The Physics of Warm Blankets

intntroducing Toyota's family of full electric rides as cool as you are The adventurous BZ Woodland, the trend setting CHR, and the versatile BZ. Zip around town in the BZ with a smooth and sporty driving dynamic. Explore the outdoors in the BZ Woodland with dual motors and available all terrain tires. Be bold on the road with the CHR's sharp handling. Imagine what you can do with an all electric vehicle that s you. Learn more about the new all electric family at Toyota. com Toyota Let's go places Eczema is unpredictable But you can flare less with eGlS, a once monthly treatment for moderate severe eczema. After an initial four month or longer dosing phase, about four in ten people taking EBGLS achieved itch relief and glare or almost cleare skin at sixteen weeks. And most of those people maintain skin that's still more clear at one year, with monthly dosing.BlS Lap LBKZ a two hundred fifty milligram per two milliliter injection is a prescription medicine used to treat adults and children twelve years of age and older who weigh at least eighty eight pounds or forty kilograms with moderate to severe eczema. Also called a topic dermatitis that is not well controlled with prescription therapies used on the skin or topicals, or who cannot use topical therapies. EBGLS can be used with or without topical corticoosteroids. Don't use if you're allergic to EBGlIS. Allergic reactions can occur that can be severe. eye problems can occur. Tell your doctor if you have new or worsening eye problems. You should not receive a live vaccine when treated with EBGLS. Before starting EBGLS, tell your doctor if you have a parasitic infection Ask your doctor about EBglas, and visit Evglus. L liily. com or call one eight hundred Lily RX or one eight hundred five four five five nine seven nine. Hey Star Tal inss. Neil here. I've got another thingsings You Thought You knew episode coming right up This time, Chuck and I explain how Rocks are light Not heavy Warm blankets and oxygen Check it out Welcome to Start Tal. Your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide Star talk begins right now Excited to know what we've got going today. We're gonna just talk about oxygen Man, What's the matter? Normally you come to me with some like super exciting stuff like todayod we're gonna talk about the moon and albedo. Do you know what albedo is? No, man, what is that That sounds great. I'm sorry, oxygen doesn't excite you, but maybe by the end of these ten minutes, it will. That's all I'm saying. All right Give it a chance. give it give it. Well, listen, I give oxygen a chance every day. Okay Okay. Many people who have never had atmospheric chemistry Right? They know that we breathe oxygen to survive. We know this. Right. But not everyone knows how much oxygen is in our atmosphere Okay, well, already, now I'm interested. Right. So the first guess is, well, it's all oxygen. Right O course, we're breathing. That's not the case Most of the air we breathe is nitrogen. Nitrogen, whichich has no value in its gaseous form as we inhale it. So we just sit inhale it and then exhale it Okay. Nitrogen is seventy eight percent of the air we breathe Wow, It's most Most id not know that. didid not know that. Okay. So now, oxygen is between twenty and twenty one percent of the air we breathe. So it's about a fifth of the air we breathe Sor right Right, so just let me put that out there first of all Second As you know, trees and other photosynthesizing life makes oxygen, right? One of the delusions of the the early Star Trek series was They you ever notice, I've said this in other explainers, they never wear spac suits when they visit down in it. Every time they come down to a planet they're Just like, well, isn't this nice? No, so they check thats oxygen, nitrogen atmosphere. It's a class M plantet.ass right. So then they go down and it's got oxygen as though in the mix of all the planets that are out there. Some of them will just happen to have this mix. and so it'll be just fine to be human and then walk down on its surface. Okay. But if you think it through, the entire source of our oxygen, is green plants. If you take away the green plants, oxygen is highly reactive as a chemical element And so the oxygen that's in the atmosphere will glom on to other ingredients on Earth's surface. and it will systematically drain out of the Earth's atmosphere leaving us with none So if you find a planet that has sustained oxygen That is evidence of something generating that oxygen, and in our case, it's plants, could be some other mechanism, None we have ever dreamt of were divined. If you find a planet with oxygen, it's going to have plant life or something that is generating oxygen in real time. And in the planets they went to, that was never discussed. because I think they just believed in the planet lottery, some planets have oxygen and others don't. And you know, what's funny that you say that manyany of the planets that they beam down to were V Mars like where they're very rocky rocks. there's no vegetation at all. I think the rocks are easier for the prop people to make than whole trees with plumage. Right. Yeah. It was very barren. Correct. You remembered