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The Mysteries About True Histories podcast is back for season two. If you're a kid who would love to travel through time to solve cool mysteries, perplexing puzzles and tricky riddles, then this podcast is the perfect audio treat for you every week. Join me, Molly and my best friend Max as we take our problem solving skills to amazing places like ancient Egypt, ancient Greece, or the Galapagos Islands in 1875 to help out the one and only Charles Darwin. We never know where we're going to wind up or what we're going to find, which is all of the fun. So put on your time traveling shoes and listen as a family. You can listen to mysteries about true Histories on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
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Hello Smarty Pants. Welcome to Smarty Qs, a bonus segment only for WhoSmarted plus subscribers, where I answer questions submitted by the Smarty Pants Our first question from Olivia asks how does an archaeologist know some dinosaurs had good binocular vision and others didn't, since their eyes aren't there when the skeleton is dug up? Well, great question, Olivia, especially since the question holds the answer. Archaeologists may not dig up an actual dinosaur eye, but what they do find is a fossilized sclerotic ring, a ring of bones found inside the eye of many fish and reptiles and including dinosaurs. In modern animals, larger sclerotic rings generally correlate to greater visual capabilities. Using the size of sclerotic ring fossils, archaeologists can estimate the quality of a dinosaur's binocular vision. Our next question is from Listener ProCon in Naperville, Illinois. Who wants to know how are diamonds made? Diamonds are made when carbon in the Earth's upper mantle about 100 miles below the Earth's surface, becomes so hot and pressurized that it bonds together. Each carbon atom creates a special chemical bond with four other carbon atoms, which each create bonds with four other carbon atoms, and so on, many billions of times over, until they form a crystal. This unique network of atomic bonds is what makes diamonds such a hard and unyielding material. It is unknown how long diamonds take to form, but it's estimated Most diamonds are 1 to 3 billion years old. However, they were brought to Earth's surface much earlier, relatively speaking, anywhere from 25 to 146 million years ago, volcanic eruptions of igneous kimberlite pushed diamonds to the surface. Shine on, you crazy diamonds. Finally, we have a question from our friend Ollie, who asks, is it possible for things or people to become invisible? In theory, yes. We see objects when they reflect light in the electromagnetic spectrum visible to us. But what if we could bend light around an object so that no light is reflected? Enter the new science of transformation optics and metamaterials, super sophisticated materials that have light bending properties not found in nature. The idea is that an object or person cloaked in metamaterials would not reflect light. Rather, the light would bend around the object or person and reflect what was behind them to create the illusion of invisibility. So far, researchers have only been able to produce metamaterials that bend microwaves, which aren't visible to the human eye but are great for heating up leftover pizza, something I love to make disappear. Thanks for listening to SmartYQs. And remember, you too can have your question answered by me. Simply email your question or questions to me, the Trusty narrator, at WhoSmartedoSmarted.com that's WhoSmartedoSmarted.Com thanks for being a subscriber. Stay curious and keep smarting, my friends. Howdy, smarty partners. Welcome to the latest edition of Smarty qs, the bonus segment for our who Smarted plus subscribers, where I, the trusty narrator, answer questions submitted by you, the smarty listener. Okay, our first question is from Marco, who asks, how do our eyes adjust to the dark? Cool question, Marko. Okay, the first thing you need to know is that the three parts of your eye responsible for the range of light you perceive are the pupil, cones and rods, and something called rhodopsin. Let's start with your pupil, which contracts or expands to block or allow in light. Next, cone cells in your retina perceive color, and rod cells in your retina perceive black and white. And then there's rhodopsin, a chemical found in the rods that absorbs photons and helps you see in low light. However, when a rhodopsin molecule absorbs light, it splits into retinal and opsin molecules that later recombine back into rhodopsin. In bright light, all the rhodopsin splits. So when you're plunged into darkness, you must wait until the rhodopsin recombines before you can see again. Whoa. You go Rhodopsin. Our next question comes from SmartYQ aficionados Charlie and Ezra from Brisbane, Australia. They ask, do you really swallow spiders in your sleep? Hmm. Is that why I woke up with webbed teeth? Just kidding. This one is easy. Of course you swallow spiders in your sleep. In fact, every person swallows an average of 8 spiders in their sleep every year. Just kidding again. In truth, the number of spiders you swallow every year is exactly zero. Phew. Finding a spider in your bed might seem scary to you, but it's also scary for the spider. Spiders are very sensitive to vibrations and would be terrified by the noise of your breathing and heartbeat as you sleep. Experts admit. In theory, a spider could make its way into your mouth while you're asleep. But between all the scary vibrations and the fact you'd likely feel eight tiny legs crawling on your face, the chances of it going into your mouth are slim to none. As for waking up with your cat sitting on your head, that's a different story. For our last question, Emma asks, why does your hair look darker when it's wet? To answer that, we need to know why does hair have color at all? It's because the pigment in your hair absorbs a portion of the light that hits it and reflects the rest back into your eyes. This reflected light determines the color of your hair. When hair gets wet, water, which absorbs almost no light, creates a thin film around your hair. This water film reflects or refracts light back onto the hair, which absorbs light a second time before reflecting it back into your eyes, making it look darker. The Whoa girl is off today, so I'll do it for her. Whoa. And that concludes another episode of Smarty Q. To have me answer your your questions on a future episode, just send me an email with your first name, location and question to WhoSmarted WhoSmarted.com that's WhoSmarted@WhoSmarted.com thanks for listening and for subscribing to who Smarted. Plus.