04x20 - More Scientists

[bunniefuu]

-[Mooshu meows]
-[fanfare playing]

[chirping]

♪ How, what, where, why? ♪

♪ What, where, why?
How, what, where, why? ♪

♪ What, where, why?
Ada Twist, scientist ♪

♪ She's gonna find out
What the answer is ♪

♪ Under here, over there ♪

♪ Science is everywhere you look ♪

♪ I'm Iggy Peck, architect ♪

♪ And I'm Rosie Revere, engineer ♪

♪ Technology, that's me, Benny B. ♪

♪ A mystery, a riddle
A puzzle, or a quest ♪

♪ There are wonders to discover
And hypotheses to test ♪

♪ Science is the best
Ada Twist, scientist ♪

♪ I'm gonna find out what the answer is ♪

♪ Everywhere science is
She's forming a hypothesis ♪

♪ Connecting polka dots
'Cause this is scientist, Ada Twist ♪

[Ada speaking]

Hmm. [gasps] I have an idea.

Let's meet some of my favorite scientists.
Come on. [giggles]

Hi, I'm Keji Sojobi,
and I'm an aerospace engineer,

and today I'll show you
a few prototypes I made

of a cool thing called the Tesla coil.

Come on, let's go!

A Tesla coil is a way
to transmit electricity wirelessly,

and a prototype is
the first example of a thing.

You never know what you'll use
when you're building a prototype.

This came from
a roll of paper towels that I finished.

I decided to use it
to help me mold the right shape

for my coil of thicker wire.

A prototype doesn't
have to be perfect or beautiful,

it doesn't even have to work,

it just needs to get you a step closer
to the thing you're trying to make.

I was trying to make a mini Tesla coil.

This battery is
providing power to these coils

that'll provide an electricity

that will wirelessly
make this lightbulb work.

Switch it on.

[drumroll playing]

Look at that.

We have electricity! [laughs]

And this is the original one right here.

You could call this
the prototype of prototype.

See, if we turn it on…

nothing happens, it doesn't work.

There were some accidents.

A little bit of burnt tape…

But it's all part of the process!

Fun fact!

One of the first prototypes
for the modern car

was a cart pulled by a mechanical horse.

[upbeat music playing]

Hi, my name is Maynard Okereke,
also known as the Hip Hop M.D.

I'm a science communicator.
We'll talk about static electricity.

Static electricity is
a transferring of charged particles

from one object to another.

I'll show you some simple experiments
that describe static electricity,

the first one with balloons.

I'll rub this balloon on my head
and see if I can transfer some particles

from this object to the other.

We are transferring electrons
from my head to the balloon,

giving the balloon a net negative charge.

Our glitter has a positive charge.

Since the goal
of everything in nature is balance,

the positively charged
particles in the glitter

now attract to
the negatively charged particles

in the balloon,
and that is static electricity.

For this next experiment,
all you need is salt and pepper, a plate,

a plastic spoon and a cloth.

First, we'll pour
our salt and pepper onto our plate.

We rub our cloth onto our plastic spoon.

This rubbing action is
transferring the electrons

from the cloth to the plastic spoon,

giving the spoon a negative charge.

Since opposites attract,

and we have our
positively charged salt and pepper,

and our negatively charged spoon,

look what happens.

Let's take a closer look.

How cool is that?

Fun fact!

The most common example
of static electricity in nature

is lightning.

Thunderstorms create a movement
of negative and positive charges.

That energy transfer is
what we see as lightning.

[dinosaur growls]

Hi, I'm Gabriel Santos.
I'm a paleontologist,

and today we'll learn about fossils.

This is the collection room,
and we have lots of fossils.

And yeah, these are
real-life dinosaur bones.

So, what we're looking at here are
the tailbone of a baby Hadrosaurid.

You can see the individual bones
that make up the tail,

and these are about 75 million years old.

When you're walking through museum halls

and you see beautiful,
complete skeletons of dinosaurs,

it can take a long time
before they're put together.

