Learn about a new phonon laser that uses sound instead of light; a counterintuitive trick to get your kids to eat vegetables; and a cognitive bias that explains why most people think they’re better than other people. 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: This New Laser Uses Sound Instead of Light — https://curiosity.im/2JU1dZ1 This Counterintuitive Trick Can Get Your Kids to Eat Veggies — https://curiosity.im/2HGGPXN The Better-Than-Average Effect Says Most People Think They're Better Than Most People — https://curiosity.im/2HI6YWs 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 a new phonon laser that uses sound instead of light; a counterintuitive trick to get your kids to eat vegetables; and a cognitive bias that explains why most people think they’re better than other people.
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:
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/new-laser-uses-sound-waves-get-your-kids-to-eat-veggies-and-better-than-average-effect
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 a new laser that uses sound instead of light; a counterintuitive trick to get your kids to eat vegetables; and a cognitive bias that explains why most people think they’re better than other people.
CODY: Let’s satisfy some curiosity.
This New Laser Uses Sound Instead of Light — https://curiosity.im/2JU1dZ1 (Republish) (Ashley)
ASHLEY: You’re probably familiar with optical lasers, or lasers that use light. But have you ever heard of a laser made from sound waves? This new so-called phonon laser exists, and as reported by The Conversation, we could find uses for it in communication and sensing, like finding the mass of very small molecules.
Let’s back up, though, and first get into what makes an optical laser light special. While the light from a light bulb or the sun goes in every direction, the light from an optical laser is concentrated into a powerful beam, with the light waves emerging from it moving in the same direction, in step with each other. Since we can focus waves of light, it makes sense that we can focus waves of sound. I mean, after all, they’re both made of waves, right? And scientists have done just that. The result is a phonon laser, where the oscillations of light waves are replaced by the vibrations of tiny solid particles, each about a hundred nanometers in diameter, that are perfectly synchronized.
To create this laser, scientists started by levitating the nanoparticles using an optical tweezer. That’s a laser beam that traps a nanoparticle in midair, like a tractor beam in "Star Wars." The nanoparticle doesn’t stay still; instead, it swings back and forth like a pendulum, along the direction of the trapping beam.
When they levitate the nanoparticle, scientists are isolating it from the environment around it, which lets them use it for sensing weak electric, magnetic, and gravitational forces. They can improve the sensing capability by varying the trapping power to make the nanoparticles oscillate faster. The mechanical vibrations produce synchronized sound waves, or a phonon laser.
A detector can keep track of the phonon laser and find changes in the pattern of these sound waves that reveal the presence of a gravitational or magnetic force.
Okay, so what’s the point of all this? Well, optical lasers are very useful. They carry information over optical fiber cables, read bar codes in supermarkets, and run atomic clocks, essential for GPS. And the phonon laser can prove to be quite useful as well. The phonon laser was developed to detect weak electric, magnetic, and gravitational fields. But the hope is that scientists will find a lot more uses for this technology in communication, sensing, and even other applications we can’t even predict.
This Counterintuitive Trick Can Get Your Kids to Eat Veggies — https://curiosity.im/2HGGPXN (Cody)
CODY: A new study has uncovered a sneaky trick to get kids to eat their greens. If you’re a parent and you’re looking for new ways to entice your kids to eat their veggies, then try this revelation: it seems that the less there is, the yummier it looks, and the more they want it.
The story starts with two professors ordering avocado rolls for their kids in a Japanese restaurant. The kids had never been big fans of avocado before, and were being predictably picky about the rolls. But instead of avoiding the food completely, the kids were extracting the slivers of avocado from the rolls and eating that. The parents ordered a plate of straight avocado, and the kids ate THAT up right away as well.
Sure, maybe their kids had developed a sudden love of avocado. But what if it had something to do with the apparent scarcity of avocados in the rolls? Siblings fight over basically any limited resource. Could that include healthy foods? And could parents use this competitive tendency to their advantage?
To figure this out, the professors headed off to a local nursery school for a series of experiments where they gave four- and five-year-olds both fun toys and healthy snacks. Sometimes they let them play or eat as much as they wanted; other times they put limits on how much was available. Whether they were dealing with Legos, carrots, or grapes, the less of something the kids thought there was to go around, the more they wanted it.
The results were pretty clear: If you want your kids to eat their fruit and veggies, just offer less of it. The study also found that children who thought the carrots were limited also thought they were more delicious.
The professors have used this handy research-backed trick in their own homes to nudge their kids to eat their greens. And there might be a good chance it’ll work in your home too. Give it a shot and let us know if it helps!
[INDEED]
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The Better-Than-Average Effect Says Most People Think They're Better Than Most People — https://curiosity.im/2HI6YWs (Ashley)
If you consider yourself better than average, you’re not alone. Research suggests the majority of people think exactly the same as you, which is kinda funny since, of course, it’s mathematically impossible for everyone to be right about being better than everyone else. This persistent belief is known as the better-than-average effect and it’s a cornerstone of psychology research. So let’s get into it.
It goes by a bunch of different names, including the above-average effect, the superiority bias, the leniency error, and the sense of relative superiority. Whatever you call it, study after study has shown evidence that the better-than-average effect is real, but the underlying reason for this effect is still largely unknown. In reasonable quantities, this effect can be beneficial, but in larger doses, it becomes detrimental. As the Economist puts it, believing that you can do better than the team’s average in a race may motivate you to improve your time. But on the other hand, believing that you can run twice as fast as average might mean you’re setting yourself up for failure. Reality can only be distorted so far before it snaps.
Unfortunately, studies have shown that reality can get VERY distorted. Research published in the British Journal of Social Psychology focused on convicted prisoners — people who are objectively below average on a wide variety of personality traits. The research found that when comparing themselves to other inmates, the prisoners rated themselves as more moral, trustworthy, honest, dependable, compassionate, generous, law-abiding, self-controlled, and kind. That might not be too surprising to hear when a prisoner was rating himself compared to other prisoners. More surprisingly is the fact that they also rated themselves better than the average non-prisoner on all the traits except law-abidingness.
This goes to show that we can have an awfully skewed perception of our own strengths. This can be good when you're trying to overcome an obstacle, but it can also make us underestimate our problems and stop us from fixing them.
There is one important caveat to all this. The better-than-average effect appears to be cultural. A Canadian study found that people in East-Asian cultures don't tend to rate themselves as better than other people. This may come down to the way Western society most values the individual, while Eastern society most values the collective community. Whether you live in the East or in the West, try to be conscious of the way you compare yourself to others, and you might be happier with the expectations you set for yourself. [ad lib]
CODY: Read about today’s stories and more on curiosity-dot-com!
ASHLEY: 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!