Learn about a new material that blocks sound while letting in light and air; how chimpanzees performed when scientists taught them how to play rock, paper, scissors; and how to be more creative by scheduling when you switch between tasks. 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: Scientists Created a Material That Blocks Sound While Letting in Light and Air — https://curiosity.im/2HXqLCN Scientists Taught Chimps to Play Rock, Paper, Scissors — https://curiosity.im/2HTOFPL To Be More Creative, Regularly Switch Between Tasks — https://curiosity.im/2HYH7eu 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 material that blocks sound while letting in light and air; how chimpanzees performed when scientists taught them how to play rock, paper, scissors; and how to be more creative by scheduling when you switch between tasks.
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-material-blocks-sound-and-not-light-task-switching-to-boost-creativity-and-gamer-chimps
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 material that blocks sound while letting in light and air; how chimpanzees performed when scientists taught them how to play rock, paper, scissors; and a trick for being more creative when you’re doing multiple tasks.
CODY: Let’s satisfy some curiosity.
Scientists Created a Material That Blocks Sound While Letting in Light and Air — https://curiosity.im/2HXqLCN (Ashley)
Scientists have Created a Material That Blocks Sound While Letting in Light and Air. It’s a new breakthrough from researchers at Boston University, and it could make it a little easier to keep things quiet — all without blocking air and sunlight. [ad lib]
ASHLEY: You might be able to soundproof your room with the right materials, but heavy materials won’t cut it if you’re trying to soundproof, say, a big glass-lined building lobby, without blocking all the sunlight. That’s why BU researchers turned to metamaterials. Those are materials that use specially engineered quirks in their shape or composition to alter light or sound waves. For an example of how metamaterials might work, think about a magnifying glass: the curved shape of the glass focuses the light waves into a point by bending them, or slowing them at different rates — those that hit the edges bend the most (or slow the least), and those that hit the center bend the least (or slow the most). Well, you can do the same thing with the composition of an object. Instead of creating a lens with a particular shape, you can create an object that's made of different materials, each one chosen for how much they slow light waves. Engineers can use lots of of different compositions and shapes to bend light to their will. And the same goes for sound. Acoustic metamaterials can use their composition or their shape to block, slow, or reflect sound waves, depending on their purpose. But to let light and air through, a material has to almost entirely rely on its shape — no thick, heavy substances here. So the researchers started by combining two materials that each blocked and bent sound waves at slightly different rates so that the sound-blocking power of the two together would be greater than the sum of their parts. Then they worked out the exact shape they needed, 3D printed a small ring about the size of a roll of masking tape, and placed it at one end of a PVC pipe. At the other end, they placed a loudspeaker. And the material blocked a whopping 94 percent of the sound. The researchers say their design is flexible, so you can build it at any size and shape to block almost any frequency — all while letting air and light through. Welcome to the future of soundproofing!
Scientists Taught Chimps to Play Rock, Paper, Scissors — https://curiosity.im/2HTOFPL (Cody)
Researchers taught chimpanzees to play rock-paper-scissors. And although they weren’t THAT great at it, chimps might be better than humans at certain other strategy games. Wow, there’s a lot to unpack there. [ad lib]
CODY: Here’s how this went down. In 2017, researchers at the Japan Monkey Centre showed the chimps a monitor with a chimp hand in the "paper" position and a chimp hand in the "rock" position. To teach them the game, the researchers rewarded the chimps with an apple slice when they pointed out the correct winner. Then, the apes learned what happened with rock-versus-scissors, and finally scissors-versus-paper. Completing the whole circle of rock-beats-scissors-beats-paper-beats-rock gave the chimps the most trouble, but after about 300 sessions, most of the chimps had gotten it down pat. Once they'd learned the game, the chimps turned out to be pretty good at it. Well, about as good as a four-year-old child, anyway. But the big difference between human toddlers learning the game and adult chimpanzees was speed. When a group of kids ages 3–6 were taught the game, it only took them about five sessions to put it all together. And while the chimps were about on par with preschoolers, even slightly older children were able to play the game with a degree of strategy instead of blind luck. So if you ever find yourself on a Planet of the Apes, you might try challenging them to a game of rock-paper-scissors instead of, say, a fist fight. But there's one game that chimps actually do best us at. There’s a simple strategy game where players choose either a square on the right or a square on the left. If they both choose the same square, the first player wins, and if they choose different squares, the second player does. Shockingly, researchers found that chimpanzees were much better at recognizing their human opponents' patterns. Even more incredible is the apes' ability to immediately memorize visual patterns. You know Ashley, if we could just train them to recognize patterns in the stock market so we could make millions of dollars investing, we could start a thriving monkey business.
[FIRST ALERT]
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CODY: One more time, that’s one-link-dot-first-alert-dot-com.
To Be More Creative, Regularly Switch Between Tasks — https://curiosity.im/2HYH7eu (Ashley)
Research from Columbia Business School has a suggestion to help you be more creative. If I gave you two creative tasks to do, you might think the best way to take them on would be to work on one until you don’t know what to do next, then switch to the other task, and so on. Right? Well, according to this research, you’ll be even more creative if you SCHEDULE when you switch tasks — even if you feel like you haven’t hit a wall yet. This might sound like it doesn’t make sense, but hear me out. When you’re trying to complete a creative task, a lot of times you might push forward without realizing you’ve already gotten to a point where you’re not gonna come up with any more fresh ideas. So what ends up happing is, you get a handful of ideas that are pretty much the exact same, then you switch to another project, and you repeat the same mistake. In terms of creative efficiency, research says that scheduling the switch is more efficient. For the Columbia Business School study, participants were asked to name novel uses for two objects: a toothpick and a brick. One group was told to come up with new ideas for one object for 4 minutes, then switch to the other one for 4 minutes. A second group switched back and forth between the objects whenever they wanted to. And a third group switched back and forth regularly — toothpick, brick, toothpick, brick, and so on. The third group ended up coming up with more answers that were novel and less repetitive than either of the other two groups. And the same result happened in further experiments where participants used the same strategies while solving word problems and puzzles. From this research, it's clear that giving your brain something new before it's tired of the same old task is the best approach. So matter what creative endeavor you're pursuing, whether as a hobby or as a professional effort, your idea generation skills will benefit from regularly SCHEDULED breaks.
CODY: That’s all for today, but you can keep learning all weekend on curiosity-dot-com.
ASHLEY: This weekend, you’ll learn about 3 super-short workouts that are scientifically demonstrated to boost fitness;
Why our ancestors’ diet may be why we can make “f” sounds;
A few steps for boosting your emotional intelligence;
And more!
CODY: And this weekend would be a great time to tell us how you feel about hearing from experts on our show. Please take the poll on our Patreon page at patreon-dot-com-slash-curiosity-dot-com, all spelled out, so we know if you want more guests or fewer guests on this show, and why.
ASHLEY: That’s patreon-dot-com-slash-curiosity-dot-com, and click on “Posts” to see the poll. Come hang out with us again Sunday on the award-winning Curiosity Daily and learn something new in just a few minutes. I’m Ashley Hamer.
CODY: And I’m Cody Gough. Have a great weekend!
ASHLEY: And stay curious!