When paleontologists are
putting together a skeleton,

sometimes it's as easy as
putting fossils on a floor or table,

and finding out where the fossils fit,

but sometimes fossils
can be pretty delicate.

Sometimes we only have a few of the bones.

Sometimes bones are broken,
so that is where it comes to research

to try to figure out what they are.

So, we have to find
where the pieces fit in our head.

We build a plan. We make a drawing,

before we ever put together
the actual specimen.

Fun fact. [chuckles]

Not all dinosaurs are actually extinct.

Birds are a kind of theropod dinosaur
like T-Rex and Velociraptor.

When the dinosaurs went extinct,

the birds were able
to survive that extinction,

and so, penguins are a kind of dinosaur.

[rhythmic music playing]

Hi. I'm Jasmine Carter
and I'm a neuroscientist,

which means I study the brain.

And today we'll talk about placebos.

So, a placebo is a fake treatment.

Placebos are really important

in science and medicine
because they allow for us

to actually determine
when real treatments work.

So, this is our placebo
and this is our treatment,

and you can see they look the same
when starting this experiment.

Here are our cells,
and we'll use these cells

to test whether or not
our treatment is going to work.

If it works,
it will turn the cells bright green.

So, first, what I'm going to do is

I'm going to add the placebo to our cells.

Now, I'm going to add
the treatment to these other cells.

Let's look at it under the microscope
so we can see if the treatment will work.

So remember, our treatment, if it works,

-is going to turn the cells green.
-[drumroll playing]

And it did.

That means it worked.

We also have our placebo group.

[drumroll playing]

They're not green.

That means our fake treatment
didn't have an effect here.

And so that means
if you took this treatment,

it might actually help you feel better.

Fun fact!

A placebo effect happens
when you actually start to feel better

after having a placebo
or the "fake treatment,"

and that's because your brain
might think it's real medicine.

Hello. I'm Shane Campbell Staton.
And I'm an evolutionary biologist.

Today we are going to catch
and learn about some lizards.

I think there's one right over here.

Lizards, they are pretty fast.

But I'm faster.

[whispering] Sutcha… Sutcha…

Oh!

Oh, my God.

He's gone.

God, they're so fast.

So, as a part of my research,
I go out and I catch lizards.

But we make sure we put 'em
back where we got 'em,

and that they're safe and sound.

For you at home, I'd say
the best way to enjoy those lizards

is just observe them and see what they do.

Oh, my goodness.

So, this is a side-blotched lizard.

Look at the little armpit.

You can see
the little side-blotch right there. Boop.

Lizards are cold-blooded,

which means that a lizard's
internal body temperature is determined

by how much sun it's been able to soak up.

So, now because it's so early in the day,

a lot of lizards will
be out in the sunlight,

trying to warm their bodies up,

to reach the perfect temperature
that'll allow them to do what they do.

One of the things
that's cool about lizards is

when they lose their tails,
they can actually regrow them like this.

It's their superpower.

So, we're gonna
put this guy back where we got him.

Thank you, buddy.

There you go.

Fun fact!

So, there is a group of lizards called
horned lizards that live in the desert

that, self-defense,

literally sh**t blood
out of their eyeballs like a water g*n

at any potential predators
that might wanna eat them.

[imitating sh**ting sounds]

It's great. It's gross. It's-- It's gross.
But I see why it's effective.

[Whitney] Hi, I'm Whitney Tsai,
and I'm an ornithologist.

Today we're talking about how birds fly.

This kite could use a little help.

So, birds' bodies are made for flight.

From the shape of their bodies
to the shape of their wings,

birds are aerodynamic,
meaning the shape of their body and wings

allows air to flow around them easily.

This is a wing of a nightjar.

They are really acrobatic fliers.

And so, the shape of their wings is
kind of skinny and bent here.

And it allows them
to be really agile in the sky.

This is a wing of a tern.

They have this long, skinny wing shape

that helps them to glide
at high speeds over the ocean.

So, you see this giant wing,

this is a condor wing

and their wingspan gets
up to ten and a half feet.

Their wings are this really broad shape.

And they have these
really long feathers here.