this. So that's one little thing about the oxygen put out there, okay Also, by the way, on the planets they landed on, they were never sort of bounding the way the astronauts did on the moon. Those planets all had about one G, just like Earth. Yes And the atmospheric pressure was about that of Earth. That the same as Earth. There ares some planets that are the same size as Earth and the same gravity as Earth, but the atmospheric pressure was a hundred times that of Earth. So they'd beam down and get flattened. flattened Like they guy hit with a fly swatter. Yeah, basically Wow. Yeah. Okay, so more about oxygen Thereere is this. Belief that oxygen is flammable Okay, Imazing. That's because every oxygen tank I've ever seen has the word flammable written all over it.. That might be why people believe that You go to any hospital and you w see a tank. You will see a tank in a corner and on that tank' gonna be a little fire emoji which weall. 'use that look's on tenense. emojis, I didn't know that. All right. So So I was I should clarify What's going on there? Okay, Okay Oxygen It promotes combustion That's why they have those labels there. So if you this won't happen today ever, but in the day, you walk into a hospital smoking a cigarette. Okay? If you go into a hospital room, wait a minute. now I'm just seeing a doctor smoking a cigarette. scp with a hole through the mask. Sble. quterize this exactly. Oh God. There we go. Oh Jesus. I think I dropped my butt in this car. open abdomen. Anybody seen a cigarette butt And you got this smoker's voice too. Exactly. Oh my go. your doctor sounds like a diner waitress. Well, listen, dear I don't want to give you bad news, but here's theow here's the lowdown, hun Let me get you a coffee and then we'll talk about this. pork. the smoking New York diner diner. Oh man, okay. All right, so here's what I have. It promotes combustion. So if you're in a room of oxygen And you bring in a lit cigarette The cigarette would Instantly go up and smoke. Wow Instantly. I mean, it would go from the lit spot, but it would go and the whole thing would just ignite instantly. Got you. But you're not gonna ignite the gas in the room. That's my point Aha. The oxygen itself does not burn. So oxygen Because no, I was about to say, it's like a non burning accelerant. Okay, I can yes, sure. I mean' I'm trying to make sense of this because I lot of it, but I think in firefighter talk, accelerant accelerant burn. might mean something else. Right. So this is what happened Apollo won U Pollllow one. All right, noobody's ever heard of Apollo one because it never went anywhere. It was that through Apollo six, I think it was, was a set of designs of the capsule that would take three astronauts to the Mon. There they are On the launch pad. Testing On a testing pad And in the capsule is pure oxygen Here's why Because if they had an oxygen nitrogen mix You would have to pressurize the inside to equal atmospheric pressure Right, so that youd have the right amount of oxygen that you're accustomed to breathing. If you do that, you have to overbuild the strength of the capsule right to contain One atmospheric pressure against the vacuum of space. Got you So all the joints, the bolts and the hinges and the door closures and the window would have to be extra strong So they said, why burden ourselves with this Let's instead putut in pure oxygen Then we don't need to have to have it at full pressure That's actually kind of brilliant. It's brilliant. It's brilliant Now now we could be much lower pressure, but it's all oxygen. So now you takeen a breath, it's less total air, but it's the right amount of oxygen. Right That your body's expecting. okay? All right In that capsule, there was an electrical fire Oh. There's a spark that immediately burned all of the insulation. The thing, their suits. And they could not open the hatch in time all three astronauts We're burnnt to death. Oh Godosh That is just awful. Yeah, it's terrible. It' so Again, it's accidents like that where we think the oxygen was burning But that's not what was burning. The oxygen enabled everything burnable To burning a burn. The astronauts themselves. correct. We lost three astronauts. in that f Dam. that is Oh my god, that's just terrible Right, right. So now what's it take to to Listen, ' let me just tell you, let me just say this First of all, it's a tragedy And I would dare never infringe upon the sanctity of those men's lives. But I will say this If I'm the next three astronauts, I just quit the space program. No, no, what's, Here's what they did. Instead of saying, okay, let's try Apollo two. Okay. No what they did was they scrapped six Apollo designs and came up with Apollo seven. I think it was seven or eightight N Paul seven And so they were nowhere near what that design was by the time they had the next vessel in place. Okay All right. That would have satisfied you, I think. Yeah. any, so that's another thing with auctyen. here's another one, youre ready? In the movie Jaws Okay. There's a tank of oxygen. Yes On deck At the end, right. And the captain, I think Richard Dreyer's character bumps into it he says, Watch out That's oxygen. o. All that mattered for the movie