Learn about how to avoid the too-familiar trap of mental accounting, the story of when a glitchy instrument led to evidence for the Big Bang, and the real science behind how to make cut flowers last longer.
Learn about how to avoid the too-familiar trap of mental accounting, the story of when a glitchy instrument led to evidence for the Big Bang, and the real science behind how to make cut flowers last longer.
Is That Real Money Or Fun Money? The Familiar Trap Of Mental Accounting by Ashley Hamer
That time a glitchy instrument led to evidence for the Big Bang by Cameron Duke
https://www.aps.org/programs/outreach/history/historicsites/penziaswilson.cfm
How to make cut flowers last longer by Ashley Hamer (Listener question from Lisa)
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Find episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/is-that-real-money-or-fun-money-the-trap-of-mental-accounting
[MUSIC PLAYING] ASHLEY HAMER: Hi. You're about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity Daily from curiosity.com. I'm Ashley Hamer.
NATALIA REAGAN: And I'm Natalia Reagan. Today, you learn, how to avoid the too familiar trap of mental accounting, the story of when a glitchy instrument led to evidence for the Big Bang, and the real science behind how to make cut flowers last longer.
ASHLEY HAMER: Let's satisfy some curiosity.
[SWOOSH]
When is $10 not worth $10? That might seem like a ridiculous question. But $10 can have vastly different values in your head depending on where it comes from, and what you've decided it's meant for. This kind of financial psychology is called mental accounting. And while it's incredibly common, it can get you into trouble.
To understand what I mean, try this thought experiment. Imagine you pay $10 for a ticket to a play, but then realize you've lost the ticket. Would you pay $10 for another ticket? Now, rewind and imagine you're about to buy a ticket to a play, and you realize you've lost a $10 bill. Would you still pay $10 for a ticket?
When researchers asked study volunteers these questions, less than half of them said they'd buy a second ticket if they lost the first. But a whopping 88% said they'd buy a ticket if they lost $10. That's because the $10 was already assigned for the theater ticket. So buying a second ticket makes the play cost $20. But the lost cash wasn't assigned to anything. So it's easier to write it off.
In another example, people said they'd be more likely to drive across town to save $5 on a $15 calculator than, they would to save $5 on a $125 leather jacket. But in both cases, the amounts are the same. It's quirks in our psychology that make us treat them differently. Loss aversion makes us treat money, we already have as more valuable, than money, we might receive, say with a tax refund or a lottery win. Same goes for found and expected money. You're more likely to spend an unexpected gain, like the $5,000 work bonus, than you are to spend money is coming, like a 5,000 paycheck.
Mental accounting is also why buying things with a credit card is so much less painful than buying them with a debit card. It uncouples the purchase from the payment, and turns individual purchases into part of a large ordinary amount due. So how do you behave more rationally when it comes to money? Understand that all money is the same regardless, of where it comes from or how you plan to use it. If you wouldn't spend that money in a different situation, you might want to rethink spending it in this one.
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NATALIA REAGAN: Isaac Asimov once said that the most exciting phrase to hear in science is not "Eureka", but, "That's funny." In other words, the biggest discoveries don't come from what you expect, they come from the unexpected, the accidental and the mistaken. One of the biggest discoveries like this came on May 20, 1964, when a supposed malfunction in a radio receiver ended up being the first evidence of ancient light from the Big Bang. Eureka? Here's the story.
Robert Wilson and Arno Penzias were two radio astronomers working for Bell Labs in New Jersey. A few years prior, the Holmdel horn antenna, a radio receiver that had been used for communication, had been made obsolete. This was exciting to the physicists, because they wanted to look for radio signatures from nearby galaxies. And this receiver was now available for research use. So they set to work.
But as soon as they began, they realized they had a problem. There was static in the signal. And no matter where they pointed the receiver, there was this ever present background hum. They couldn't carry out their research without fixing it. But they couldn't find the cause.
They pointed the dish at New York City to rule out urban interference. They pointed at various points in the sky to rule out interference from celestial objects. The hum kept on humming all year long. Meaning, that seasonal atmospheric effects and even radiation from nuclear tests couldn't be blamed. Eventually, they resorted to cleaning out the pigeon poop in the receiver's horn. Still, the hum persisted.