And these feathers are
called primary feathers

and they help them a lot with flight.

And when they are flying,
they are all splayed out,

kind of like fingers.

So, we have primary flight feathers
and the secondary flight feathers.

Then, we have the coverts over those.

All of these feathers help
to shape the bird's wing

and make it more aerodynamic
and easier for it to move through the air.

But there are birds
that don't have these primary feathers.

One of those exceptions is a penguin.

Penguin wings are more like
flippers than actual wings.

It flies in the water
instead of in the sky.

Fun fact!

Albatross can soar for a really long time.

They can fly for up to six years
without touching land.

That is a long time.

Hi, I'm James Finley.
I'm a biomedical engineer,

and today we'll
learn about human movement.

Movement is really
the basis of being alive.

You move when
you're writing with a pencil,

you move when you are
at recess and you're running around.

Even when you're sleeping,
you're still moving, right?

You're-- You're breathing in and out.

And all of those things are
controlled by muscles,

and your brain sends commands

to tell your muscles
when to contract and when to relax.

[treadmill powers down]

When we do motion capture,

we're just going to put on some markers.

These markers are really reflective.

The way that this system works

is that these cameras can detect
exactly where the marker is in the room.

And so now if you take
a look at the computer screen,

you can see an animated skeleton walking.

How do I look?

[laughs]

We're interested in
understanding human movement.

All of these things are tied together,
movement and energy and sports.

So, now we can think about
how you even kick a ball.

We can even measure
those different ways that you kick

and compare that to someone
who's a professional soccer player.

Fun fact!

We need muscles to move

and our body has over 650 of them.

That's a lot of muscles.

[upbeat music playing]

Smells good to me.

Hi, I am Anand Ray, an entomologist,
which means I study insects.

I study how insects smell
and what scents they like and dislike.

Welcome to our greenhouse,
where we work with mosquitoes.

We've been studying what odors

from human skin
and breath attract mosquitoes.

In this case, we used an odor
that mimics carbon dioxide.

Carbon dioxide is present
in our exhaled air.

The moment they can smell
the carbon dioxide from our breath,

they get excited.

It's almost like the smell of pizza
for humans when they're hungry.

Some of the scents that we test
end up being ones that mosquitoes hate.

They just do not come close to them.

We have been able to use that knowledge

to create odors that can
repel mosquitoes from our skin.

If I were to stick my arm
into this cage without repellent,

all the mosquitoes in the cage came
and landed on me immediately

within seconds.

They could smell scent from my arm.

They knew that they had
a delicious meal waiting for them.

This time, I will apply
this scent that mosquitoes hate,

and I'll show you what happens.

They are avoiding most of it.

They're still flying around. You see that?

Even if they land,
they take off right away.

Fun fact.

It's the female mosquito
that bites us, not the male.

The females need a little bit of blood

to make healthy eggs.

So, if you find a mosquito biting you,

that is definitely a female.

Hi, my name is Tania Romero,

I'm the biologist here
at the Audubon Center at Debs Park.

And today we are going to
be learning about camouflage.

[laughing]

Camouflage is when animals
are able to hide in plain sight.

Camouflage comes in different forms.

It can come in being
the same color as their environment.

It can come in the way they behave,

or it can even come
through, like, smell or hearing.

So, camouflage allows
our animals to be either better hunters,

or be able to hide
more efficiently from being hunted.

So, if we're looking at a butterfly,

it will have circles on their wings.
That's supposed to mimic a lot of eyes,

so, when a predator is
trying to grab them, it will think twice.

So, we'll see
if we're able to spot anything.

Where can they be?

Nothing today!
We don't even have a bunny today.

So far, nothing.

Nothing.

All right.
We currently have not seen bunnies.

However, I do know they're here
because two weeks ago,

I planted this plant,
and now they have been eaten.

That lets me know that a bunny was here
and had a really nice lunch.

Fun fact!

A burrowing owl will
do camouflage, but through sound.

It will mimic the sound of a rattlesnake

to be able to tell its predators,

"Stay away. I'm a rattlesnake
and I am dangerous."

But really, it's just an owl.