was that what was in the tank was compressed gas Right. But they're saying, watchatch out it's oxygen.. Oxygen. So what happens, How do they finally defeat the great white shark Okay, I forgot which it's been a while since I've seen the film. One of them, I think while the shark is munching on the boat, takes that oxygen tank and shoves up into the mouth of the shark. Right. Th Dives off the boat I'm making some of this up because I don't remember the details, but the shark, you can see the tank in the shark's mouth. the guy takes his high powered rifle, shoots the tank and the tank explodes, blowing the head of the shark off and then peiece. Reigns in Nantucket or wherever the hell this was. Yeah Okay So What mattered there was not that it was oxygen, but that it was gas under pressure. And when you punched a bullet hole in it Probably it have just would have been a hole and wouldd have gone I was gonna say. The shuck should have just shot off into the distance. Yeah, he would have had a little retro rocket little rocket mouth his rocket mouth now and it's just like. So that's probably what would have happened, but if this tank is not structurally sound and it can't accommodate a hole, it could conceivably blow up, but it blew up not because it had oxygen in it Right. becausecause was gas under pressure So that's different from if you leave your gas and your stove on and all your windows are closed And you go out and you come back. right. now there's gas everywhere in the house. a spark Right? won't just burn what sparked all the gas will now ignite and explode.. And That's the difference between methane gas which is flammable and oxygen gas, which is not Right. Right. You know, and the other difference is normally that's kind of like insurance fraud. But Oh yes, yes Okay. In the old days, I don't think there's as much of that today. Yeah they got too much forensic stcience. Too much science. Yeah. too much science. your people. your people screwed it up We can science the shit out of whatever you just did.'t Right, I can't collect the insurance on my failing business now thanks to your you guys ass in jail. So a couple more things. Okay Um as you may know, pllant life likes carbon dioxide Of course. It absorbs it Okay, and that carbon becomes part of the fibers of the wood And out comes oxygen which we breathe Okay, if you have too much plant life and it creates Let's call it excess oxygen. Okay, let's say thirty percent oxygen in the atmosphere And there are calculations that do this, which I can't quote precisely, but just some number above the twenty one percent that we now have, right? Take it to thirty, forty, fifty percent oxygen. Imagine a world where plants are just pumping this out and they leaven it, okay In that world Forest fires never end. Oh, that makes sense because they have they're being fed by oxygen all the time. By oxygen. cororrect. So there's a f threshold full of the wood and then the oxygen is also, you know, fueling it too. So in a way, it's self correcting. Too much plant life creates too much oxygen. so it's the next lightning strike Take it out preventing more oxygen from coming in. Oh wellow. it's its own check and balance. Correct. cororrect. So it's just interesting to think about how you end up pegging oxygen at one level versus another. Interesting. One other thing, and I think we talked about it in our surface area Explainer Insects Don't Most of them don't have lungs the way we think of we breathe in and we have lungs and that's how we get our oxygen. Insects, many of them rely on absorbing oxygen through their surface. right Okay, Which is why they never need breathmeds but. Is that right? than you for tell. Okay. they And so If you have more oxygen in your air This is like rocket fuel for them. W and they can grow bigger Oh Because when you're bigger, your surface area to volume is lower But if we did that and explain it, you have to dig that one up. If you're bigger, you have more volume to your surface area. So now you're not going to get enough oxygen to feed your fat body. But if the oxygen levels are higher, you can. And so that's why you had those huge dragonflies back at the time of the dinosaurs Right. Okay. Oxygen levels were higher back then. you had these huge insects So Oxygen levels have consequences in the bioda O her eyes Wow So who no They're all of this Who knew all this about O two? Exactly. Exactly. And oxygen wants to combine and so combines with itself best. so you have an O two, two, oxygen. One last thing. People talk about humans Wrecking the earth You know, the only species ever to change the ecosystem of the Eth, That is just false U the creature that had the greatest effect on the climate and conditions of the Eth were the cyanobacteria H of when was it three and a half billion years ago, something like that? At that time, Earth's atmosphere was mostly carbon dioxide Hardly any oxygen at all. They takeaken carbon dioxide and put you out oxygen Wow And they built the oxygen supply of our atmosphere to levels that were caustic to animals that don't like oxygen. Right So this killed off entire branches of the tree of life who were doing just fine in their carbon dioxide