Learn about how a struck match creates fire; why "the island rule" makes some animals huge and other animals tiny; and how you can melt glass at home, with some help from Netflix reality glassblowing competition “Blown Away” host Nick Uhas. Please support today’s sponsor, Skura! Visit https://skurastyle.com to get sponges delivered right to your door, and enter promo code CURIOSITY to get your first month FREE! In this podcast, Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer discuss the following stories from Curiosity.com to help you get smarter and learn something new in just a few minutes: How Does a Struck Match Create Fire? — https://curiosity.im/2Sls55M Why Do Islands Make Some Animals Huge and Others Tiny? — https://curiosity.im/2SlrRvs 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 a struck match creates fire; why "the island rule" makes some animals huge and other animals tiny; and how you can melt glass at home, with some help from Netflix reality glassblowing competition “Blown Away” host Nick Uhas.
Please support today’s sponsor, Skura! Visit https://skurastyle.com to get sponges delivered right to your door, and enter promo code CURIOSITY to get your first month FREE!
In this podcast, Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer discuss the following stories from Curiosity.com to help you get smarter and learn something new in just a few minutes:
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/melt-glass-at-home-w-nick-uhas-how-matches-make-fire-and-odd-animal-sizes-on-islands
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 a struck match creates fire; and, why islands make some animals huge and other animals tiny. You’ll also learn about a fun glassblowing trick from Nick Uhas, the host of Netflix’s new reality glassblowing competition “Blown Away.”
CODY: Let’s satisfy some curiosity.
How Does a Struck Match Create Fire? — https://curiosity.im/2Sls55M (Republish) (from Thursday 8/8) (Ashley)
If you’ve ever watched someone trying to spark a fire using a flint, you’ll realize its not that easy to produce a flame from friction alone. So how come when you strike a match it quickly provides a strong flame?
It’s clearly using friction, but as reported by The Conversation, the secret is in a series of chemical reactions that are more complex than you’d think for a simple little match.
To start, the friction is increased due to the strip on the matchbox containing a powdered glass to make it extra rough. This produces just enough heat to start a series of chemical reactions. The red powder on the box is red phosphorus which if you zoomed right in to see how all its atoms are arranged, it would look like a bunch of triangles and other shapes stuck together into a long chain. A small amount of these chains break apart from the heat. This causes some of the red phosphorous to change into another chemical called white phosphorus, which reacts immediately with oxygen in the air and creates a lot more heat.
So now we’ve got our heat and we need some fuel, the second of the three ingredients we need to make a fire. This comes from the sulfur and wax in the head of the match and of course from the wood in the matchstick.
When it comes to the third ingredient, oxygen, the match has a secret supply. Stored inside the match head is another chemical called "potassium chlorate." When it gets hot, it releases a lot of extra oxygen and heat. This makes the match head burn like gangbusters.
When you put it all together — the heat, the fuel, and the oxygen – you get a flame! And amazingly, all this chemistry happens in a fraction of a second.
Nick Uhas Interview Clip 3 - You can melt glass in a microwave (August TBD) (Cody)
Glass has some pretty interesting properties, and the host of a Netflix TV series about glass is here to talk about some of them. Nick Uhas is a science influencer host of “Blown Away,” where ten master artists turn up the heat in glassblowing sculpture challenges for the chance to win $60,000 in prizes and the title of champion. After shooting the show, Nick told us he started making some videos for his YouTube channel based on his newfound love of glass, and here’s one lesson he decided to cover.
[CLIP 2:02]
Remember, kids: don’t try this at home… at least, not without parental supervision. Or, if you want to play it extra safe, you can just watch Nick Uhas do it on his YouTube channel, which we’ll link to in today’s show notes. And remember to check out his brand-new Netflix series “Blown Away,” which is available right now. We’ll put links to the show, Nick’s YouTube channel, and more in today’s show notes.
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Why Do Islands Make Some Animals Huge and Others Tiny? — https://curiosity.im/2SlrRvs (from Thursday 8/8) [REPUBLISH] (Ashley)
What is it about islands that make some animals huge and others tiny? You've probably heard of the komodo dragon, which at 10 feet long is the largest lizard in the world. Then there is the extinct elephant bird but also the dwarf mammoths, dwarf hippopotamuses, and even Homo floresienses, a miniature cousin of modern humans.
Biologists call it "the island rule,". It was first pointed out by a researcher named J. Bristol Foster in 1964. He theorized that small critters would face both fewer predators and fewer competitors in island environments, giving them plenty of space to get bigger. But big animals like elephants, would be less concerned about predators or competitors, but more concerned with resources with which to sustain themselves. For them, being smaller would increase their chances of surviving in a small habitat.
Then in 1978, another young biologist named Ted Case took a look at Foster's rule and found it intriguing, but incomplete. He found instances where animals would sometimes react to being isolated on an island by becoming larger and sometimes by growing smaller. Take the case of the red diamond rattlesnake. He found that on the mainland, the red diamond rattlesnake is twice as big as the speckled rattlesnake, but on the island Angel de la Guarda, their sizes were reversed.
A genetic analysis of those two snakes found that the speckled rattlesnake had diverged more from its mainland relatives which meant it had probably arrived earlier. So, by the time the red diamond rattlesnake landed on Angel de la Guarda, there just wasn't space for a big rattlesnake. It had to shrink in order to find its niche.
In short, whether an animal gets bigger or smaller on an island might have less to do what size they started out as and more to do with what the island's existing ecosystem is capable of supporting.
ASHLEY: Let’s recap what we learned today.
ASHLEY: Today we learned that [matches
CODY: [Nick Uhas]
ASHLEY: [animals]
[ad lib]
CODY: Join us again tomorrow to learn something new in just a few minutes. I’m Cody Gough.
ASHLEY: And I’m Ashley Hamer. Stay curious!