Learn why a Prince Rupert’s drop is both super-fragile and virtually unbreakable; why researchers think newborn babies are a lot smarter than they look; and why Earth’s core is younger than its surface. 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: SKILLSHARE: Two months of unlimited access to more than 20 thousand classes for just 99 cents — http://skillshare.com/curious A Prince Rupert's Drop Is Both Extremely Fragile and Virtually Unbreakable — https://curiosity.im/2DbfwVX Newborns Are Way Smarter Than They Appear, According to Science — https://curiosity.im/2D7lTcV Thanks to Time Dilation, Earth's Core Is Younger Than Its Surface — https://curiosity.im/2D7ziS0 Please tell us about yourself and help us improve the show by taking our listener survey! https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/curiosity-listener-survey 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! Learn about these topics and more on Curiosity.com, and download our 5-star app for Android and iOS. Then, join the conversation on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Plus: Amazon smart speaker users, enable our Alexa Flash Briefing to learn something new in just a few minutes every day!
Learn why a Prince Rupert’s drop is both super-fragile and virtually unbreakable; why researchers think newborn babies are a lot smarter than they look; and why Earth’s core is younger than its surface.
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:
Please tell us about yourself and help us improve the show by taking our listener survey! https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/curiosity-listener-survey
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!
Learn about these topics and more on Curiosity.com, and download our 5-star app for Android and iOS. Then, join the conversation on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Plus: Amazon smart speaker users, enable our Alexa Flash Briefing to learn something new in just a few minutes every day!
Full episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/prince-ruperts-drop-why-earths-core-is-younger-than-its-surface-and-newborn-babies-may-be-super-smart
[MUSIC PLAYING] CODY GOUGH: Hi. We've got three stories from curiosity.com to help you get smarter in just a few minutes. I'm Cody Gough.
ASHLEY HAMER: And I'm Ashley Hamer. Today, you'll learn why a Prince Rupert's drop is both super fragile and virtually unbreakable, why researchers think newborn babies are a lot smarter than they look, and why Earth's core is younger than its surface.
CODY GOUGH: Let's satisfy some curiosity on the award-winning Curiosity Daily.
ASHLEY HAMER: Would you believe that there's an object that's both nearly unbreakable and so fragile that it shatters instantly? Well, believe it. This paradoxical object is a piece of glass known as a Prince Rupert's drop. I just found out that Dustin, the guy from Smarter Every Day has named his cat Prince Rupert. And I think that's a perfect name for a cat because if you touch one end, you're fine. If you touch the other end, all hell breaks loose.
CODY GOUGH: That's the most cat person thing you've ever said on this show.
[LAUGHS]
ASHLEY HAMER: It's perfect. Cat people will understand.
CODY GOUGH: Enjoy that piece of Prince Rupert's trivia, cats people.
[LAUGHS]
ASHLEY HAMER: Well, Prince Rupert's drop is said to have been named after the nephew of King Charles I, who was able to bring the drops to England in 1660. But they'd been around for a really long time before then, possibly as far back as Roman times. And Prince Rupert's drop is super simple to make. Literally, you just drip molten glass into super cold water.
You end up with a teardrop-shaped shaped piece of glass that's nearly impossible to break at one end and really fragile on the other end. It's because when glass hits water, the outside layers cool really quickly while the inside stays molten. The effect of thermal expansion makes liquids expand when they're hot and contract as they cool. That means the molten interior is trying to expand at the same time as the cool outer layer is contracting inward.
While the whole thing crystallizes, these equal pushing and pulling forces build up in one long chain that stretches from the head of the drop to the tail. And once the drop cools off, it's locked into this state of high tension. Here's how the Royal Society of London describes it quote "The head withstands hammering on an anvil or squeezing in a vise, indenting its steel jaws without fracture. Yet, breaking the tail with finger pressure caused the whole thing to explode into powder." unquote.
Prince Rupert's drop is kind of like an arch. It's incredibly strong in one piece. But if any part of it is broken, the whole thing fails. You can see a video of it failing spectacularly in an explosion of fine glass shards in our full write-up on curiosity.com and on the curiosity app for Android and iOS.
CODY GOUGH: New research suggests that newborn babies are way smarter than they seem. Maybe Sir Mix-a-Lot should have made a song called "Baby Got Brain. Huh? Huh?"
ASHLEY HAMER: Oh, man. They've got an itty-bitty waist and a round thing in your face because they're babies, and they've got big, round heads.
CODY GOUGH: I don't know any of the words, so that's all.
ASHLEY HAMER: Oh, I know all the words to it.
CODY GOUGH: Of course, you do. Ah! Yeah, that was the not cool kid in eighth grade dances, that just didn't know all the words.
ASHLEY HAMER: It's not too late. It's not too late.
CODY GOUGH: Isn't it?
ASHLEY HAMER: It's worth studying up on.
CODY GOUGH: Is it? How about we just go to karaoke, and you can sing this song?
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah, I still have not gone to karaoke with you. You've been--
CODY GOUGH: Threatening?
ASHLEY HAMER: No. The Curiosity office has gone to karaoke at least twice. And I keep finding ways to avoid it because I hate karaoke.
CODY GOUGH: Really?
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah.