[imitating rattlesnake, laughs]

Hi, I'm Brett Doar.

I'm a contraptionist.

And today we'll talk about
how to build a strong bridge.

I built these two bridges here,
let's see how much weight they can hold.

So, this is the simplest kind of bridge.

There were two high points

and it's just a board
across the top of them.

These kinds of bridges are great,

as long as what you're trying
to hold up is lightweight.

But what happens if
you start adding weight to it,

you start to see that
this isn't a very strong bridge.

So, if you're trying to
really hold a lot of a load,

you need a different kind of bridge.

This is called a suspension bridge.
This is the same material as this.

It's the same height,
it's covering the same span,

but this can hold a lot more weight.
Let's check it out.

You can see how much there's a bend here,

and this is bending almost not at all.

Rather than just supporting it
at these two ends,

it's being supported throughout
the entire span by these cables,

and it's pushing down on these towers,

and then it's being
stabilized by these points here.

If they're not anchored here,
the whole thing collapses.

You have this-- These multiple parts

acting all together
to help support this weight.

Fun fact!

The Golden Gate Bridge has
over 80,000 miles of wire

in its two main cables.

That's enough wire
to wrap around the earth three times.

Hi, I'm Jamal Lewis.
I'm a biomedical engineer.

Today we'll talk about the immune system.

This is where we keep
all our flammable chemicals.

Danger, flammable.

No playing here. You can explode stuff.

[laughing]

This is our culture room,
our tissue culture room.

This is where we grow cells.

So, these cells are really special cells.

They're very important
to your immune system and immunity.

They are cells that can eat germs.

They can eat bacteria and viruses,
and prevent them from infecting you.

We can't see cells with our eyes,

so to take a look at them,
we use this special instrument

called a microscope.

These cells are everywhere in your body.

Your immune system is a system of cells

that act simply to protect you

from really small germs you can't see,

but are potentially very harmful to you.

Fun fact!

So, crying produces tears

that have substances in them
that can actually k*ll germs.

So, next time
your mom tells you to stop crying,

you can tell her,
"I'm k*lling germs, Mom."

Hi, I'm Andrea Armani,
a material scientist,

which means I make new materials.

Today, we'll talk about one that I made.

When you think of materials,
you might think of a jean jacket

or even a cotton shirt,

but really materials can be anything,

all the way to steel on airplanes.

In our lab, we make this material.

It's used in TVs
and cell phones and solar panels.

So, if this is a liquid,
how could you make a TV out of this?

Well, it's just like paint.
It can start off as a liquid and then dry.

Now you actually have
a glowy, fluorescent paint.

This type of material is
a type of quantum dot.

It's made up of four different elements.

A quantum dot is
a tiny particle that can glow.

So, once we have our ingredients,

we put them in this flask,

and we allow it to heat
for about 35, 40 minutes.

This initial solution turns
into a dark red color like this.

So, the red is
the initial reaction happening.

The orange is the final step.

When the lights are off,
these materials glow,

so let's turn the lights off.

So, as you can see,
it glows really bright orange.

This is the final material that we made.

The bright glowy colors
really make TVs shine.

Fun fact!

An example of the material being
used in different ways is Velcro.

It was originally used by astronauts

to keep their stuff
from flying around in space,

but now it's used everywhere…

On shoes and in cars.

Hi, I'm Terry McGlynn,
Professor of Biology.

We'll talk about ants,
how strong they are.

It wasn't until I was becoming a scientist

that I realized,
"Oh, ants are super cool."

There's all these
amazing behaviors they do.

These ants can pick up rocks
ten times their weight.

Usually, the way the ants carry things,

their mouths have
these jaws that we call mandibles,

and the mandibles have
big muscles in them.

If you look at an ant,
it has a big, rounded head capsule.

The muscles for those mandibles
are in their head.

So, just like us,

the power behind our jaws
is actually in our head too.

If you put your hand
right here on your temple

and you move your jaw up and down,
you can feel your muscle here moving.

The muscle for your jaw connects
to the top of your head.

Ants are the same with their mandibles.