Meanwhile, physicist Robert Dickie, over at Princeton, had been working on theories about the Big Bang. One of his predictions was that, such an energetic event would leave low-level microwave radiation lingering in the universe today. All of this was purely theoretical until the day Penzias and Wilson knocked on his door asking about the mysterious hum from their radio telescope. That hum they couldn't get rid of turned out to be the energetic residue left over from the birth of the universe 13.7 billion years ago. It's now known as cosmic microwave background radiation. Because it's the same frequency in temperature no matter what direction you look, it lends support to the idea that the universe expanded from a single point.
Today, scientists use the cosmic microwave background to learn more about how old the universe is, and what the early universe was made of. Penzias and Wilson won the Nobel Prize in physics for their discovery. All because they overheard the birth of the universe while troubleshooting their radio antenna.
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ASHLEY HAMER: We got a listener question from Lisa, in Chicago, who writes, "I've read a lot of competing advice about how to keep flowers fresh for longer, ice cubes, sugar, aspirin, coins, vodka. Does any of this actually make a difference?" Full disclosure, Lisa is our boss. Also full disclosure, this would be a great question, even if she wasn't.
First, let's back up and talk about, what makes flowers go bad? The most important thing they need to thrive, of course, is water. The second most important is food, sugar specifically, which is what they make via photosynthesis when they're still attached to their roots. Just like with any living thing, if you take away their food or their water your flowers won't be long for this world. The third thing that can spoil your bouquet is microbes. They're the culprit behind that sludge and slime you start to see on the vase after a few days. And forth, ethylene gas, a hormone released by plants to make fruit ripen, seeds sprout, and flowers wilt.
Knowing all that, let's run down the science behind these DIY flower solutions. First up, ice cubes. Cold temperatures have been shown to keep flowers fresh for longer. But the ice isn't doing much to preserve the blooms themselves. So if you really want to take advantage of low temps, you're probably better off sticking the vase in the fridge at night.
Sugar is also good for flowers. In fact, it's a central ingredient in commercial flower foods. But those flower foods also contain bleach to kill microbes. Microbes eat sugar too. So the more sugar you add, the more you risk bacterial and fungal growth.
Aspirin is supposed to lower the waters pH and make it easier for the flowers to absorb. Whether it actually does this, isn't totally clear though. Commercial flower food uses citric acid to make this happen.
The idea behind coins is that copper is a fungicide. So a penny dropped in the water will keep fungus from growing. The only problem is that the metal in coins isn't water soluble. You're better off making a wish on that penny.
Finally, vodka. Vodka can reduce levels of that last element I mentioned, ethylene gas. But plants, like many people, have a low tolerance for alcohol. If you add more than a tiny bit, you risk damaging your flowers.
In the end, your best bet is to use commercial flower food in a clean vase. Cut the stems to remove any air bubbles that would block water intake. Keep your flowers away from any ethylene producing fruits and veggies. And change the water every day or so. Thanks for your question, Lisa. If you have a question, send it in to podcast@curiosity.com, or leave us a voicemail at 312-596-5208.
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NATALIA REAGAN: Before we recap what we learned today, here is a sneak peek of what you'll hear next week on Curiosity Daily.
ASHLEY HAMER: Next week, you'll learn about the psychological effects of ignoring someone's email, what a dinosaur's cloaca looks like, how physicists just achieved room temperature superconductivity for the first time, and why animals keep evolving into crabs. We'll also talk to food and cooking expert, and bestselling author, Harold McGee, about the science of smell. OK, so now, let's recap what we learned today.
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NATALIA REAGAN: Well, we learned that not all money is considered the same in our eyes sometimes. And that's because when we assign a designation for funds, it somehow seems worth a little bit more than if we hadn't give it any real thought yet. So maybe a way to best avoid this phenomenon is to try to remember all money really is the same, and it spends the same. So be a bit more thoughtful when and how you spend it.
ASHLEY HAMER: I found a $100 bill in my winter clothes, when I was taking them out of my closet for the winter. And I remember losing that $100. I know exactly when it happened. And it was like, Oh, it was here the whole time in these corduroy jeans. And I haven't spent it yet. I feel like the temptation is there to just go out. But how much can you buy with a $100 bill, really?
