeling, and you have
Speaker 2: to sort of you have to take it with that
Speaker 2: in consideration. On top of that, we have to to
Speaker 2: mention that, Yeah, there have been various methods that have
Speaker 2: been brought up over the years as possible means of
Speaker 2: dampening hurricanes or preventing hurricanes, or stopping a hurricane and
Speaker 2: its growth. None of these I think has really proven
Speaker 2: to be effective. We're not actually doing any of those
Speaker 2: those things. I mean, we're there are things we know
Speaker 2: that we could do in the world a large scale
Speaker 2: to prevent hurricanes from becoming worse in the years ahead,
Speaker 2: and we're not necessarily doing all of those either. So,
Speaker 2: but you know, nobody wants to to change their lives.
Speaker 2: They want they want the really quick means of stopping
Speaker 2: the hurricane some dynamic idea, something you can drop out
Speaker 2: of an airplane or so forth. But still I don't know.
Speaker 2: The modeling here is is is interesting and it's it's
Speaker 2: neat to see this more modern, like very technical approach
Speaker 2: to trying to figure out the same thing that Benjamin
Speaker 2: Franklin was pondering over, and that the the the ancients, uh,
Speaker 2: in many cases just took as fact you have you
Speaker 2: have turbulent seas well, throw a little oil in there
Speaker 2: and that's going to calm things down.
Speaker 3: It would be very 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 2: Yeah, And again even the authors themselves are pointing out
Speaker 2: that they're taking the various factors involved in the growth
Speaker 2: of a hurricane and reducing it to this one area.
Speaker 2: So this is not a solution that would seem to
Speaker 2: take everything into account. But just concerning this one aspect
Speaker 2: 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 Oswy
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 if there's a storm,
Speaker 3: you pour this oil on the water and it'll calm
Speaker 3: the storm. And so that raises two different interpretations. One
Speaker 3: could be like, oh, is he just talking about the
Speaker 3: thing that is in a way. I mean, I don't
Speaker 3: know how well it would really work on a large
Speaker 3: scale around a boat, but there is at least experimental
Speaker 3: evidence that you pour oil on waters and somewhat will
Speaker 3: calm waves. Is that all that this story is talking about?
Speaker 3: Or should we take it in the broader sense of
Speaker 3: it will actually stop the storm, like it will affect
Speaker 3: the weather coming from above and the winds.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean in so many of these accounts, you're
Speaker 2: dealing with retellings of the thing. And even though even
Speaker 2: though bed was was maybe not too many degrees away
Speaker 2: from the actual account. Yeah, it's easy to imagine how
Speaker 2: the story could could be exaggerated, you know, the calming
Speaker 2: of the waters to the overall you know, calming of
Speaker 2: the storm in the same way that perhaps an effect
Speaker 2: that makes the surface of the water more like glass
Speaker 2: so that you can see down into it. Could I'm
Speaker 2: and I'm guessing here potentially be you know, further exaggerated
Speaker 2: into making the entire water column illuminated and diveable in
Speaker 2: a way that you can easily find what you're looking
Speaker 2: for in the depths. But this is all what I
Speaker 2: think makes the topic so fascinating because it, you know,
Speaker 2: it seems to be this realm where this some it
Speaker 2: seems on one hand that this could not be. This
Speaker 2: seems like, surely this is just fable. But on the
Speaker 2: other hand, we do see, you know, some of the
Speaker 2: science at play here. We can see like why it
Speaker 2: works at least to some degree. So it's it's it
Speaker 2: kind of has a has 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 2: Absolutely, all right, Well, We're gonna go ahead and close
Speaker 2: out this episode and this exploration, but we'll be back
Speaker 2: with more episodes in the future. Here core episodes of
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