Michael (2:06)

Oh, sorry. I almost couldn't breathe when I saw.

Hannah (2:09)

The discount they gave me on my first order.

Michael (2:11)

Oh, sorry.

Hannah (2:13)

Namaste. Visit 1-800-contacts.com today to save on your first order. 1-800-contacts.

Michael (2:25)

Hello and welcome to the Rest is Science. Today is an episode of Field Notes, where Hannah and I share amazing stories, objects, our deepest fears.

Hannah (2:36)

Oh, we're going there today.

Michael (2:38)

We might be or we might not. If you have questions or things you want to share with us, you can always reach out. We would love to take on those, but today Hannah told me that she brought something related to ellipses.

Hannah (2:50)

I did. Okay. If you want to draw a Circle. Easy peasy. Get a compass.

Michael (2:55)

Hold on. I want to guess what you brought. You've already given me a piece of information that's almost confirming what I was gonna guess.

Hannah (3:02)

Oh, really? Okay, let's imagine I do.

Michael (3:04)

Is it an ellipsograph?

Hannah (3:05)

It might be.

Michael (3:07)

Is it just an ellipsograph? Does it allow me to draw an ellipse, or does it simply trace an ellipse in a surprising way?

Hannah (3:14)

It allows you to draw one, but I think in a surprising way. I think in a very beautiful way.

Michael (3:22)

Is it a circle that rolls on the inside of another circle? No. Okay, let's see it.

Hannah (3:30)

Okay. You want to draw a circle. You get the compass from your primary school pencil case that you have not opened since and never needed to use in actual real life. And that's fine because you just. A circle is a fixed distance from a single point and trace out the arc. Right. Easy peasy. Ellipse is way harder. Way harder. Because instead of having one focus, you have two. And you can do it by putting two pins into a piece of paper and like tying a single piece of string between the two and then using a pencil to kind of trace out that arc. That is one way of doing it. So some friends of mine at Maker's Cabinet have over engineered a way to draw ellipses, and I thought you might enjoy it.

Michael (4:12)

Yeah, you know, you're sort of.

Hannah (4:13)

There's sort of like a draftsman in you somewhere.

Michael (4:15)

Yeah, there is.

Hannah (4:16)

The key point here is that an ellipse is a fixed distance between two foci. Okay. Between two points.

Michael (4:25)

So what does that mean? That means that no matter where you are on the ellipse, the combined distance from that point to both foci is fixed. Is the same.

Hannah (4:35)

Exactly. Right.

Michael (4:36)

Got it.

Hannah (4:36)

Okay, so do you want to have a little play with this? See how you can get that to work?

Michael (4:39)

Okay. Okay. So. So there's a magnet. Oh, that's a nice, strong magnet. There's a magnet underneath this page. This sits on it. Ah, yeah. I wanted people to appreciate this ellipsograph. Look at this. Those shuttles are following straight line tracks. And yet we trace out an ellipse from circular motion. Well, from linear motion, we get circular motion. I love that. It's so well made.

Hannah (5:08)

It's beautiful, isn't it?

Michael (5:09)

I've seen them made of wood and plastic, but this is like brass. Look at that.

Hannah (5:14)

Isn't that beautiful? Come on.

Michael (5:19)

What a treat.

Hannah (5:20)

I mean, isn't that a treat? Yeah, they're the coolest objects.

Michael (5:25)

They're how the planets move.

Hannah (5:26)

They are how the planets move. But the thing is that there were such big arguments about the idea that that is how the planets move. Because the Greeks in particular were obsessed with circles. They thought there was like the Platonic ideal, the symmetry of it, the beauty of it is just absolute perfection. And this stood for a really long time, this idea of circles. I mean, like thousands and thousands of years people thought it's circles that's going on in the sky. And then Tico, brah. Or sometimes people say Tycho, don't they?

Michael (5:53)

I say Tycho. I say Tycho, brah.

Hannah (5:58)

From now on, that is how it will be known. And he was a bit of a bruh, actually, because he, he got into an argument with someone about a formula, had a jewel, ended up losing his nose.

Michael (6:08)

No kidding.

Hannah (6:09)

You know this, right?

Michael (6:09)

I didn't know this.

