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- I often come across interesting things
that aren't substantial enough
to warrant an entire video of their own.
So I wait until I've collected
a few of them and then I create
a compilation video like this one.
It's only the second one I've ever made
but they're really fun.
All right. Interesting thing Number one
is about tape measures.
Have you ever noticed
that tape measure manufacturers
seem incapable of creating
nice sturdy tabs that don't move around.
Like look at the
horrible wobble on this one.
Surely we've perfected
the riveting process to the point
where we don't have to suffer
these mechanical failures.
And of course it turns out
that these tabs wobble for a reason
and it's all to do
with the way we use tape measures
to measure things.
There are basically two different ways
you can use a tape measure.
You can measure the
outside dimension of something,
or the inside dimension of something.
Let's assume for a moment
that the tab is fixed,
that it isn't wobbly
and you're measuring
the outside dimension of something.
If you measured the outside dimension
then what you do is
you hook the tab over the thing
you wanna measure
and then you pull the tape measure backwards
until you reach your mark.
In this case, you're interested
in the distance from the inside face of the tab.
And you can imagine
that the tape measure would be calibrated
for that purpose when it leaves the factory.
But then when you want
to measure the inside dimension of something,
you'll push the tab up against
the inside surface of the thing
that you want to measure.
And in that scenario,
the measurement you're after
is the measurement that starts
from the outside face of the tab.
But this thing has been calibrated
for the inside face of the tab.
So the solution is to have a tab
with a little bit of travel
and it's just enough travel
to compensate for the thickness
of the tab itself.
Interesting thing Number two.
Why do Hammerhead sharks
have hammer-shaped heads.
Well, it's at least partially
to do with depth perception.
You might know that having two eyes
improves your ability to perceive
how far away things are
due to something called binocular vision,
that gives you a skill called stereopsis.
Basically the image coming
from your two eyes
are slightly different
because they're in
slightly different positions
and your brain is able to interpret
those subtle differences
in the two images,
as information about depth.
Information about how far away things are.
And the further apart your eyes are,
the more different
those two images will be.
And so the more accurately
you will be able to perceive depth
and you'll be able
to perceive differences
in depth to greater distances.
So for whatever reason
the hammerhead shark occupies
this evolutionary niche of being
good at perceiving depth in the ocean.
To have binocular vision,
you need to have overlap
between the two images
coming from your eyes.
And if you look at a hammerhead shark,
you might think,
well those eyes seem to be really
pointing out sideways.
Like maybe there isn't any overlap
between the images
coming from those eyes.
And actually interesting sub fact.
Let's call it interesting thing 2.1
Prey animals tend to have eyes
on the sides of their heads,
so they've got good wraparound vision
for detecting predators coming
from all different directions.
Whereas predator animals
tend to have eyes
on the fronts of their heads.
So they've got good overlap
and they can perceive
how far away their prey is.
Anyway, some scientists did some studies
and it does seem as though
there is overlap between the images
coming from the two hammerhead shark eyes
and they hypothesized
that hammerhead sharks
improve the overlap of the images
by moving their heads side to side,
as they swim.
I wanna do an impression. I will.
I will do an impression.
This guy's doing a slightly
better impression than me.
Slightly mind you.
Interesting thing Number three.
If my wife needed a kidney,
I probably wouldn't be able
to give her one of mine.
In fact, I would be the number one
worst person in the whole entire world
to try and give her a kidney.
And that's because
we've had kids together.
So genetically speaking,
our kids are 50% Lianne and 50% me.
That means that some of the proteins
that my kids produce are the same
as the proteins that I produce
because they are produced by my genes
and they have those genes,
whereas Lianne doesn't produce
those proteins because
she has different genes.
So when my wife gave birth
to our kids,
her body was exposed to these proteins
that her body doesn't produce.
And her immune system
recognized those proteins as foreign.
So now her immune system is primed
to deal with those proteins
in the future.
So if we try to take one of my kidneys
and transplant it into Lianne,
her immune system
would almost certainly
reject it as foreign.
