Learn about why metals, fruit, and vegetables spark in the microwave, and the 1-3-5 method for arranging your to-do list. Plus, hear a couple lesser-known stories from the 20th-century space race between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, with some help from a special guest, Dr. David Warmflash. 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: Here's Why Fruit and Vegetables Spark in the Microwave — https://curiosity.im/2tJrzCQ Arrange Your To-Do List According to the 1-3-5 Method — https://curiosity.im/2tGg5jD Additional resources from Dr. David Warmflash: Pick up “Moon: An Illustrated History: From Ancient Myths to the Colonies of Tomorrow” on Amazon — https://amazon.com Follow @CosmicEvolution on Twitter — https://twitter.com/CosmicEvolution Moon Monday Episode 1: Saros Cycles — https://omny.fm/shows/curiosity-podcast/saros-cycles-w-dr-david-warmflash-the-eiffel-tower Moon Monday Episode 2: The Eclipse War — https://omny.fm/shows/curiosity-podcast/narcissism-lessons-the-war-stopping-eclipse-w-dr-d Moon Monday Episode 3: Space Race — https://omny.fm/shows/curiosity-podcast/craving-healthy-foods-what-grew-astronomy-w-dr-dav 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 why metals, fruit, and vegetables spark in the microwave, and the 1-3-5 method for arranging your to-do list. Plus, hear a couple lesser-known stories from the 20th-century space race between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, with some help from a special guest, Dr. David Warmflash.
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:
Additional resources from Dr. David Warmflash:
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/space-race-stories-w-dr-david-warmflash-why-produce-sparks-and-a-1-3-5-to-do-list
CODY GOUGH: Hi, we're here 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 about why metals, fruit, and vegetables sparked in the microwave, and the 1-3-5 method for arranging your to-do list.
CODY GOUGH: You'll also hear a couple of lesser known stories from the 20th century space race between the US and the Soviet Union in the fourth and final installment of our Moon Monday Mini Series with Dr. David Warmflash. Let's satisfy some curiosity.
ASHLEY HAMER: Do you know that not all metal sparks in your microwave? And did you know that certain fruits and vegetables do? A lot of people use microwaves, so let's dig in to some microwave physics. First off, let's recap what your TV dinners favorite appliance actually does.
A microwave produces, well, microwaves, as in a certain wavelength of electromagnetic radiation. That microwave radiation creates an electric field inside the microwave that does different things to different materials. For example, water molecules absorb microwaves, which makes them move around and create heat.
But metal is a really good conductor of electricity, so it acts like a lightning rod and creates a stronger electric field than there is in the air around it. That electric charge wants somewhere to cool off, so it makes a beeline for another material with lower electric potential, like the plastic in your plate. And when an electrical charge connects between two surfaces through the air, that creates sparks.
That's a thing we call arching. The main thing that makes a metal microwave safe or not comes down to geometry. If there aren't any materials nearby, then no sparks form, and the energy just goes back into the microwave itself.
That can cause real damage, which is why you should never run an empty microwave. For example, a knife on its own or a spoon on its own can be safe in the microwave, but a fork on its own won't be because the tines will create arcing. But we don't recommend putting any metal in your microwave, by the way.
This brings us to fruits and vegetables. Plants absorb minerals, like iron, magnesium, and copper from the soil through their roots. If you put a vegetable with a bunch of minerals in the microwave, you've created a perfect recipe for arching. That's because there literally are tiny metal particles ready to boost their local electrical field.
Plus, the uneven geometry with all its bumps and angles primes it to carry that charge to a nearby surface. Boom, sparks fly. Sometimes, the effect can be so strong that a blazing ball of plasma can form, like with grapes. As cool as this effect is, it's not the safest thing in the world. It can cause fires and fry the electronics in your microwave. If your veggies start to spark, press stop and find another way to cook your dinner.
CODY GOUGH: Like an oven.
ASHLEY HAMER: It'll take a little longer, but I love oven roasted vegetables.
CODY GOUGH: Productivity hack alert. I've got a quick productivity tip before we get to today's guest. It's called the 1-3-5 rule, and it's a trick for organizing your to-do list. This comes from Alexandra Cavoulacos, founder and President of online career platform, The Muse.