atmosphere. But it enabled other forms of life to rise up that would exploit the oxygen for their own benefit. Wow So why can't we just use cyanobacteria as a carbon scrubber our current situation where we have to mitigate the amount of carbon in the atmosphere Yeah that's that's a good. Um, Okay, so Sure, you have to watch out for unintended consequence. Right. Be guess what? we already saw one unintended consequence of cyanobacteria. Thanks cyanobacteria. You know, I mean, it's who knows that we get should probably get people to look into that. to have biological CO two scrubbers, which is what plants are right. But again, they're putting more oxygen in the air and that also has consequences So Wow, that was great. Anyhow You gotta do. I started off saying oxygen was boring, but you know, I was wrong. Yeah. And by the way, if oxygen were actually flammable Every time you lit a match, it would just burn. your air would burn out. That would absolutely kind of cool. Well, you could just pump oxygen through the gas, right? Your gas stove, But no, we don't, because it's not flaming. That's all I gota tell you about oxygen. Do we have any good reason to think that aliens would be evil Where do we get that idea from Aliens could be the most peace loving creatures. The universe has ever generated yet our representations of them tend to be diabolical whichich gets me to wonder that these representations of evil aliens or not based on how we think they will behave that maybe they're really based and how we know We have behaved to one another especially when there's a conflict between a higher technology and a lower technology So exploring the topic of aliens can not only give us insights into all the ways of being alive in the universe. You can on occasion hold up a mirror to our greatest fear which might in fact be ourselves That and more in my latest offering, Take me to your leader perspectives on your first alien encounter. I narrated the audio book that's available with the print version and I'm kind of thinking you should get it now. It'd be too late if you have your first alien encounter and have not yet read the book. You want to be ready? You may have heard the best voice in show business, Morgan Freeman, talking about a serious and underndiagnosed heart condition that's often missed a TTR Cardiac amyloidosis or ATTRCM. It's a condition that can greatly disrupt your life with symptoms like severe fatigue, shortness of breath and carpal tunnel If left untreated, A TTRCM may become serious leading to a shorter lifespan Aruby helps adults with ATTRCM live longer and have fewer hospitalizations due to heart issues, so you can focus more on living for what you. Tell your doctor if you're pregnant plan to become pregnant or are breastfeeding and about the medications you take The most common side effects were mild and included diarrhea and abdominal pain If you have a TTRCM, talk to your cardiologist about A Truby and visit atruby dot com slash podcast. That's a TTr ubY. com slash podcast to learn more It's time to get busy living Brought to you by Bridge Bio I am so happy to welcome NoO as a sponsor to Start Talk. Established in nineteen fourteen, NoO provides industry leading battery power solutions including jump starters, tire inflators, battery chargers, lithium batteries, and a wide range of accessories. Through its innovative design, it provides users with dependable power for home business and recreational needs The GB forty is a one hundred A lithium jump starter that weighs two point four pounds, it handles gas engines up to six liters, and diesel up to three liters, covers most cars and SUVs on the road, and can do up to twenty jump startarts on a single charge. It's not just a jumpstarter, it's a USBC power bank, a one hundred Lumen flashlight with SOS and strobe And here's why I'm really really happy to welcome Noco because I have a Tumph T one hundred twenty and it sits during the winter because I don't ride during the winter and every spring the battery is dead. And thanks to Noo, I don't have to worry about that anymore. I used to have to take this pretty heavy bike and run it down the hill so I could pop the clutch and start it. And if that didn't work, well, let's just say I didn't have to go to the gym for a week because I had to push it back up the hill But now, thanks to Noko, guess who's jump starting and hitting the open road. that would be me. If you've ever been stranded or worried about being stranded, if you're ever worried about anything dying on you. I mean, aside from your house plants, you need the peace of mind that Noo brings you. Let it live in your trunk in the back of your SUV and then drive with Peace of mind or keep it in your garage and don't worry about your little bonny when you have to charge it up and get on the open road. No C. pick it up at no d. co slash GB forty. That's n d. c slash GB four zero. Use code StarTalk at no d. co for ten percent off while it lasts. That's ST A R T A L K at n O d. C o Host unforgettable backackyard barbecues with savings from Whole Foods Market. Get the good times going with made in house chicken or pork sausages and ready to cook kebabs for hassle free flavor. Grab tasty