Here are some of the weirdest ways big problems have been solved!
9 - Tallest man in the world If you’ve been following our videos here,
you’d know by now that dolphins are smart.
And they loooooove pufferfish.
Anyways, there are tons of scientists trying to decipher dolphin-language and culture.
Dolphins are an advanced race, and they have many things in common with us.However, just
like human babies, baby dolphins aren’t exactly the brightest.
Back in 2006, there were two baby dolphins in Fushun, China who were left unsupervised.
During this time without human supervision, these two dolphins managed to eat off the
plastic edge of their pool!
They succeeded in swallowing the chunks of plastic before their caregivers noticed and
stopped them.
No matter what the vets did to try and get the plastic bits out, the dolphin’s stomachs
just constricted with the instruments they used, and no one had arms long enough to reach
inside the dolphin’s stomach.
With the plastic in their stomach, the dolphins couldn’t eat, so the vets were afraid that
they weren’t going to survive.
However, someone got a brilliant idea: why not just get someone who has arms that can
actually reach inside the stomach of these dolphins?!
And that’s when the oceanarium called on the world’s tallest man, a man named Xi
Shun, to help with their baby dolphin dilemma.
He was able to get his 41.7-inch-long arm inside the dolphins stomachs and remove the
plastic, bit by bit, saving their lives!
8 - Make them walk longer Do you guys hate having to wait for checked
bags at the airport?
We definitely try to avoid checking a bag just because of having to wait!
A few years ago, the Houston airport got some minor restorations, and the airport started
getting hundreds of complaints.
You would think a new restoration would cut down on complaints, but no, the complaints
kept rolling in because of the increased amount of time passengers had to wait to get their
bags!
The airport executives thought the problem was because that there wasn’t enough staff
working on a particular shift.
They hired more baggage handlers for the busiest times of the day.
This plan worked pretty well, but even so, the complaints kept coming in.
The executives were baffled, and it was time to call the experts in.
The consultants essentially found that the distance between the arrival gates and the
baggage claim was very short, and it took passengers only a minute to walk that distance.
If the time it took for workers to get the luggage from the plane to the baggage claim
was eight minutes, this meant passengers spent about 85% of their waiting time just standing
around waiting for their bags!
So what was the solution?!
Just make them walk longer!
They moved the arrival gates away from the main terminal and at the same time, they routed
the bags to the outermost carousel.
Problem solved: now it took passengers 6 and a half minutes to walk to their bags.
The complaints dropped to almost zero.
Pretty ingenious if you ask us!
7 - It bangs So you've probably have seen commercials that
advertise that some cleaning product is able to remove grease and grime without almost
any effort whatsoever.
It's almost magical, because at the end, there's always a happy person standing in a pristine
kitchen.
Well, maybe those ads weren't exaggerating after all.
Caithness Chemicals is a chemical company with a plant in Ireland that used to recycle
plutonium.
The plant hadn't been active since the '80s, but radiation just doesn’t go away for a
lonnnnnng time.
Caithness chemicals had a team in charge of dismantling the plant, but plutonium was still
all over the place giving off radiation.
The normal chemical agents they used to decontaminate surfaces needed time to dry and slowed down
the demolition process significantly.
So one of the workers suggested a cleaner he had seen on TV, a cleaning product called
Cillit Bang.
Obviously, they were desperate, because the team actually tried it.
Surprisingly, it worked.
The cleaner was found to reduce levels of radioactive contamination remarkably well!
The cleaner had worked so well, its use also drew interest from operators of other nuclear
sites in the UK.
Who knew that a cheap household cleaner is capable of getting rid of radiation?!
6 - Mice with headaches Here’s an interesting fact: Brown tree snakes
were accidentally introduced to Guam after the second world war.
A few of these snakes were inadvertently transported from the Solomon Islands to Guam on a cargo
plane.
The thing with brown tree snakes is that they’re great predators.
Since coming to Guam, Brown tree snakes have made several of the island's native animal
species extinct!
Also, they reproduced like crazy, so brown tree snakes infested the island’s jungles.
So what was the solution?
Over the years, U.S.
Government scientists have unsuccessfully tried many methods to get rid of the overpopulation
of these snakes with such things as traps and snake-detecting dogs.
However, these methods still didn’t seem to make a dent.
Instead, one unusual method that was developed actually worked.
Brown tree snakes are one of the few species that’ll eat prey they didn't grilled themselves!
So scientists began filling red mice with acetaminophen, aka Tylenol, and began dropping
these mice over the jungles.
The acetaminophen dose is just enough to induce a coma and eventually make the snake a goner,
but not enough to damage any other animals fatally.
Pretty clever, right?!
5 - MacGuyverd it You’d think that after hundreds of scientists
planned out every single detail, and made backup plans for backup plans, there’s pretty
much no chance for things to go wrong in an outer space exploration mission.
Well, if there’s anything Hollywood has taught us is that space is unexpected at best.
What happened at the International Space Station was something that would’ve made Steven
Spielberg proud.
And MacGyver, too.