It's like if you were to pick up a couch,
but actually be holding it in your mouth.

That's what ants do.

When you see ants carrying things,

usually when they bring
things into their nest,

it's food or water that they will need.

When they carry things out of their nest,
it's because they're cleaning,

so they're carrying out dirt or rocks.

Some ants are pranksters
where they'll take pebbles

and block the nest for other ants.

So, they wake up in the morning

and it's like, "Oh, no.
I have to clear that out again."

Fun fact!

All adult ants are the same size.

You don't grow
once you hatch into an adult.

The babies are larvae.

They're just grub-like things.
They don't have legs.

And then they hatch into an adult.
An adult looks just like this.

[mysterious music playing]

-[music stops]
-Oh1

Sorry, it's just me.

Hi, I'm Nawa Sugiyama,
and I am a zooarchaeologist.

Which means I study animals from the past.

Today we're going to take a look
at some of these animal bones. Let's go.

So, as a zooarchaeologist,

what we do is really try
to reconstruct a puzzle.

We go from really tiny fragments
to try to understand what animal it is,

how it lived,

why it interacted with humans,

and then we slowly try
to build up the complete picture

of what life was like in the past.

Another thing we look at is their teeth,

because our teeth tell us a little bit
about what type of diet it has.

Herbivores eat grasses,

and the teeth necessary to shear
all that grass and leafy stuff together,

they're sharp, thin,
and a lot of nooks and crannies.

A carnivore eats meat primarily,

so what they need are these big, sharp,
knife-looking teeth to slice the meat.

Fun fact!

Sometimes when we're digging up
complete individuals, like this one,

we find the bones
of another animal in its stomach content.

Which means we could
figure out what it ate on its last meal.

[burps]

Hello, my name is Barbara Bar.

I'm an entomologist,
and I'm specialized in honeybee research,

because honeybees are
important for our food production.

If you want to do research
on honeybees, better put on a bee suit.

Bees have a smell language.
They speak in smells.

They have one smell
that is called the alarm pheromone,

and that tells all the other bees,
"An enemy's coming, go sting it."

To avoid that, we use a smoker
when we work on honeybees.

The smoke covers up the alarm pheromone
if they send some out.

This is a beehive where the bees live,

and this is where they come
in and out of the box.

So here we have the youngest bees.

As soon as they hatch,
they look after the queen,

and when they get older,

they start guarding
the entrance of the hive.

When they get better at flying,
they fly out

and they start
collecting pollen and nectar.

So, flowers produce
a sweet juice that is called nectar.

The bees like it. It's sugary.

But when the bees collect the nectar,

they also collect pollen
and fly from flower to flower.

That is called pollination.

Bees pollinate
every third spoon of food we eat.

Without bees, we would not
have apples, pears, and lots of berries.

Food'd be less healthy.

That's why it's
important to save the bees.

Fun fact!

Bees taste with their feet.

So, they can walk over the food
and decide whether it's good enough

for them to eat with their tongue.

[upbeat music playing]

Hey, everybody. I'm Kanten Russell,
professional skateboarder,

and today we're talking
about muscle memory.

One thing to consider about
developing muscle memory

is that you can't rush the steps.

Your brain might tell you,
you can jump over and down some stairs,

but your muscles haven't
developed a memory

of knowing how to do that trick
and balance and land properly.

When you learn how to skateboard,

the muscles you're using are your thighs
and your calves to steady your balance

and feel kind of
a center sense of gravity.

Once you learn the basics of balance

and then eventually shifting
and conditioning your muscles

to have that memory,

those basic essentials are
the building blocks to learning

how to do the more complicated tricks.

By doing it over and over again
and having that repetition,

then your muscles will
remember how to do it

and it will get easier as you go.

Fun fact!

In skateboarding, you will
have one dominant stance

with your left foot or right foot forward.

Eventually in skateboarding,

you'll develop the skills
to be able to do either one,

left foot or right foot, equally.

Left foot forward.

Right foot forward.

Both feel good.

That was amazing!

Science is the best!

[instrumental theme song playing]