And it's a tragic irony, really
because of all the people in the world,
I'm the one that would most want
to be able to give her a kidney.
She doesn't need a kidney by the way.
This is hypothetical,
except it's not hypothetical
for a lot of people.
So what do you do in this situation?
I mean I could sell my kidney
and then use that money
to buy another kidney
that is compatible with Lianne
except that in most societies
we've decided that we shouldn't be
exchanging money for organs,
at least not at market value.
So instead we have
the Kidney Exchange Program,
where I say,
"Look, I want my wife to have a kidney.
She can't have mine.
So I'm gonna give my kidney
to anyone who needs it,
so long as my wife gets
a kidney in the bargain."
And so they'll pair us up
with another pair of people,
who've had kids together
where the father wants
to give a kidney to the mother,
but he can't.
So they, on this database of compatibilities
and stuff like that,
you find one where that person's kidney
is compatible with my wife
and my kidney is compatible
with that person's baby mother, essentially.
And so, yeah. You do a kidney swap.
Kidney swap.
Interesting thing Number four.
The North pole is a South pole.
So you know the earth
is a giant magnet.
Well, it turns out that
the South pole of that magnet
is at the top where the North pole is.
And that's not because
like the poles flip
every few thousand years
like that hasn't happened
in human history.
It's to do with the way
we talk about magnets.
So let the magnet in a compass, for example.
So if you've got a bar magnet,
one end is attracted in the direction
that we call North.
And the other end of the bar magnet
is attracted in the direction
that we call South.
So we've got the North attracting
end of the magnet
and the South attracting
end of the magnet,
except we don't call it that.
We just call it the North end
and the South end or the North pole
and the South pole of the magnet.
And because with magnetism,
opposite poles attract,
the North pole of your magnet
or the needle in your compass
must be pointing towards the South pole
of the Earth's magnet.
In other words,
the magnetic field of the earth
has its South pole at the top
where the North pole is.
Interesting thing Number five.
This ant. Look at its head.
It's a turtle ant.
This one's a soldier
and it's grown a door on its head.
Its head is a door.
So these are tree dwelling ants.
They live inside tree trunks
and they cut out
a circular entrance to their burrow.
And then they guard that entrance
with their heads.
It's an example of Frank Moses.
When you use your body
to block the entrance to your burrow
as a form of defense.
Here's another example.
It's the Chinese Hourglass Spider
and it uses its bum.
A totally unrelated interesting thing
is that Oreos are vegan.
Which means they are healthy.
(crunching biscuits)
I reckon I'll keep making videos
of this format just every now and again.
So I've set up a website
to track the interesting things
probably because I want it
to be searchable outside
of the YouTube ecosystem.
I want each interesting thing
to have its own image
like on YouTube,
you only get one image per video.
It's the thumbnail.
So I wanted that too.
Also I just like to see this
growing list of interesting things
it's called ninterestingthings.com.
And I've set it up
with the sponsor of this video
which is Hostinger.
Things I like so far,
it's got two factor authentication,
which is really important to me.
I like to do things in the nerdy way,
so I, you know,
I tend to build websites
with a static site generator where appropriate
and then if it can deploy it
with Git, even better
and you can do that with Hostinger.
Git push. There it is.
I appreciate that's not for everyone.
So I was looking at kind of, you know
what can you do at the other end?
And so Hostinger they love WordPress.
I was reading some documentation
about how they've optimized
the servers for WordPress.
And it's one of those it's like, you know
one-click install type thing.
And then once you've got
WordPress running,
content management's super easy.
So you can go either way with Hostinger.
You can go the really nerdy route
with Git push,
or you can go the much easier
with WordPress
and then it's got everything else
in between just uploading files
whatever you wanna do.
So, yeah, I recommend you checking out,
you know, setting a website
can be daunting
if you've not done it before,
but it doesn't have to be.
If you go to hostinger.com/stevemould
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(lively upbeat music)
So yeah, have a look today.
I hope you enjoyed this video.
If you did,
don't forget to hit subscribe
and I'll see you next time.
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