flatbreads and their new balsamic chicken salad in the prepared foods department. Keep things fresh with organic red cherries, strawberries and peaches at their peak and stock up on bug sprays and sunca must haves. Make your summer sizzle at Whole Foods Market I you ready? Ahead, That rocks are light As in Rck littleittle te Boulders. I don't care. I don't care what size o They're all like What I mean by light is that they're low density Now you might say, no they're not. Yeah. I was gonna say, okay Hercules. Rocks is so damn light boulders. L But we went over weight and density on another explainer. Yes, I did. which We could say a big tree is heavy but it floats. Okay? So how heavy could it be if it floats?. battleship floats too. The Battleship float. So the average density of a battleship or even an aircraft carrier is less than water. becausecause when you do a cross section through an aircraft carrier, it's mostly air. Okay Okay, most of a ship is ever aired. And so that's why great discovery, by the way, to realize You can make a boat out of something that itself The material doesn't float. float, right. You have It's the design of the hole that I guarantee you Guy was not well received No what he did? It transformed naval warfare. You didn't have to make a ship out of wood anymore You can make it out of steel. Just put enough hull in there And you're good. So God, that would have been cool to be on the first steel battleship going up against wooden dudes. Yeah, you would just plow through that would that's called asymmetric advantage in warfare. Nice, okay. I like that. Yeah. so the first person with a gun when all you have is a bow and arrow, asymmetric advantage. Okaykay ' called winner. winner. You won that battle. Okaykay? If if you there was a bow and hour and somebody' shoot you', Okaykay, we're good, we good That's like like aliens with ray guns and you're up there with a pistol shooting at it? It's like, No, can you just see the situation here? I am so glad you said that because I hate when they do that where in the movies in the movies when the earthlings go up against the aliens and the earthlings are shooting bullets and the aliens are shooting like laser beams. Laser beams that vaporize their homes, right? I' like really come on. And we win Oh O All right. But a but a pistol to a laser fight. Get out. All right, back to rocks Rockcks are Dense or not dense? No, they're light. they're light. Now here's why. Earth was once molten Okay When in the early days of formation, right When you're molten And you're as big as the earth Gravity will do things to that molten mixture That makes sense, right So, so you If you're denser If you're heavier, if you're denser, you will sink to the middle That makes sense. If you' lighter, you'llat. This happens with any if you're mixing oil and vinegar for your salad, okay, you're mixing anything. Layer cocktails.ay For example, and that generally, well, always The lower density stuff will float on top of the higher density stuff. Some things you can mix and it'll stay mixed for a while. That's cool. But that's how things work Okay So Why is it? that when you walk around Earth's surface, You find rocks Okay Earth does not have rocks in its core You know what it has in his core Iron, iron. Nickel Right, Magnesium, right? Okaykay. It's got heavy metals in its core because all their heavy stuff sank to the middle. and all the light stuff looaded to the top. So Earth's crust where the active ingredient is rock is the lightest stuff in Eth. when it formed So the sorry sorry' the thirdest. It's the third lightest. Third lightest. The very lightest stuff are the gases, okay? Okay. So they're floating over your head. Right. Okay. And next is the water. Okay, all right. Okay. So the water sank to the bottom of the gas Makes sense. Okay, that's Eth's surface right. And what sinks to the bottom of the water Rocks, rocks. And what sinks below the rocks, all the rest of the crap that Earth is made of that's heavier than the rocks So rocks are the third lightest thing that came about in the creation of the Eth. Yes, basically Basically And it's made our crust. Now. Everything didn't solidify in the same instant So and plus you have volcanoes that communicate lower layers with upper layers and things.. So there is some Of this That's why if you're looking for iron, you gott to find the iron ore Okay, The iron or what No exactly. I'm sorry, I had to do it it It was so bad. It was bad. It was so bad. It was good. Okay. I know. It was so bad. it was good. Okay.. So there's iron ore, nickel ore. so so it's not everywhere. there are these places where these veins had been preserved at the point Earth was solidified Okay. So you get this remnants of this stuff, you want to find out where most of the iron is and most of the nickel is on Earth. It is in the center of the Earth. And the universe has a lot of nickel and iron in it So Earth Gide, it's plenty of its share of those two ingredients and it's in our core And you might say, well, how do you know you've never been there. Let me hear it. Well, how do you know? you've never been there? Well, I like that accent, That was the obnoxious cem. in the classroom. How