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Learn Something New Every Day – Interesting Fact of the Day Blog

The Shiny Side of Tinfoil

By Ryan | Published: October 23, 2012

Shiny Side of Tinfoil

Let’s just set the record straight right from the get-go. “Tinfoil” is an obsolete term, as there has been no tin in the foil since about 1926. The foil is made almost entirely of aluminum, which should probably be your favourite metal for good reasons. Reynolds brand foil is 98.5% aluminum, leaving that 1.5% to be mostly iron and silicon for durability reasons. No tim involved. So, from here on in, we call it aluminum foil.

You may have noticed that everybody has their opinion about the shiny side of foil. If you are bar-b-queing vegetables you have to wrap them with the shiny side of the foil inwards, so the shiny part can reflect heat back in to warm your asparagus. It sounds like it makes good scientific sense. Of course, you’ll also run into people who say you should cook them with the shiny side out, so it reflects heat away and the veggies don’t burn too fast. I suppose there’s logic there too.

When we talk about reflecting heat, this involves heat that moves by radiation in the form of infrared waves travelling invisibly through the air. Pretty much any surface will reflect some of these waves, while absorbing others. Under the sun, a black shirt will feel hotter than a white shirt for this reason. The white one reflects more infrared waves. So there is certainly some scientific merit to this shiny-side-of-the-foil idea.

That’s why it’s so easy to believe. The truth is, however, that the shiny side of the foil has very little impact on the results of your cooking. The only reason one side is shiny is a result of the manufacturing process, as the aluminum is being squashed flat underneath a giant roller, which is smoother than the surface underneath, giving one side of the foil more sheen. So it seems the theories about shiny-sides came after the fact, as a reverse-engineered attempt at justification.

Now go forth and roast some garlic!

 

 

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Enlightenment Through The Double-Blind Test

By Ryan | Published: July 18, 2012

It seems no matter how enlightened we become, the level of hokum in the world stays the same. In the dark ages you could not fault a person for believing that leeches and blood-letting could cure all ailments. The education just wasn’t available. But now, as scientists are peeking into the fabric of the universe, there is just no excuse anymore. It’s time to stop believing in stupid things.

The latest flim-flam that has me irked is the “power bracelet” fad. These bracelets are supposed to give you strength, balance, and energy through the use of magnets, ions, or resonant frequencies. Bah humbug.

Within 5 minutes on the internet, an information storehouse that would make Archimedes quiver, I was able to find an Australian news report that put these bracelets to a double-blind test. As soon as they were scientifically tested, all the reported benefits failed to be seen over and over again. Yet, they are still selling like new-age hotcakes.

The popular sales tactic for the bracelets is a balance test, where the sucker… er… subject stands on one foot and gets pushed around by the demonstrator. When the bracelet is worn, their balance miraculously improves.

I personally have zero faith that the bracelet does a darn thing, so the results of this test are caused by one or both of two factors.

The Placebo effect has been proved to create changes in your physiology through purely psychological means. It can be summed up as the power of positive thinking. If a subject believes the bracelet has positive affects, then they will make it come true.

The second factor is the bias and influence of the demonstrator. When they conduct the balance tests they can change the results based on how hard the push, where they push, or the direction they push the subject. Their influence may be intentional or sub-conscious.

A double-blind test can remove both placebo and influence from the proceedings to better measure the true results. In the case of this bracelet balance test, we could have six people wearing bracelets. Some are the “power” bracelet, while others are imitations. The subjects must not know which bracelet they are wearing.

Also, the demonstrator doing the pushing must not know which bracelet is which. They will not be able to influence the results, or have any bias.

Finally, the double-blind test, like any scientific result, must be repeated. Even not knowing which bracelet they are wearing, a subject could believe they have the real thing, and the placebo effect could come into play. Repetition nullifies random variables, and confirms results.

I encourage you to use the double-blind test, the skeptics favourite tool, to challenge anything in your life that seems too good to be true. Even if it’s something you truly do believe in. Especially if it’s something you believe in. Some people say that it’s better to have false hope, and not to challenge things. I disagree. Let’s find the truth.

Double-blind tests can be used to determine if Cheerios taste better than the generic “toasted wheat rings”, or if $200 dollar speaker cables perform better than coathanger wire. You can remove your false beliefs, and save some cash!

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Smaller Plate Makes For Smaller Belly

By Ryan | Published: July 17, 2012

The Delbouf illusion shows us that the perceived size of things can be manipulated by changing the size of nearby things. A person of average height would look tiny standing beside the 8 foot 11 inch Robert Wadlow. Not only would they look smaller, but it might affect your feelings and attitude about that person. What we perceive affects how we think. The same thing happens on your dinner table.