NATALIA REAGAN: Yeah, I mean, it depends on what you're looking for. But yeah, for me, I feel like it's like you just found it, so why give it away? I almost feel like I'd hold tight to it.
ASHLEY HAMER: I think that's what I'm doing. I'm holding on to it.
NATALIA REAGAN: Yeah.
ASHLEY HAMER: It's even more valuable to me, because I lost it for so long.
NATALIA REAGAN: Yeah, I feel like I'm different with cash as I am with cards, and that's a problem. I look at cash as somehow something I don't want to spend. I'm like, Oh, no. I want to hang on to my cash. And part of it is out of concern that, if something were to happen, it's good to have cash on hand.
But at the same time, it all is the same. Especially with-- We've talked about this before, credit cards being even more dubious. Because that interest doesn't necessarily go away. So it just gets bigger and bigger and bigger.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah. But then, there are also really great budgeting techniques that do involve assigning jobs to money. There's this app called You Need to Budget, where everything you spend, you assign it to-- Oh, this was for groceries, this was for utilities. And you have certain amounts that you're going to spend on all of those. And you just basically give every dollar a job. You know, how much you're going to spend that month.
And so you make sure that everything you're going to spend goes to something. And that makes it-- so there isn't any fun money. It all has a job. So there are different ways to go.
NATALIA REAGAN: I like that. As a freelancer, it's always so tough. Because you don't necessarily know when your next paycheck is going to come. So it is, I think, important to have that clear idea of how to sock away money.
ASHLEY HAMER: And we learned that some of the biggest and best scientific discoveries were made completely by accident, including the evidence for the Big Bang. It happened in 1964 when two radio astronomers kept getting static from a receiver. They tried tons of ways to fix it, including cleaning pigeon poop off of the receiver's horn, which I love. And it turns out, that the static is just the background noise from the universe being born. It's the cosmic microwave background radiation, which is basically the leftover energy from that very energetic event at the birth of our universe. Super cool.
NATALIA REAGAN: If this doesn't give scientists hope, I don't know what will. Because I feel like there's so many different things that happen, where you're like, I didn't get the results I wanted. I didn't-- I have to do this all over again. But that's good. That means-- And sometimes you just discover things, oops, wait. What, really? Oh, OK. Not what I expected, but I don't know. Sometimes that's the best things in life catch you by surprise.
Lastly, we learned that to keep cut flowers fresh and microbe free, you could try a lot of different methods from ice cubes to sugar to vodka to aspirin. But the best method is to use commercial flower food, a clean vase, and keep those flowers away from ethylene producing veggies and fruits, and also, be sure to change the water pretty frequently. All of these things, Ashley, I do not do. I am the worst fresh flower receiver ever.
ASHLEY HAMER: I feel like they just don't give you enough flower food in that little packet to change your water all the time. One packet in one vase, and then you need to change the water in two days. What are you supposed to do? Also, I found some other DIY hacks for flowers that also might work. 7 Up seems to be pretty good, because it has sugar and it's acidic.
So it might fight off those microbes. But you might want to add a little bit of bleach to the water at the same time. And yeah. I mean, if you're really type A about it, putting your flowers in the fridge at night, if you have the room, is actually a really good way. I mean, that's what florists do. So they can't be wrong.
NATALIA REAGAN: That's so wild to me. Yeah, it makes sense. I guess, this is of sad to admit. I don't get fresh cut flowers very often, Ashley.
ASHLEY HAMER: Well, you you've got to be like Lizzo. You've got to buy yourself flowers.
NATALIA REAGAN: Now, I know how to keep them alive. So I have no excuse now.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah.
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NATALIA REAGAN: Today's stories were written by Ashley Hamer and Cameron Duke. And edited by Ashley Hamer, who's the managing editor for Curiosity Daily.
ASHLEY HAMER: Scriptwriting was by Natalia Reagan and Sonja Hodgen. Today's episode was edited by Jonathan McMichael. And our producer is Cody Gough.
NATALIA REAGAN: Go ahead, buy yourself some fresh flowers. Have a great weekend. And join us again Monday to learn something new in just a few minutes.
ASHLEY HAMER: And until then, stay curious.
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