Learn about an easy trick for making needles less painful; how ancient Mayans used zeolite to filter water more than 2,000 years ago; and the story behind moonmoons, the hilarious name astronomers have proposed for moons that orbit other moons.
Learn about an easy trick for making needles less painful; how ancient Mayans used zeolite to filter water more than 2,000 years ago; and the story behind moonmoons, the hilarious name astronomers have proposed for moons that orbit other moons.
Smiling or grimacing reduces needle pain by Steffie Drucker
The Ancient Maya used zeolite and quartz to filter drinking water 2,000 years ago by Grant Currin
Moons can have moons called moonmoons originally aired October 16, 2018: https://omny.fm/shows/curiosity-daily/moonmoons-why-you-get-sick-when-seasons-change-and
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Find episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/a-trick-for-making-vaccinations-less-painful
CODY: Hi! You’re about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity Daily from curiosity-dot-com. I’m Cody Gough.
ASHLEY: And I’m Ashley Hamer. Today, you’ll learn about an easy trick for making needles less painful; how ancient Mayan civilizations filtered water more than 2,000 years ago; and the hilarious name astronomers have proposed calling moons that orbit other moons.
CODY: Let’s satisfy some curiosity.
The COVID-19 vaccine is HERE! That’s pretty exciting because this is a big step in resuming some kind of normal. Of course, it’s also bittersweet for those of us who don’t like needles. If that’s you, I’ve got good news: Scientists have discovered a free and easy way to ease the pain: smile. Or grimace. Up to you.
This came from researchers at the University of California, Irvine. They started by recruiting 231 psychology students for a study that supposedly explored how multitasking affected needle pain. They crafted this ruse so the students wouldn’t overthink how their facial expressions affected their pain. The scientists injected the students with a harmless saline solution using a needle that’s common for flu shots. The students, meanwhile, were randomly assigned to grimace, smile, or keep a straight face while getting their shot. Weirdly, everyone did this while holding a chopstick in their mouth. That was to keep the expressions the same across participants. They rated their stress before the shot and the pain before, during and afterward on a scale of 0 to 100. Researchers also measured the students’ stress by monitoring their heart rates and sweat on their hands.
The team found that smiling blunted the participants’ pain by up to 40 percent. And if that weren’t enough, smiling also reduced stress about the shot by lowering their heart rates. That was only true of a sincere smile — you know, the kind where your eyes crinkle up. Students who were told to “soft smile” or fake it didn’t feel the effects as much.
But if you’re too distraught to smile, it’s okay to show your pain. Like the smilers, the grimacing group had 39 percent less pain than the poker-faced participants. Grimacing may seem like the opposite of smiling, but the muscles involved are similar. You scrunch your eyes and bare your teeth to make both faces.
This is another check in the “win” column for the facial feedback hypothesis — the controversial idea that the expression on your face can directly affect your emotions. We covered it back in September, and you can find that episode in the show notes. Controversial or not, it’s a good thing that studies like this are still being done to add to that body of evidence.
Seems like the expression “grin and bear it!” is actually science-backed advice! Hopefully making a face will make your next shot a little more bearable.
If you want to support a population, you need a reliable supply of clean water. So it might not be too surprising that Roman, Greek, and Egyptian civilizations had water filtration systems as long as 2,000 years ago. But researchers just discovered that around the same time, the Mayans did too — and they relied on a mineral we thought was new to the water filtration game.
We know this because of a recent discovery in modern-day Guatemala, in Tikal [tee-kAL like “Al Bundy” Al], which used to be one of the great cities of the Americas. Between the 4th century BCE and about 900 CE, the city grew to be one of the Mayan civilization’s most important urban centers. Its population peaked as high as 90,000. But it wasn’t located near a source of clean springwater like great Aztec and Inca cities were. So to get clean water, its people had to innovate. And they did it using zeolite.
Zeolite is a natural crystalline compound that’s incredibly porous, so it absorbs water easily and captures contaminants effectively. In other words, it’s perfect for making water safe to drink. The stuff is still used at water purification plants across the world, and technicians even used it to absorb radioactive waste after the Fukushima nuclear disaster.
The people of Tikal relied on 10 reservoirs to sustain them during periods of seasonal drought. Researchers made the big discovery at the bottom of the Corriental reservoir, which was the largest in the Mayan world. Mixed in with the sediment were zeolite and coarse quartz sand. Exactly what you’d need to make, say, a giant water filter! They think the zeolite was quarried about a six-hour walk north of the city, at an aquifer known for its extremely clean water — clean water that’s still naturally filtered by the surrounding volcanic rock, which contains zeolite.
The researchers don’t know exactly how the filtration system works, but they think the filtration happened at the point that water flowed into the reservoir. The mixture of zeolite and quartz was probably surrounded by woven fiber mats to form a giant filter that the water could pass through as it entered the reservoir.
And get this: there’s still evidence that the water in Corriental reservoir was exceptionally clean. Modern researchers have found mercury in other reservoirs around Tikal, but they haven’t been able to find any trace of the toxin in Corriental. It’s the oldest known example of water filtration in the Western Hemisphere — and it worked like a dream.
CODY: We’re gonna go from human history to OUTER SPACE. After all: we like to do a bit of everything on this podcast. So we polished up this classic clip just for you. Take a listen.
Let’s recap today’s takeaways
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CODY: Today’s stories were written by Steffie Drucker and Grant Currin, and edited by Ashley Hamer, who’s the managing editor for Curiosity Daily.
ASHLEY: Today’s episode was produced and edited by Cody Gough.
CODY: Join us again tomorrow to learn something new in just a few minutes.
ASHLEY: And until then, stay curious!