Hannah (6:10)

So he lost his nose. So he had a prosthetic nose. He had different ones. He had a bronze one, he had a silver one for special occasions and then a gold one that flickered in the candlelight to look realistic. But he collected all of these observations of celestial objects in the sky. He also had a pet elk that he used to like bring around to places. In the end, the elk passed away because it got drunk.

Michael (6:38)

Oh, no.

Hannah (6:38)

Got the elk drunk and tried to take it downstairs. Anyway, whatever. He was a bit of a dude. Yeah.

Michael (6:43)

This was in like the late 1500s.

Hannah (6:45)

Exactly, right, early 1600s. Exactly. And he collected all of these observations and he handed off all of that data to his assistant Kepler. And Kepler was like looking for the circles, looking for the circles, trying this circle, that circle, and then eventually came to the conclusion that, no, it's not circles, it's ellipses. And he said that it was like a cartload of dung that you had to swallow because he just hated, hated the idea that there might be anything other than circles in the sky.

Michael (7:16)

But it was, but it was. And swallowing that heap of dung really moved us forward. It really did. Imagine that being like, oh, here's my assistant Kepler, like you imagine better. Help. Speaking of the motion of planets as perfect, because I actually brought something related to them. Now this shows them in circular orbits. Sorry, Kepler, but. But it's a simplified thing for a reason. Watch. This is an orrery calendar. It's a page a day calendar. It doesn't tell you an inspirational quote for each day or give you a sudoku for each day. It shows you the relative positions of the planets each day. So this is January 1st of 2026. It's a 2026 calendar. And then the next one is. We actually got 2 of January 1st. And then the next one is Friday, January 2nd. And as you can see, almost imperceptible. They almost don't change. However, you use it like a flipbook, and you can see just how quickly the planets are moving in their orbits.

Hannah (8:22)

Okay, show, show, show.

Michael (8:23)

Neptune basically doesn't move at all in a year, but Earth goes all the way around once. Okay, now, full disclosure, you can only flip it backwards easily. You kind of have to, like, break the back. Oh, but isn't that cool? So you can plan ahead and be like, ooh, I want to do that thing. But only when Uranus is as far away from Earth as it's going to be all year and they've got the moon phases on them.

Hannah (8:47)

It sort of feels like more than 360 pages, but it isn't.

Michael (8:50)

Well, we made it out of a special recyclable paper, like a compostable paper. Because I was like, if we're going to print this many sheets, I want to keep Earth happy.

Hannah (8:59)

That is absolutely delightful. Mercury whizzing around there.

Michael (9:03)

I know, Isn't it nuts?

Hannah (9:04)

And Jupiter just barely. I mean, it's taking its time.

Michael (9:07)

Jupiter takes its time to go go around the sun, but around its own axis. Jupiter is, like, really fast. Takes the earth 24 hours to go once around its axis, but it takes Jupiter just 10 hours.

Hannah (9:19)

So it's two and a bit days for every day.

Michael (9:21)

That's wild because Jupiter is huge.

Hannah (9:25)

Yeah.

Michael (9:25)

So if you are some gas out on the edge of Jupiter around the equator, you are booking it. Like, no wonder that great red spot won't go away. The storms on Jupiter have an enormous amount of energy just from that planet whipping it around.

Hannah (9:40)

I'm just liking the idea of being on a spaceship and just your face being pulled back with the speed of it.

Michael (9:44)

Well, I mean, it's not quite that fast. I mean, none of us are on Earth being like, whoa, Even though we are rotating at hundreds of miles per hour around its axis. Earth is just too big even for us to appreciate that.

Hannah (9:56)

Don't ruin my mentality.

Michael (9:58)

It does make us a little bit lighter. In the same way that when you're on a spinning carnival ride, you feel like you're being pulled away, really. You're being pulled tangential to the circle. But on Earth, we are feeling that motion, too. And so we weigh a few fractions of a gram less because of its rotation. If it stopped moving, we'd Be like, oh, all of the gravity. I'm feeling all of it.

Hannah (10:21)

So, wait, what's that on Jupiter then? So you're spinning faster, but it is heavier.

Michael (10:26)

You're spinning faster, so you've got an even greater, like, uplift. We often call it a centrifugal force when it's not really a force, but it's that, like, whoa, I'm moving away from the center of rotation of my curve. When in reality, you're leaving tangential to the path, but on a big circle that feels like going straight up.