Imagine a serving of mashed potatoes. A big creamy pile of starch, covered in gravy. Picture it in the middle of an otherwise empty plate. If it’s a large dinner plate, then the mound of potatoes would look relatively small. If that same pile was on a small side plate, it would look significantly larger. Turns out, the size of your plate not only affects how your food looks, but how much you eat, and how satisfied you feel.

One study conducted at a summer camp gave half the kids larger breakfast bowls. The kids with the big bowls were eating 16% more cereal every morning. Not only that, when they were asked about, the large bowl kids felt that they were eating 7% less than the small bowl kids. They were eating more, but feeling less satisfied.

In a world filled with ridiculous and harmful “diet plans”, often the best strategy is eating smaller portions. Try replacing your 10 inch dinner plates with 8 inch lunch plates, and you may find the Delbouf illusion garners better results than willpower alone. Your plates won’t be the only thing losing inches.

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Gears, Sprockets, and Cogs In The Machine

By Ryan | Published: July 16, 2012

It was in Medieval times when a toothed wheel used in machinery came to be known as a gear. This was the very beginning, when they were made of wood, and very large compared the the fine workings of a pocket watch.

The technical function of gears is to transmit torque. In the example of the classic Mill the system of gears changed the linear movement of the water, which spun the large vertical wheel, converting it into a slower, but higher torque, rotation of a horizontal grinding stone.

The mechanical advantage is gained based on the difference in size, and number of teeth, between two connecting gears. For example, let’s look at the gears on your bicycle. Let’s see… looking… looking… hey! There are no gears on your bicycle!

In fact those things you see by the pedals, and on the rear wheel, aren’t actually gears at all. If they were meshed with each other, they would be gears, but since they are connected by a chain, we call them sprockets. A rose by any other name, however, still follows the same laws of physics.

So with your bicycle sprockets, a mechanical advantage is gained based on the size of the two sprockets the chain is connecting. If the rear wheel sprocket is the same size as the pedal sprocket, it would be a 1 to 1 ratio. No mechanical advantage. This is the “low gear” position that is easiest for starting off, or going up long hills. As the chain moves to smaller sprockets, more mechanical advantage is gained and, if you were to maintain your pedaling, the speed the rear wheel would move faster and faster with each successively smaller sprocket.

Now if gears can become sprockets simply by adding a chain, it’s also very easy for sprockets to become pulleys. The only difference between the two is the cogs, which is what you call the teeth on a gear or a sprocket. In gears it is the cogs that mesh together. Cogs on a sprocket slip into the links of a chain. The benefit of this is the lack of slipping. Pulleys have no cogs, and rely on friction to move the chain (or belt). The benefit of pulleys and belts, as used in automobile engines, is that they will not get snagged or hung up at high speeds as easily as a chain might catch on a cog.

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Boxers or Briefs, the Historical Choice

By Ryan | Published: May 30, 2012

The choice between boxers or briefs is one that has only been available for about 80 years. For the century prior, about 1830 on, the prevalent underwear for men was the “Union Suit”, or something you might call long-johns. A full-body flannel suit, sometimes using the infamous buttoned bum-flap.

Boxer shorts are so-named because they were designed to be worn by boxers of the people-who-punch-each-other-for-fun variety. The elastic-banded shorts replacing the heavier leather belted lace-up shorts used up to that point. They were created by Jacob Golomb, founder of the sport supply company Everlast.

The jump from the ring to the underwear drawer was not fast for boxer shorts. They didn’t really catch on until after World War II, and it wasn’t until the 1980s that they became the medium for secretive self-expression and high-fashion that they are today.

Briefs, however, had a more pronounced impact with their debut in 1935. Arthur Kneibler was the “apparel engineer” responsible for the invention. Inspired by a postcard from France featuring a picture of a man in a swimsuit, he went about creating underwear of the same sort.

Their first day in a Chicago department store sold 600 “Jockey Shorts”, as they were named. The new jockey shorts received as much support as they provided, and their success spread across the world rapidly. While they are known as briefs in North America, the British refer to them as Y-fronts, for the signature overlapping fly that was part of the original design.

 

A personal note from Ryan: I am participating in the “Underwear Affair” fundraiser for cancers below the waist. (Ovarian, testicular, prostate, etc.) I sure would appreciate it if you would donate to my team! Even 5 or 10 bucks would help. Donate online here.

