• What thing in your kitchen right now is actually equipped to withstand an EMP attack?
How many things add tiny little holes in them to potentially save your life?
Here’s 15 everyday things and their functions you may never have known about.
15 – Ballpoint Pen Caps • Have you noticed the caps of pens have
a tiny hole in them?
Ever wonder what that hole is for?
• Lots of people think it’s to reduce air pressure buildup when you’re putting
the cap back on the pen.
And it does help with that.
• But the real reason that hole is there is to reduce choking deaths.
If you accidentally swallow one of those caps, the hole keeps it from blocking the airway
completely.
14 – Fuel Gauge Arrows • Next time you’re in a car, look for
a little arrow pointing left or right on your fuel gauge.
• You’ve probably never even noticed it before, but now you have a perfect way to
remember which side of the car you fill up the gas tank on.
13 – Bumps on the Keyboard • On your standard Qwerty keyboard, there
are little bumps on the F and J keys.
• In traditional 10-finger typing, those are the keys your index fingers are supposed
to rest on.
The bumps are there to let you know your fingers are in the right place without even having
to look.
12 – The Tab on your Tape Measure • The little metal tab on the end of your
tape measure is small, but multi-featured.
• First off, it has a hole in it to make it easier to hook onto nails and screws if
necessary.
• It also has a little serrated tip so that you can make a measurement mark with one hand.
11 – The Plastic Disc Under Bottle Caps • You may never have even noticed, but there
is a little plastic disc sitting inside many plastic bottle caps.
• If you take it out, the bottle still closes fine, so what is it actually doing there?
• It’s actually a liner that acts as an air seal to hold in carbonation.
If you took it out and closed the bottle, any carbonated beverage would go flat in no
time.
10 – Tiny Holes in Airplane Windows • When you’re looking out an airplane
window, you’re actually looking through three panes.
• If you’ve seen a tiny hole in your window, don’t worry – it only goes through two
of the three panes.
Its job is to ensure that only the outer pane of glass – the toughest one – bears the
brunt of the cabin pressure difference.
• That way, even if the outer pane ruptures for any reason, you still have two panes protecting
you, rather than all three of them breaking at once.
Sure, there’s a small hole in those last two panes, but it’s small enough so that
the cabin will stay pressurized. 9 – Gas Station Pumps
• You’ve probably never driven off with a gas pump still hanging out of your car,
but somebody, somewhere, definitely has.
• It has actually happened often enough for gas stations to come up with a countermeasure.
• Most gas pumps now have magnetic breakaways so that they can detach from the pump, limiting
the damage, rather than just ripping the entire thing apart.
8 – Screwdrivers and Wrenches • Sometimes you need to get just a little
more leverage to twist out a troublesome screw.
• That’s why a number of screwdrivers are shaped in such that you can lock onto
them with a wrench and twist them that way.
• Don’t do this every time, though – it’s not really great for the screwdriver.
But it can help with some of the more difficult spots.
7 – Microwave Ovens • You know how that metal mesh covers the
front of your microwave?
That’s not just a fun design.
That’s a shielding mechanism that makes the inside of your microwave something called
a Faraday cage.
• That keeps the energy in the microwave from escaping and melting your eyeballs.
Faraday cages are also known to resist EMP attacks on electronics, in case some kind
of cyber war breaks out in your hometown.
• The Faraday shielding keeps outside signals of any kind from getting in.
If you set your cell phone inside a microwave, it will most likely lose signal.
Disclaimer: Don’t ACTUALLY START the microwave with your phone in it.
6 – Rubber Erasers • The blue part of the eraser is the stuff
of legends.
Supposedly it could erase pen ink.
• Many tried.
All tore the shit out of their paper.
• That’s because the blue side of the eraser isn’t for pens.
It’s actually for thicker, high-quality paper, because it takes more of the paper
off with less effort.
It’s a great tool for artists, less so for students with cheap-ass spiral-bound notebooks.
• On thick paper, it actually possible to erase ink, but it’s not consistent.
It’s technically still for pencil marks.
5 – Prescription Bottles • Childproof caps are important to making
sure your kindergartener doesn’t mistake those little blue pills for candy.
• But if there aren’t any kids in the house, you’re really just making things
harder on yourself for no reason.
• That’s why some prescription bottles have simple threaded screw-tops on the opposite
side of the cap.
4 – Road Reflectors • When you drive at night, you’ll see
little white reflectors on the road showing marking the lanes.
• Hopefully you’ve never learned this from experience, but if you drive down the
road going the wrong way, those white reflectors look red.
• That might make you stop and think, but if you’re already driving down the wrong
side of the road, you might be too far gone to notice.
3 – Pasta Spoons • Ever wonder how much pasta you ought to
make at a time?
Or do you pretty much just throw the whole damn box in at once?
• If you have a plastic pasta spoon, stick some spaghetti through the hole in the middle
of it.
That’s how much you ought to make for one person.
• If you’re making elbow noodles, just measure it out in a measuring cup.
2 – The Hole in the Bottom of Padlocks • In the bottom of a padlock, there is a
tiny little pinhole with no apparent purpose.
• That’s actually there to let water drain out instead of pooling inside.
If water were to build up inside the lock and then freeze, it would most likely destroy
the locking mechanism.
• In some designs, it can also be used to oil the interior of the lock to loosen it
up.
1 – Apple Power Cable • If you have a Macbook, you’ve probably
noticed the little plastic wings on the sides of the power block.
• Those are there to let you neatly wrap up the power cord in a way that won’t slip
off and tangle.
• Or you can just keep throwing it in your bag as-is, because who has time
for all that?