CODY GOUGH: Oh. Fine.
ASHLEY HAMER: I'll go someday. Maybe. Possibly.
CODY GOUGH: Well, maybe if you brought a newborn baby to karaoke--
ASHLEY HAMER: That sounds like an awful idea.
CODY GOUGH: Yeah, that's not a good idea. No one should do that. Well, from babies to karaoke-- we should probably get back on track and way-- back to babies and babies science. It's actually pretty hard to study newborns since they can't tell you what they're thinking or point or really do anything but lay there and make sure there is no way you're getting a full night's sleep tonight.
But writing for The Guardian, science journalist Angela Saini recently explained some clever new study techniques. New methods analyze where an infant looks and how they respond to stimuli, like images on a screen, and EEG machines can read their brain activity. And there have been some surprising results. Would you believe your baby understands some basic physics?
Well, looking time studies have shown that babies stare longer at actions that betray the laws of physics, like a toy car that looks like it's moving through a solid wall. That implies that they think it's weird when those universal rules are broken. Other research has shown babies looking longer at a cartoon shape that behaves in odd ways, like expending effort to avoid non-existent obstacles. Infants might even have some innate sense of probability.
Psychologists at UC Berkeley showed six-month-olds a box filled with colored balls. They were almost all pink, while their three yellow. Well, when the researchers pulled out more yellow balls than pink ones, the babies watched longer, suggesting they were expecting to see more pink balls. And they were surprised when that didn't happen. But this is new cutting edge science, so lots of scientists are arguing over how to interpret these results.
Pretty much every expert agrees that infants learn at a ridiculously fast rate, but there's controversy about how much of an understanding of the world we're born with and how much we pick up in our first few, frenzied months of development. Not to mention, these so-called clever baby studies get a lot more popular press than the studies that confirm the apparently stupid things that kids do. But those caveats aside, the main takeaway is that there's a whole lot more going on in those little brains than you'd guess just by looking at babies cute little faces.
Today's episode is sponsored by Skillshare. Skillshare is an online learning platform with more than 20,000 classes in business, marketing, design, technology, and more. And all of the classes are taught by real experts in their field or public motivational speakers.
ASHLEY HAMER: You can learn lots of different skills like nutrition, photography, web design, productivity, cooking, data analytics. You name it, they've got it.
CODY GOUGH: Skillshare covers pretty much everything, and it can be super helpful, whether you're exploring a passion or starting a side hustle. I've been messing around with some of our recording equipment after I took a course called Recording Vocals Like a Pro, Nail Recording Techniques and Acoustics. I liked getting a few ideas for how to make the show sound even better, and I knew I was learning from an actual expert, not just some random YouTuber.
ASHLEY HAMER: Like we said, there are classes on so many topics. And you can join the millions of students already learning on Skillshare today with a special offer just for Curiosity Daily listeners. Get two months of Skillshare for just $0.99.
CODY GOUGH: You heard that, right? Skillshare is offering Curiosity Daily listeners two months of unlimited access to over 20,000 classes for just $0.99. To sign up, go to skillshare.com/curious.
ASHLEY HAMER: Again, that's skillshare.com/curious to start your two months now.
CODY GOUGH: One more time, that skillshare.com/curious.
ASHLEY HAMER: According to a recent study, the center of the Earth must be younger than its surface by a lot. Ready for some physics?
CODY GOUGH: Am I?
ASHLEY HAMER: Going to take a journey to the center of the Earth. So first, you need to understand time dilation. That's the result of Einstein's theory of relativity that makes gravity distort time. In the 1960s, legendary physicist Richard Feynman said that because of time dilation quote "the center of the Earth should be a day or two younger than the surface" unquote.
Well, in 2016, a team of Danish physicists decided they should probably check that math. They performed a back of the envelope calculation and found that due to the effects of physics and not say geological processes, the Earth's core is, in fact, 2.5 years younger than its surface. This isn't just a mathematical abstraction.
Time dilation actually affects things you use every day. Take GPS maps for example. GPS satellites orbit the Earth at 12.5 thousand miles up, which is way further out in Earth's gravity well than everything on its surface is. That means that time moves faster for GPS satellites than it does for clocks here on Earth. The one snag in this factoid is that satellites are also moving at 8,670 miles per hour, and acceleration slows time down. That means time isn't as fast for satellites as it would be if they were stationary. But these two effects don't completely cancel each other out.
Gravity has a bigger effect on the satellites than speed does. As a result, clocks on GPS satellites run a few nanoseconds slower than clocks here on Earth. And get this. We can also see the effect in humans. Astronaut Scott Kelly came back to Earth younger than his twin. He spent 11 months aboard the International Space Station. And because the ISS moves so fast around the Earth, that shaved 13 milliseconds off of his Earth age in the process. So the Earth's core got younger because of gravity, but an astronaut got younger because of speed. Physics is wild.
CODY GOUGH: So if you want to live longer, start digging really fast. Kind of ironic when you think about it. Read about today's stories and more on curiosity.com.
ASHLEY HAMER: Join us again tomorrow with the award-winning Curiosity Daily and learn something new in just a few minutes. I'm Ashley Hamer.
CODY GOUGH: And I'm Cody Gough.
ASHLEY HAMER: Stay curious.
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