Learn about how scientists developed a self-repairing battery. Plus: science communicator Trace Dominguez answers a listener question about the difference between 4G and 5G networks. In this podcast, Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer discuss the following story from Curiosity.com about how scientists have developed a self-repairing battery: https://curiosity.im/2JZD57m Additional resources from Trace Dominguez: How We Got to 5G, Explained — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1mtzyeKUPY Subscribe to Uno Dos of Trace on YouTube — https://www.youtube.com/user/TravellinTrace Follow @tracedominguez on Twitter — https://twitter.com/tracedominguez Trace Dominguez on Facebook — https://www.facebook.com/official.tracedominguez If you love our show and you're interested in hearing full-length interviews, then please consider supporting us on Patreon. You'll get exclusive episodes and access to our archives as soon as you become a Patron! https://www.patreon.com/curiositydotcom Download the FREE 5-star Curiosity app for Android and iOS at https://curiosity.im/podcast-app. And Amazon smart speaker users: you can listen to our podcast as part of your Amazon Alexa Flash Briefing — just click “enable” here: https://curiosity.im/podcast-flash-briefing.
Learn about how scientists developed a self-repairing battery. Plus: science communicator Trace Dominguez answers a listener question about the difference between 4G and 5G networks.
In this podcast, Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer discuss the following story from Curiosity.com about how scientists have developed a self-repairing battery: https://curiosity.im/2JZD57m
Additional resources from Trace Dominguez:
If you love our show and you're interested in hearing full-length interviews, then please consider supporting us on Patreon. You'll get exclusive episodes and access to our archives as soon as you become a Patron! https://www.patreon.com/curiositydotcom
Download the FREE 5-star Curiosity app for Android and iOS at https://curiosity.im/podcast-app. And Amazon smart speaker users: you can listen to our podcast as part of your Amazon Alexa Flash Briefing — just click “enable” here: https://curiosity.im/podcast-flash-briefing.
Find episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/difference-between-5g-and-4g-networks-w-trace-dominguez-and-self-repairing-batteries
CODY: Hi! We’re here from curiosity-dot-com to help you get smarter in just a few minutes. I’m Cody Gough.
ASHLEY: And I’m Ashley Hamer. Today, you’ll learn about how scientists developed a self-repairing battery; and, what researchers learned when they analyzed DNA from 10-thousand-year-old chewing gum. We’ll also answer a listener question about the difference between 4G and 5G networks with a special guest, science communicator Trace Dominguez.
CODY: Let’s satisfy some curiosity.
Scientists Have Developed a Self-Repairing Battery — https://curiosity.im/2JZD57m (Ashley)
Last month, scientists announced that they may have achieved a major breakthrough: they’ve developd a self-repairing battery. This could mean that in the future, those days of having an old phone or laptop that just can’t hold a decent charge anymore COULD be over! Before I get into how they did that, here’s a quick refresher on how batteries work. All batteries contain 3 things: a positive electrode, a negative electrode, and an electrolyte between them. Rechargeable batteries like the lithium-ion one in your phone or laptop charges by sending charged particles from the positive electrode through the electrolyte and into the negative electrode. Those charged particles are called ions, and when it’s time to actually use your device, the ions head in the opposite direction, this time from the negative electrode to the positive one.
Okay, so why does a battery stop holding a charge? Well, let’s use a lithium-ion battery as an example. The electrodes in a rechargeable battery are usually made up of a bunch of super-thin layers of some type of metal — “super-thin” as in “about as thick as an atom.” In a lithium-ion battery, the negative electrode is made of graphene, which are basically sheets of carbon atoms, and the positive electrode is made of lithium cobalt oxide or lithium iron phosphate. These layers are held together by a weak Van der Waals force, which is the force that exists between really closely packed neutral particles. When your battery’s charging, the lithium cobalt oxide in the positive electrode sends some of its own lithium ions to pass through the electrolyte and hang out between the layers of graphene in the negative electrode. That release of ions physically changes the electrode, which creates a little bit of extra space between the layers. Since the forces holding the material together need the atoms to be closely packed, that extra space can degrade the electrode, and after a while, it’ll lead to cracks or flakes known as stacking faults. Over time, these stacking faults make it harder for the battery to store and deliver a charge. If scientists figure out a way to prevent or repair these cracks, then they could end up creating a significantly longer-lasting battery.