do you know, Mrter Asopphysicist? You' have been there. So we have geophysicists who anytim there's an earthquake Right. They can time The passage of the of the of the earthquake signals through the different layers of the earth. And depending on where and when they receive them at other stations, they can map density profile. of the entire eararth. They know it because Because the wave moves through dense materials differently different from new light materials. And once you know that, you can figure that out and bott a b, we've got an iron core That's amazing. There have it. So so we think we're about the density of water. All right,rox some people float, some people think that right humans are about the density of water. So so we think of rocks as heavy. And relative to us, they're heavy, relative to water, they're heavy, relative to air but not relative to the rest of the Earth That's why You don't have to have a mining operation to find rocks They're sticking out of the side of the mountain. They have floated to the top floed to the top and they're there for the taking That's so And by the way, that's why it's so hard to find Meteorits on Earths surface becausecause most meteorites are rocky And so the land and it just looks like any other rock. So you got to go to places where they would stand out And there are two kinds of places where that happens. One, is the desert Sandy desert. Sand. And One problem is that sand will cover it over often. However, sand will also blow away. And if you see a rock sitting in the middle because you can you can scan like many square miles at a pop Okay So you say, oh, there's something sticking out of the sand over there that just got revealed. G over It' probably a meteorite W. Okay. A B, another place you can go is glacier ice sheets in Antarctica and in Greenland. So most meteorites in our collections in our modern collections come from Greenland and Antarctica for just that reason. Because every other place on Earth is made of frreaking rocks, right So there's probably tons of them there, but they're just hanging out of the rocks. Because some people ask, how come all the meteorites are aiming for Antarctica?ight. Or that's like the thing. How come I only find my car keys near the lamppost Right at night Be that's the only place you would have seen them. Right. Okay. But we' good Wow, that was cool, man. This's a rock. Rck are light. Rcks are light. Rocks are light people and people. Pumus is even lighter becausecause it's got air in it Air is helping it out Yeah, that's the that's the fast. solidifying rock from a volcano when it hits the ocean. It's also great for us taking dead skin off your feet, but no, I don't want That's yes. That's why God put bullets on this world. Eact man That's the best use of it. Never mind that God could have made it so that you never got rough feet in the first place, okay I didn't perfect that foot thing. Let me give you something else to help that. Okay. That's the second round of creation, right? Okay. Yes, exactly. The first round was, you know, the The actual body and the second round was cosmetics.. For those days where even God couldn't help me. F like, I can't even do anything with this. Yeah. Takes a boomus. Yeah. Takes some of this other stuff. Right. You're doing L'orereal, baby I can't help you need Max factactor. How can I help you. You need oil of old age? You know Hey everyone, it's me, Morgan Stewart and I have a new podcast called The Morgan Stewart Show. Join me each week as I talk about pop culture, fashion, my personal life and just a warning. I'm going to be giving my opinion on everything. I'll also have some really fun guests to join in on the fun. The Morgan Stewart Show is out now. Listen and follow wherever you get your podcast or watch full video on YouTube Avoiding your unfinished home projects because you're not sure where to start. Thumbtack knows homes, so you don't have to. Don't know the difference between matte paint finish and satin, or what that clunking sound from your dryer is. With Thumbtack, you don't have to be a home pro. You just have to hire one. You can hire top rated pros, see price estimates, and read reviews all on the app. Download today You've never been one to settle. Stand down or stand still. You're a lifelong learner, ennergized by excellence. There's a fire inside you you can't ignore. You've got competition to outrun, momentum to build on, and your own high standards to meet. Stop now? Not a chance. At Capeella University, we help you catch what you're chasing Because you've always had the drive. Now, go earn the degree, Caappeella University. What can't you do? Visit Cpeella. edu to learn more I'm Brian Futterman, and I support Start Talk on Patreon This is Star Talk with Neil Degrras Tyson I got a topic for you. Okay. Warm blankets. All right, what is happening to us? What is going on that warm blankets are a topic It's the topic''s the what's the next explainer going to be snuggling? just saying there's physics everywhere. and I just want to sort of ing warm blankets, time has arrived to country undernderstand Warm blankets. First of all, Wm Blankets sounds like a new emo band. Secondly I am It's an underused