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How Colours Change In The Sun

By Ryan | Published: April 4, 2012

Have you ever seen a t-shirt that changes colour when it is in direct sunlight? Or perhaps new colours become visible? Maybe you have some of those fancy prescription glasses that become tinted sunglasses as you step outside.

All that falls under the name Photochromism. Photo being light, and chromo being colour.

It’s a minutely complex chemical reaction that occurs in the presence of electromagnetic waves in the ultraviolet region of the spectrum. That is to say, UV light. When those UV waves hit the photochromatic substance, the chemical reaction occurs that causes a change in its ability to absorb visible light.

Now, here at LSNED I always try to take the hardcore science and boil it down to a casual explanation that makes sense. Just so you’re aware of my struggle, here’s the source material on this…

The conjugated system of the oxazine and another aromatic part of the molecule is separated by a sp³-hybridized “spiro” carbon. After irradiation with UV light, the bond between the spiro-carbon and the oxazine breaks, the ring opens, the spiro carbon achieves sp² hybridization and becomes planar, the aromatic group rotates, aligns its π-orbitals with the rest of the molecule, and a conjugated system forms with ability to absorb photons of visible light, and therefore appear colorful.

So, umm, to summarize, err… well… so every thing in the universe is made up of the same building blocks, as seen on the Periodic Table of the Elements. The difference between your eyeball and the computer screen you’re looking at is just a different arrangement of those basic parts. In the case of our colour-changing dye, the sunlight actually rearranges the physical bonds between the parts, and that teeny-tiny change makes for a dramatic and visible shift in the objects properties. Just like your eyeball, if the parts suddenly got scrambled, could end up being a potato dumpling.

When it comes to glasses that turn into sunglasses as you step outside, that chemical process is a little bit different. When they make the lenses, they add two special ingredients. Silver chloride and copper chloride. When that same UV light hits the silver chloride it oxidizes, or “rusts”. That throws the physical arrangement out of whack and leaves us with a pile of leftover electrons, which find new homes with silver ions to create new silver atoms that block some of the incoming light, making the glasses seem darker.

It might stay that way for a ling time, if not for the copper chloride that was also added into the lens. Like an atomic groundskeeper, the copper chloride not only keeps the stray chlorine from escaping the lens, but it reduces and re-sets the chemical change as soon as the UV light has faded away. The tinting process is reversed, and set to go again.

Personally, I find chemistry to be the most mysterious thing in the universe. I tend to have a logical grasp on the concepts of physics, but chemistry still seems like magic to me!

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The “Did You Just Eat My Goldfish?” Prank

By Ryan | Published: March 31, 2012

To make sure you’re ready to go for April Fools Day, I’m going to teach you how to eat a goldfish to shock and awe your friends. I’m not talking about Goldfish crackers. That’s less exciting. Rather, imagine you are at your friend’s house. You are admiring her fish-tank when you reach into the tank, pick up a fish by the tail, and drop it into your mouth. You chew, swallow, and stare straight at your friend’s face as the panic sets in.

Sounds like great fun to me!

Here’s how to pull of this prank. You need a large carrot. Using a peeler, slice of a wide but thin piece of carrot. It needs to be thin enough to be a bit floppy.

From the wide end of that slice, use a knife to carve it into the rough shape of a fish. Detail isn’t important, as your fiend only gets a fleeting glimpse as it passes your lips. Hide your carrot-fish in your pocket until you find yourself beside an unsuspecting aquarium.

As you make some breezy conversation about the fsh, your hand slips into your pocket and picks up the carrot-fish. Hide it in your loosely closed hand in a casual way. (Being casual is key. Don’t worry, nobody will ever suspect you’re secretly hiding a fish-shaped carrot. If they do, you have a complicated relationship with this person.)

When you’re sure that you’re being watched, dip your hand (still hiding the carrot) into the aquarium water and move your fake fish into view, pinching the tail. Pull it out, wiggling the fish a bit, and quickly drop it into your mouth. Do this fast, but not so fast that it is not clear what just happened. The impact of your prank relies on your calm execution of this moment.

Now you just need to try not to laugh as you chew and swallow your carrot fish. It’s up to you how much you want to torture your victim at this point. If you’ve pulled off the prank, they should be seriously shocked right now.

Now go have some fishy fun!

  • Source: Tricks With Your Head by Mac King, a fantastic book of tricks, gags, and stunts somehow involving your own head.
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  • LSNED author Ryan Pilling is an amateur factologist and a professional entertainer, performing as a Calgary magician.