Hannah (10:46)

There's a ride at Thought park, and what's interesting about it is that it has the longest negative G, basically. So you are effectively airborne as you, if you like, in your seat. But the way that they have to do it, you know, normally you are. As you go on a roller coaster, you are forced into your seat, right? So you want to go down. It's like. Like really feel the weight of it. In this one, it's the opposite. And the way that they do it is they. To slow down the carriage as it goes on the outside of a turn in order for you to really have that feeling of sort of being flung out into the air.

Michael (11:22)

Whoa. I won't be riding on that anytime soon. I don't. No, I just. I never had. As a kid, I actually collected newspaper clippings of deaths on roller coasters. It made me feel like my fear was justified. I still have the box. It's actually the box that my Bill Nye fan club subscription goodies came in. And then I just put little comics and recipes and deaths at the Worlds of Fun theme park in Kansas City. All in there, please.

Hannah (11:53)

One day. Can we do a field notes where you go through that box?

Michael (11:55)

Yeah, we sure can. It's gonna be a lot of, like, corny Family Circus cartoons that I thought were quite clever when I was 8. But I brought one more thing. This is actually for your two daughters.

Hannah (12:07)

Okay. Amazing.

Michael (12:08)

You.

Hannah (12:08)

You better believe I'm stealing this. By the way, just to be absolutely.

Michael (12:11)

Clear, you cannot steal that, because I have to make a video about it, and it's the only one I have.

Hannah (12:15)

Fine.

Michael (12:17)

I will get you one that can be just yours. Here's two CMY cubes. These are the additions that we put in a Curiosity box. As if I'm gonna buy anything for you. But the couple who invented those are fantastic people, and we partnered with them to make this edition of their CMY cube. It is a translucent cube about 2 inches on each edge and opposite faces of the Cube have the same color, the same translucent color. And the colors that you'll find are. There's three of them. Cyan, magenta and yellow. Cmy. Those are primary colors in the CMY system. And you can combine them to make all kinds of other colors.

Hannah (13:04)

You've got magenta, then twist it, you've got yellow and then twist it again and you have got cyan.

Michael (13:13)

Cyan.

Hannah (13:13)

I mean, these are the colors you get in your printer.

Michael (13:15)

That's right.

Hannah (13:16)

But if you combine them together. Hang on. Does it work? Does it work?

Michael (13:24)

It does work, yeah.

Hannah (13:26)

I'm just trying to work out what the colors would be.

Michael (13:28)

It can be very confusing because there's not just the subtractive color mixing that's happening, there's also reflection. But greens and purples and oranges are produced as the light is subtractively changed, passing through the cyan filter. Only cyan comes through.

Hannah (13:46)

Hey, do you know where you send naughty rainbows?

Michael (13:49)

Where?

Hannah (13:49)

To prism.

Michael (13:56)

I do like that. Prisms can create rainbows, but they can also destroy them. If you send a prism through a rainbow, it comes out as white light.

Hannah (14:04)

Does it?

Michael (14:05)

Yeah. And if you look at a rainbow, like a rainbow in a children's book through a prism at the right distance, it'll get smashed into just a white line. Yeah.

Hannah (14:14)

These are absolutely amazing.

Michael (14:15)

They're really beautiful and they're really well made.

Hannah (14:18)

Also, what I notice is like the source of truth. This is the second object that you've given me for my children with extremely sharp edges.

Michael (14:26)

Oh, that's right. Yeah. You're welcome.

Hannah (14:31)

Amazing. Should we go to a break?

Michael (14:33)

Let's take a break.

Hannah (14:39)

This episode is brought to you by Cancer Research uk. In the uk, nearly one in two people will face cancer in their lifetime. Tell you what, though, I've already had it, so between us, we're fine now.

Michael (14:49)

I'm safe.

Hannah (14:50)

That's not how statistics works.

Michael (14:51)

Shoot.

Hannah (14:52)

The question is, could science stop cancer before it begins?

Michael (14:56)

And over the past 50 years, Cancer Research UK has helped double cancer survival in the UK. And that's proof of what research can achieve. Like take cervical cancer. Almost every case is caused by hpv, the human papillomavirus. And when scientists uncovered that link, prevention became possible.