And in a paper published in Nature last month, engineers at the University of Tokyo announced that they'd developed a way to make batteries repair these cracks on their own. Instead of lithium ions, the team used sodium, which is a promising alternative we've talked about on this podcast before. The natural degradation of the layers is reversible thanks to the extra sodium atom in the electrode layers. The material they used was held together by a force called coulombic attraction, which is the fancy term for the attraction between particles with opposite charges. And that might not sound super impressive, but the force of coulombic attraction is a lot stronger than Van Der Waals forces, which means the new material they made the electrode out of can do a lot more than your run-of-the-mill electrode. Thanks to this more powerful force, once the sodium ions make their way back to the positive electrode during charging, they can return to the same structure they started in, and repair any extra spaces or cracks that might have formed when the battery discharged. Cracks aren’t the only things that limit rechargeable batteries, so this doesn’t solve every battery problem ever. But it’s still a big step towards longer-lasting batteries with more capacity, and that’ll make a big difference in everything from electric cars to your smartphone.
Scientists Recovered DNA from 10,000-Year-Old Chewing Gum — https://curiosity.im/2I0Q7Os (Republish) (Cody)
Scientists have recovered DNA from 10-thousand-year-old chewing gum. And this research gives us some insight into the lives and origins of our recent ancestors. This reseatrch ALSO answers… a listener question! Believe it or not, we got a tweet in September from Alain Paul, who asked “how long does DNA survive on chewing gum.” Thanks for your question, Alain, and, uh… sorry it took us a while to get a solid answer for this one. This baby took a full 9 months to gestate! Anyway, as reported by The Conversation, this gum was actually used as a glue to make tools, but researchers do believe it was chewed on, too — to make it more pliable and sticky. The gum was found at a Mesolithic site in western Sweden, and the fact that we can get human DNA from bits of old chewing gum is a breakthrough in itself. Most ancient DNA samples come from bones or teeth, but they have to be ground into power in order to extract the DNA. Not very preservation-friendly. Researchers sequenced the entire genomes of three of the gum-chewers, and they compared them with modern-day genomes from 10 other sites from across Europe. The results showed that these Scandanavian hunter-gatherers had genes from people further west and south, but their tools were more like ones that were more common in the East. And that suggests they were more diverse than being just from Eastern Europe, which is what scientists had thought. They were also surprised that two of the sequenced gum chewers were female, which means maybe prehistoric females weren’t just stuck doing domestic roles, as we’ve previously thought. And these findings give scientists a whole new list of mysteries to answer. Like, if females were making tools, were they also hunting with them? Did Mesolithic people chew gum for fun, like other cultures? If you’re studying archaeology or anthropology, one thing’s for sure: you’ve got plenty of questions to chew on.
[ARM & HAMMER]
ASHLEY: Today’s episode is sponsored by Arm & Hammer.
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CODY: New Cloud Control Cat Litter by Arm & Hammer. More Power to You.
Listener Question - 5G (Ashley)
ASHLEY: We got a listener question from Aditya, who asks “5G is the next big thing in networking. How is it different from 3G and 4G?” Great question Aditya! And perfect timing, because our friend, science communicator Trace Dominguez, recently produced a super in-depth video about this very thing on his YouTube channel, Uno Dos of Trace. We called him up to help shed some light on this cellular subject.
[CLIP 3:30]
We asked Trace about 5G in the rest of the world, and he said that since the International Telecommunications Union is part of the United Nations, we’re going to see similar rollouts worldwide — although the timing could vary. Again, that was Trace Dominguez, science communicator and host of the Youtube channel Uno Dos of Trace. He gets much deeper into the subject in his video about this, which we’ll link to in the show notes. Thanks for your question! If you have a question, send it into podcast at curiosity dot com.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1mtzyeKUPY
CODY: Before we wrap up, we want to give a special shout-out to Dr. Mary Yancy and Muhammad Shifaz, who are executive producers for today’s episode thanks to their generous support on Patreon. Thank you SO. MUCH.
ASHLEY: If you’re listening and you want to support Curiosity Daily, then visit patreon-dot-com-slash-curiosity-dot-com, all spelled out.
CODY: Join us again tomorrow for the award-winning Curiosity Daily and learn something new in just a few minutes. I’m [NAME] and I’m [NAME]. Stay curious!