The ISS is home to six astronauts, all highly trained.
The ISS is powered by four Main Bus Switching Units, and basically, one started to malfunction.
No big deal, they thought.
After all, that’s what they’ve been trained to do.
But when they went outside to replace the unit, they found that the unit was stuck.
Metal shavings had accumulated around the bolts, making the unit impossible to dislodge.
None of their highly technical tools was the right fit, and the problem remained.
However, the next day, they ventured out to fix the issue: they had a plan with a can
of nitrogen gas... and a toothbrush.
Say what?!
With the help of these not-so-technological instruments, they were somehow able to get
the unit unstuck and replaced in no time.
In other good news, no astronaut had to sacrifice their oral hygiene to the mission... the toothbrush
was a spare!
4 - Just add balls This scenario that we’re about to describe
sounds like a crappy ScyFy Original Movie plot, but it actually happened.
A while back, the Ivanhoe Reservoir in Los Angeles dropped over 400,000 balls in the
water to protect the water from the sun!
But wait, why did the water need sun protection?
At the Ivanhoe Reservoir, the water contains bromide and chlorine.
Bromide is an element naturally present in groundwater, so no big deal.
On the other hand, chlorine is a chemical used to kill bacteria.
Obviously, the reservoir’s water is consumed by thousands of people, it’s of course vital
that the water doesn’t have much bacteria floating around.
Bromide and chlorine on their own aren’t harmful, but the trouble apparently comes
when the two are mixed with sunlight.
As it turns out, this dangerous mix results in bromate, a known carcinogen.
Okay, got it, keep the sun away from the water.
But c’mon, how do you do that in sunny Los Angeles!
A tarp could’ve been used, but it would have been too expensive.
They thought of using a metal cover, but that would have taken too long to install.
So the execs at Ivanhoe Reservoir reached the only possible solution: They dropped 400,000
pitch black balls over the surface of the water, a solution that somehow worked!
3 - Where the sun doesn’t shine Viganella is a tiny little village in the
Italian Alps.
When we say small, we mean small as in there are less than 200 people living there.
However, those people had a big problem.
This small town is sun-deprived!
The village was built in a deep valley, and the mountains surrounding it doesn’t let
the sun rays get to the village for many months out of the year.
Some of the villagers claim that it gets as cold as Siberia, as the ice and snow never
get the chance to melt.
What’s the solution?
They essentially needed a giant reflector!
With the help of all their neighbors, Viganella was able to place an eight-by-five meter sheet
of steel at the top of one of the mountains.
This giant mirror reflects the sun into the main piazza of the town in the months where
the sun stops shining.
Thanks to this new mirror, Viganella will have at least one ray of sunshine from November,
when the sun disappears, to February, when the sun finally reappears on its own!
Viganella’s mirror is controlled by a remote system that allows it to move and follow the
sun’s path.
The whole project cost only about 100,000 euros, financed mainly by the local authorities
and banks.
Not bad!
2 - Avoid earworms Make no mistake, earworms aren’t parasites
that burrow their way into your ear to lay eggs in your brain.
But for all the pain they cause, they might as well be!
Earworms are bits of music your brain gets stuck on.
You see, our brains are like machines.
When they start a thought, brains want to finish it in order to move on.
But sometimes, brains just can't finish the thoughts.
And what do they do?
You guessed right, they start all over again.
Earworms are essentially broken pieces of melodies that your brain repeats over and
over and over again in the hopes of finishing.
Because you don't know the full song, your brain is never able to reach the end, and
it just starts over again.
Earworms are the worst because you can’t get it outta your head!
Sooooo, how do you get rid of them?
The experts recommend several different tactics, but the gist is this: the only way to replace
an insistent thought is with another thought.
You can start by playing the most annoying song on youtube.
In most cases, listening to the song finishing will be enough.
If that doesn't work, try solving some tricky anagrams or sudokus.
Focusing on a difficult task will get your brain distracted from the melody loop.
1 - I can get you a toe by 3 James Byrne was 29 years old when he had a
terrible accident at work.
While sawing through a piece of wood, he severed his left thumb completely.
He was taken to the hospital immediately with his severed thumb of course.
Surgeons got to work right away trying to reattach Byrne’s thumb to his hand.
But despite their hard work, blood wouldn’t start flowing again into his thumb.
Byrne underwent months of treatment, but ultimately, his thumb had to be cut off for good.
Unfortunately for him, there was just no way to get blood flow back into his thumb.
That’s when surgeon Umraz Khan, the doctor overlooking Byrne’s case, had an idea.
He proposed to use Byrne’s dominant toe to replace his missing thumb!
During an 8 hour procedure, Dr. Khan supervised two surgery teams.
One team was working on Byrne’s left foot, removing the big toe.
The other team worked on Byrne’s hand, attaching the toe they had just removed.
Although it was a complicated surgery, the surgery was a complete success!
Although James Byrne now has a toe-thumb on his hand now, he almost has regained full
movement in the thumb.
He’s able to do all the things we take for granted, such as being able to use a pen,
or open a door.
Here’s what’s next!