Hannah (15:14)

Indeed it did, by vaccine. And it's protection that works way before the cancer itself can actually grow. After the vaccine was introduced, cervical cancer rates in England were nearly 90% lower than expected in women in their 20s.

Michael (15:27)

And knowing about HPV improves screening and that's, you know, vital for diagnosing cervical cancer. Early.

Hannah (15:33)

I mean, we're now genuinely at a point where this is a disease that is disappearing in younger women in the uk. This is something that I really hope my daughters will never, never have to deal with.

Michael (15:42)

For more information about Cancer Research uk, their research breakthroughs and how you can support them, visit cancerresearchuk.org REST ISScience.

Hannah (15:56)

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Michael (16:14)

The best stuff goes fast, so bring.

Hannah (16:16)

Your gift list and your wish list.

Michael (16:17)

To your nearest Nordstrom rack. Today, toast the holidays in a new way and raise a glass of Rumchata, a delicious creamy blend of horchata with rum. Enjoy it over ice or in your coffee. Rumchata. Your holiday cocktails just got sweeter. Tap or click the banner for more. Drink responsibly. Caribbean rum with real dairy cream. Natural and artificial flavors. Alcohol 13. 13.75% by volume 27.5 proof. Copyright 2025 Agave Loco Brands, Pojoaque, Wisconsin. All rights reserved.

Hannah (16:54)

Welcome back. This is Field notes, an extra half an hour that you get to spend in the company of me and Michael every single week where we try and impress each other with things that we know, things that we found.

Michael (17:04)

I'm not trying to impress you with any of this.

Hannah (17:06)

Oh, I'm absolutely trying to impress you.

Michael (17:08)

I'm trying to impress my mom.

Hannah (17:11)

Yeah, aren't we all?

Michael (17:13)

Anyway, sorry. This got really deep. Deep very quickly. Let's, let's, let's lighten it up. Who's got a question?

Hannah (17:21)

Should we, should we go to the mailbag?

Michael (17:22)

Yeah.

Hannah (17:22)

Okay. All right. We've got some interesting questions this week. By the way, please do feel free to send in your questions to the rest of science. Goalhanger.com all right. Alana asks, you can invite three other people from the world of science who are dead or alive to a dinner party. Who are you choosing?

Michael (17:40)

Oh, my gosh. Do you have an answer?

Hannah (17:44)

I mean, I've definitely got some favorites.

Michael (17:46)

Yeah, sure, sure, sure. I feel like, you know, Albert Einstein is one of the more obvious cliche types of answers, but I want to know what his last words were. You know, he spoke them in German to a nurse who did not know German, and so they've been lost. No, I want to know if it was like, oh, crap, or if it was like, oh, it's actually MC cubed, you know, or something. I don't know, but I would love to find out.

Hannah (18:14)

I'd also like to know how he feels about, you know, the story about Einstein's brain. Oh, his brain, yes. And then it was sort of extracted, put in a jar, and then just forgotten about.

Michael (18:25)

That's right.

Hannah (18:26)

It was in the back of a cupboard and someone found it years later and were like, why is this? And it turned out to be Einstein's brain. Einstein's brain.

Michael (18:33)

And this was at like a medical facility, by the way. It wasn't just like, oh, his neighbors came over and pulled it out in the garden. It was like donated to be studied and then just forgotten about. Forgotten about in a little medical closet.

Hannah (18:45)

But when they did study it, they basically found there was nothing remarkable about it. Right. Maybe slightly more white matter than the rest of us. Okay, I'd like to ask about that. I would like to ask about that. How do you feel about your brain being forgotten about in a cupboard for.

Michael (18:57)

A very long time? Okay, so besides Einstein, who's on your list?

Hannah (19:01)

Okay, I would quite like to meet Galois.

Michael (19:05)

Who is that?

Hannah (19:05)

Okay, so Galois is like, he's such a dude. He's this French mathematician. He's like 19, 20 years old, and he is super, super, super bright, but he's also very French and loves to have affairs with beautiful women. One of the people he has an affair with turns out to be engaged to some very important soldier in the town who challenges him to a duel. And of course, because he is very French and this is, you know, around 1700s, you can't turn down a jewel. So he agrees to go off and have the duel, have the fight with this, you know, with, with his lover's partner. Before he does that, he decides he needs to finish his maths theory.