And this 1-3-5 rule helps you tackle nine items in a day, which is not too many, but definitely not too few. Here's the gist of it. Take everything on your to-do list and split it up this way. Allow yourself to tackle one larger project, your 1, three medium-sized tasks, your 3, and finally, five stragglers that are the little easy things to take care of.
It's a little more ambitious than the Ivy Lee Method we talked about last month, which I've totally been using by the way, but it's a great way to cross lots of tiny tasks off your list if you keep checking off five easy errands a day. If you couldn't get into the Ivy Lee Method or any of the other ideas we've given you, then give the 1-3-5 method a shot. You can catch up with your to do list. We believe in you.
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ASHLEY HAMER: Today is the fourth and final installment in our Moon Monday mini series, where we'll teach you how the history of the moon has affected the world in some way. Today, we're going to focus on the so-called space race between the United States and the Soviet Union in the 20th century.
Our guest will get into a couple of stories from that era, really focused around two of the scientists who helped us get where we are today. I'm just going to warn you right now that these stories are bittersweet and might even be a bit of a tearjerker. History in its finest form. Here's what Dr. David Warmflash told us.
DAVID WARMFLASH: We get a big, big, really striking difference between the American program and the Soviet program, where the Americans are doing everything out in the open, launching on live television to the point where there was one rocket that was launching, trying to put the first American satellite into space, it just blew up on the launch pad. And we had the Soviet leader Khrushchev just totally just loving that for his propaganda and all that.
You also had one person on backing really all the Soviet space program all their ideas, how they put the first satellite into space, the first animal into space, the first human into space, first woman into space, the first time you had more than one person going up in a spaceship. This is all Sergei Korolev who was the rocket genius of the Soviet Union, and his identity was totally unknown to the outside world because the KGB was trying to protect him. They thought he would be assassinated.
So here you have the first dog in space is like a dog celebrity and is more famous than the brains behind the whole thing, which is Korolev. And sadly, he died around, I think, in 1966. And it was at that point that they finally released his name. They said, every single thing we've been doing since 1957, it's all because of one guy.
And they had a big state funeral for him in Red Square and all that. But during his lifetime, he was just a totally-- and there's like a really sad and touching story that I spread through about two or three different entries about a scientist, Eugene Shoemaker, who really got NASA's started by his work in the US Geological Survey. He figured out that this big crater in Arizona that is called Meteor Crater, it was from a meteorite impact and that all the craters on the moon are from impact events.
And he was able to demonstrate this while in the course of his PhD work. And this led him to found the NASA Astrobiology Program, where they were envisioning that you should have astronauts who will not only test pilots, but scientists as astronauts. And he was slated to be one of the first scientists astronauts, but it turned out that he had Addison's disease.
He had adrenal insufficiency, so he was eliminated in the-- he was medically disqualified from the program. And the only scientists who was ever sent to the moon is Harrison Schmidt, who had a PhD in geology. But later on in the 1990s, he was doing his geological exploration. They were coming around a turn in a rural part of Australia, and they were hit by someone driving on the wrong side of the road. And he was killed.
And six months later, there was a probe that was sent to the moon, and they put his ashes on the probe. It was in lunar orbit for about a year or two. And then, intentionally, they crashed it into the moon so that they could take seismic readings as they like to do all the time to learn about the geophysics of the moon.
And his ashes were literally interred on the moon. So it's maybe poetic way. Shoemaker actually ended up on the moon, the place he wanted to go to, to be the first scientist there. So I have all kinds of stories like that spread throughout the book.
CODY GOUGH: You can read all of Dr. David Warmflashes' stories in his upcoming book, "Moon, An Illustrated History." You can also follow him on Twitter @cosmicevolution. You can find links to those in today's show notes as well as links to the previous "Curiosity Daily" podcast episodes in this Moon Monday mini series.
This is the first time we've tried doing a series like this. So please let us know what you thought. Email your comments to podcast.curiosity.com or take a poll on our Patreon page at patreon.com/curiosity.com, all spelled out. We would really appreciate the feedback.
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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