title for something out there. It ye, Warm Bankets. But I will say that I'm excited to see the physics. Okay Wm blankets. Okay, so here you go, you ready? Okay, here we go. Okay. We look at a coat or blanket or an item of clothing, so that's a warm item of clothing. Right. Obviously when it's sitting on the hanger The temperature of the clothing is the same as the temperature of the air Okay Okay So you don't say, oh, that's a if If there's a blanket sitting on the tile floor, you'll say, oh, that's a warm tile. You say, oh, that's a warm blanket But they're the same temperature. Right? If they're just sitting out there in the air They'll be the same temperature as each other. So why are we thinking The blanket is warm. time was cold. when they are the same temperature Interesting. And the funny thing is We do make that distinction because you will look at the blanket and call it warm. and call the tile cold or cool. E though just even though they're sitting there together. They sitting there together at the same temperature. Okay, so here's the thing If the blanket were actually a source of warmth You could put it over the tile Wait a while, peel back the blanket and then the tile would be warmer than the surrounding tiles. Now I just pict a tile on the floor just going. Oh man. It'snugly tiles. Oh, that was so good. I'm tired of people calling me cold. Why did you do that? Why did put the blanket back? So So the point is the blanket doesn't make anything warm It is completely passive in this it's not a source of warmth If it were, you could put it on something cold to warm it up. tr That's no sense. It is not a source. It is not a source. Even though our language callalls it a warm blanket or warm mittens or warm, anything else. Okaykay So what we really mean when we say and Garment is warm. is that it does not transmit heat energy That's all we mean evenven though that's what we're saying Okay first of all, that doesn't sound very comfortable. I just want to get under a blanket that doesn't transmit heat energy ' Seet. new catchy ad for the blanket commercial, right? Come on under here and let's get under this thing that doesn't transmit heat energy So Here's the point. If you put the blanket on the I hope There is no heat difference between them. so nothing is happening. There's Okaykay, so now watch. Now I put it on you. So you are warmer than the blanket if you got the blanket out of the closet or on the shelf. Okaykay? Right. The blanket is just room temperature. You are warmer than the blanket. and right now you are radiating heat to the air. Yes, I am. losing heat because I am hot, baby. You are radiant. I am I was coming hot. Cing in hot, That's what I am. So come on in. And so you feel cold because you're losing heat to the air. And then you say, Oh, there's a warm blanket. Let me go get it. So now you bring the blanket. Now the blanket doesn't let you Lose the heat to the air You keep that heat And you interpret what's going on as the blanket being warm. when all that's happening is that you are no longer losing the heat you were a minute before you put on the blanket Hm Now you might say that's just semantic. No, Okaykay. becausecause let's say you brought in some cold beer, Okay? And so you don't have any ice yet, but you got it out of the refrigerator cabinet it's cold beer is sitting on the floor and you say, I don't want the beer to warm up Let's get a warm blanket to put on it, o. Okay? Be becausecause how does the beer get warm? It's taking heat from the air Okay, becausecause the air is warmer than the beer So what you need is super bllanket that does not transmit heat energy across its thickness So you take a blanket putut it on the beer, it'll keep the beer cold by preventing heat from coming from outside of the beer entering the beer Oh man So So the point is so the blanket that you're calling a warm blanket is also a cold blanket. It's a cold blanket too Now And And by the way, we have another word for things like that that you carry around and it's called the thermos. That's true, rightight Whether it's a themos cooler or a thermos for liquids, it's the thermos keeps hot things hot and cold things cold cold The thermos is the ideal blanket. for the food that contained within it So want if you wanted the best bet of them all turnurn it into a thermist It's just not cuddly, but boy, you will stay in fact you become too hot because your body needs to actually cool off. othertherwise you'll overheat So I just wanted to clarify the fact that worm blankets are simply blankets that don't transmit heat energy And it'll work keeping your beer cold or you warm And more broadly, it'll maintain the temperature of whatever it is it's covering There it is And if you're not having a good time, then that's a wet blanket, but that's a whole another explainer. Wh another explainer. That's another another, whole another another. So so basically this is what insulation is Insulation We don't think of blankets as insulation, but that's what they are And if one blanket is not working for you, you get a second blanket.. So the two combined make it even harder for heat to transfer from one place to another Okaykay, so now How does that