Michael (19:50)

Okay.

Hannah (19:50)

So he stays up all night and he scribbles this stuff down. It's all about, you know, you have quadratics, which is where you have. We have something squared.

Michael (19:59)

Yeah.

Hannah (20:00)

You have cubics, which is, which is cubed to the power of three. But he was looking at quartics and quintics, equations to the power five. Right. I'll be honest with you, it gets very hard very quickly. Yeah, but so he's, he's there, he's like, I've got to, I've got to work out these equations. I've got to work out these equations. And we still have the kind of ink splattered pages that he wrote on that night. Every now and then he's like, he's scribbling down the theory, he's crossing stuff out and these. Then he writes like, la femme, la femme. And then he's like, oh, I'm gonna die in the morning. And he's like, no, I've got to get back to these equations. Anyway, he goes off, he does the jaw, he loses in the jewel, he loses his life. But those pages and the work that he did in advance of that then goes on to be absolutely foundational. And now every person who goes to study mathematics as a degree level will learn galois theory. This 20 year old kid, what a romantic story that is.

Michael (20:50)

Wow. It's like if he'd been given just a couple more days, what else could he have discovered? Or was it the impending possibility of death that made him work so well? It just spilled off all that brilliance at once.

Hannah (21:02)

I'd just like to meet him at dinner and be like, you idiot. You idiot.

Michael (21:08)

That would be very cool. Can we go to the same dinner party together?

Hannah (21:12)

Okay, so we've got Einstein and Galois.

Michael (21:14)

We could go way back in time. Like I'm thinking about Pythagoras would be neat. This is sort of the world of math at this point. But like I want to hear about the meaning of numbers to him. What do they mean to you? It was much more religious.

Hannah (21:28)

He didn't really like numbers. I mean, they didn't really like numbers at all, the Greeks.

Michael (21:32)

Not all of them.

Hannah (21:33)

Sure.

Michael (21:34)

Those irrational ones.

Hannah (21:35)

Those irrational ones they weren't so happy with.

Michael (21:37)

They were like the demons, obviously. Archimedes. I think it'd be cool just to say that I met him. I love that. Of all the things Archimedes did, the inventions, the eureka. I'm in a bathtub and I've learned about volume and how to measure it. The story goes that on his gravestone, do you know what he had them put there?

Hannah (21:59)

Go on.

Michael (22:00)

A sphere, a cylinder and a cone of equal heights. Because he showed the relationships between their volumes. And he was so proud of that that he was like, of everything I did. I want that to be what's on.

Hannah (22:13)

My grave is Archimedes the one who died at the hand of a soldier who was trying to capture him. I think there was some sort of invasion of his island. And then he was told to, because he was such a genius, they were like gonna capture him and bring him back to the whatever king. Okay, something. The soldier went in and was like, you need to come with me. And he was like, don't disturb me when I'm with my circles. And so the soldier killed him. Wow.

Michael (22:40)

For the circles.

Hannah (22:41)

For the circles.

Michael (22:42)

He just couldn't give him up.

Hannah (22:43)

Yeah. Maybe instead of doing like, maybe instead of picking people based on interesting things they have to offer, maybe we should just get the people who've got the most stupid deaths in science.

Michael (22:52)

Yeah, right. And we can just make fun of them.

Hannah (22:55)

Just make fun of them.

Michael (22:55)

You could bring Archimedes and then have a bunch of circle foods. Okay. Slices of bologna, pie, pizzas, and be like, hey, let's cut them up. Let's make some cords, some diameters.

Hannah (23:06)

In your honor. In your honor. Here is this, Here's a cone shaped cake.

Michael (23:11)

So yeah, it's not so much to learn from them, but it's to honor them and kind of razz him a bit.

Hannah (23:16)

Yeah, I'd be up for that. That sounds like a good dinner party. Actually, Pythagoras himself, he's got an amazing death. Do you know about Pythagoras death?

Michael (23:23)

No.

Hannah (23:23)

Okay, so, I mean, this is possibly apocryphal, but I'll be honest with you.

Michael (23:27)

A lot of stories that old are.

Hannah (23:29)

Sure.

Michael (23:29)

Yeah.

Hannah (23:29)

Right. Pythagoras of Triangle of Fame. Absolutely amazing. Had a school, basically, like had loads of, you know, disciples terrified of beans. Really, really hated them. Thought that they looked like sort of miniature humans. Just really. He absolutely abhorred them. Yeah.

Michael (23:44)

Who hasn't thought that?

Hannah (23:47)

Who hasn't thought that beans were banned in his school?

Michael (23:49)

Okay, got it.

Hannah (23:50)

And the rumor goes that he had sort of a fight with some other people. They wanted to join his school. He didn't let them. They barricaded his house, set it on fire, and he ran away. Managed to get free. Ran away. And they were chasing him. And then he carried on running and it was all fine until he came up to a field of beans and he refused to run through the field of beans as they caught up with him and killed him. Wow, this sounds like a great dinner party. Beans and pizza for dinner, would you bring beans? Yeah, would you not bring beans?

Michael (24:20)

Bean pizza, bean cookies. Like a can of refried beans is a cylinder. Archimedes would love that. Pythagoras wouldn't, but you know, he. He's got a. He's got a lot of credit. It's time for him to get a little roasting. Roasting. That's right. That's right. Well, we've got one more question. This one is from Fred. Fred asks, why do goldfish have such short memories Okay.

Hannah (24:45)

I think that this is a massive misconception.

Michael (24:47)

I was wondering if that might be.

Hannah (24:48)

Yeah, I think that actually there have been experiments with goldfish where they can sort of, you know, be shown to navigate a maze to get food and then can remember the route that they've learned months afterwards.

Michael (25:01)

So where did this misconception start?

Hannah (25:03)

I think it's just snobbery.

Michael (25:05)

Right?

Hannah (25:05)

I think it's just straight up snobbery. But also it really does, I think, underline the cruelty of putting a goldfish in a bowl where it's got nothing to do. Because of course, if it's only got a three second memory, who cares that it doesn't have anything to interact with? But I mean, we did an episode about boredom. All this time, those pretty little goldfish that we've been having to effectively decorate our homes, we've been essentially torturing them.

Michael (25:30)

Yeah. I don't know what kind of space they need, but yeah, a three second memory seems pretty made up maybe to make us feel better about like, oh, yeah, there's not much to do there, but yeah. I don't know how much room they need. They might even need like a place where they feel like they can go to be safe and hidden. Like a little, you know, rock cave feature.

Hannah (25:47)

Maybe a goldfish friend.

Michael (25:49)

A goldfish friend?

Hannah (25:50)

Yeah.

Michael (25:51)

Do they like having friends?

Hannah (25:52)

I think they do.

Michael (25:52)

I think they all surprised they did. Yeah.

Hannah (25:54)

Yeah. I've never owned one of you.

Michael (25:56)

I might have had one when I was like 4 because I kind of remember fish, but not since then. My daughter really wants a bird.

Hannah (26:06)

Oh, yeah.

Michael (26:06)

And I'm like, birds deserve to be free. Not gonna happen.

Hannah (26:09)

So I had a cockatiel when I was younger. What was interesting about him is he would sit on your shoulder in the garden.

Michael (26:16)

Oh, outdoors.

Hannah (26:17)

Yeah.

Michael (26:17)

And not leave.

Hannah (26:17)

And not leave. I think you can bond with the bird. I think that's my point. I think you can bond with the bird.

Michael (26:22)

I believe that. For sure. For sure. And you guys can bond with us by joining our newsletter at thereestisciencegoalhanger.

Hannah (26:30)

Dot.

Michael (26:37)

Hey, Ryan Reynolds here wishing you a very happy half off holiday because right now Mint Mobile is offering you the gift of 50% off unlimited. To be clear, that's half the price, not half the service. Mint is still premium unlimited wireless for a great price. So that means half day.

Hannah (26:57)

Yeah.

Michael (26:57)

Give it a try@mintmobile.com Switch upfront payment of 45 for 3 month plan equivalent to 15 per month required new customer offer for first 3 months only. Speed slow after 35 gigabytes of networks busy, taxes and fees extra. See mintmobile.com.