Hey, smarty pants, quick question.
When do you most like listening to Who Smarted?
Is it before bed?
On a car ride?
At breakfast?
Or when you're on a roller coaster?
No matter what you said, that's a great answer, because any time's a great time to smart along to Who Smarted.
Although, the roller coaster might be a little loud.
That also includes school time.
Whether you're on your way to school, listening with your teacher in class, at home school, or on recess or snack time.
Who's Smarted is honored to be a part of your learning experience.
And speaking of school, today we're talking about something you probably use in school every day.
It's that long yellow thing in your backpack or desk.
Knock, knock.
What?
Who's there?
Banana.
No, not a banana.
I'm talking about something you use to write with.
You know, there's a dark point on one end and a pink thing on the other.
Smartypants, are you all shouting out, Pencil!
I thought so.
And you're right.
Did you know over 14 billion pencils are made each year?
That's enough to circle the Earth 62 times.
This is Mission Control to Orbital One.
You can stop orbiting the Earth now.
Our pencil experiment is completed.
Phew.
Thank goodness.
62 times.
I'm dizzy.
But despite there being so many pencils and you using a pencil nearly every day, how much do you really know about pencils?
Take that gray material in the center.
You know, the part that makes marks on your paper.
What's that made of?
Smarty Pants, are you all shouting out, lead, right now?
I thought so.
There's just one problem.
You're wrong.
Ah!
Yes, it's called lead, but it's not lead.
At all.
So why is that?
Why are most pencils yellow and marked with the number two?
And just how high can you stack them before they topple over?
It's time for another whiff of science and history on... Who Smarted?
Who Smarted?
Who's smart?
Is it you?
Is it me?
Is it science or history?
Listen up, everyone.
We make smarting lots of fun on Who's Smart?
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Since ancient times, people have found ways to write things down.
Many early writings were images carved in stone known as what?
Emojis, wingdings, or hieroglyphics.
That's right, smarty pants, hieroglyphics.
When ancient people weren't carving hieroglyphics, they were drawing on wax tablets or early forms of paper.
Some ancient Romans used something called a quill, which was a feather from a large bird dipped in ink for writing.
But the quill wasn't the only writing utensil ancient Romans used.
There was another one called a stylus, which historians describe as the ancestor of the pencil.
The stylus was a thin rod that could leave light marks on early paper.
Smarty Pants, do you know what metal Romans used to make a stylus?
Is it A, copper, B, lead, or C, aluminum?
The answer is B, lead.
Ooh, just like the material in a pencil.
Except that's not really lead.
It's not?
No, smarty pants.
Take a guess.
Why don't today's pencils contain actual lead?
Is it A. Lead is a dangerous substance that can make people sick.
B. The material in pencils writes better.
Or C. Pencils have never contained real lead.
Well, while lead is a dangerous substance that can make people sick...
And pencils do write better than true lead.
Those are not the reasons why pencils today don't contain that metal.
The truth is, pencils have never contained real lead.
So the answer is C. Hogwash.
Me pencils do have lead.
Me discover it meself.
Ah, yes.
You must be one of the Englishmen who found some of the original so-called pencil lead.
Aye, that we did, or so the legend goes.
The year was 1564 and I was out tending me sheep in the valley in Borrowdale England, when me friends and I discovered a bunch of trees had been knocked down in a storm and we spotted treasure neath the roots of those trees a shiny black substance which we realized was some sort of magical darker lead.
Except it's not lead at all.
Bah!
It looked like lead, it wrote like lead, and there was a lot of it too.
We shepherds started using it to mark our sheep.
You used it to mark sheep?
You try counting your sheep without marking them.
One, two, three.
Excuse me?
Well, I'm awake, I'm awake.
Not only does counting sheep put you to sleep, you don't know which ones you've already counted, because they all look alike and they keep moving around.
But with this darker lead, I could keep track of me sheep and keep from falling asleep.
Four, five, six.
Four, five, six.
Huh?
What?
I get that.
But the fact remains, it's not really lead.
Hogwash, of course it's lead.
It is a wee bit soft and brittle.
Kept breaking apart on us, so we wrapped it in sheepskin to keep it together.
And then some others made rods of it, wrapped in string.
Apparently, some folks in Italy came up with the idea of creating a hole in a stick and putting the lead inside it.
And by Jove, it worked!
Some Germans ran with the idea and started making lots of wooden pencils for everyone to write with.
About a hundred years after we found the magical lead.
Cool story.
It's still not lead.
But that's what we all call it.
And that's why you might call it lead today, Smarty Pants.
The name stuck, even though it's scientifically wrong.
Smarty Pants, do you know what mineral actually is inside a pencil?
Is it graphite, vegemite, or chalk?
If you said graphite, you're right.
And if you know what vegemite is, you're probably listening in the UK or Australia.
G'day, mate.
In the 1700s, scientists discovered that the graphite in pencils is actually a type of carbon.
So, definitely not lead.
You can buy all you want, but it's a completely different chemical element.
Smarty pants, guess what other object is a type of pure carbon?
A. Rocks.
B. Diamonds.
Or C. Sponges.
The answer is B. Believe it or not, pencils and diamonds are made of the same stuff.
Whoa.
Of course, most diamonds are usually whitish, while pencils are... What color, smarty pants?
Are you shouting out yellow?
Thought so.
And yes...
Most pencils are yellow, but why?
Believe it or not, the color yellow actually represents something.
Is it A, quality, B, geography, or C, royalty?
Smarty pants, if you picked A, quality, you're right.
But if you picked geography or royalty, you're also right.
Back in the late 1800s, the best pencils were not painted.
But a Czech manufacturing company called Hartmut Pencil changed that when it introduced what it called a luxury pencil.
Its golden color was meant to show that this pencil was of superior quality.
The yellow also represented the geography of the pencil's graphite.
By this time, the best graphite was coming from Asia near China.
And Chinese royalty also liked to associate with that golden yellow color.
Heartmoot named its pencil Koh-I-Noor after the massive diamond from Asia that is part of the British crown jewels.
Ooh, like the jewels in my necklace.
Don't I look fabulous, darling?
Um, you just connected a bunch of pencils with string and tied it around your neck.
Yes, but they are yellow, royal pencils made from the same stuff as diamonds.
Right.
Unfortunately, yellow pencils no longer indicate the highest quality.
After the Koh-I-Noor pencil came out, other pencil makers simply copied Hartmut and painted their pencils yellow too.
So now, yellow pencils are pretty much everywhere.
Oh, these cheap pencils are leaving a mark on my neck.
That's kind of what pencils are for, leaving marks.
But you said they were like diamonds.
I said, the graphite in pencils is a form of carbon, just like diamonds, but the carbon that makes graphite is shaped differently than the carbon of diamonds.
The tiniest parts of a diamond.
Its carbon atoms are tightly arranged in a pyramid, making a diamond strong, dazzling and unbreakable.
Graphite's carbon atoms are structured in sheets.
When you rub graphite on paper, the sheets easily slide off making a mark.
And because the graphite mark is so thin, you could do a lot of writing with just one pencil.
One mathematician estimated a single pencil can draw a line longer than 700 miles.
That's two and a half times as long as the Grand Canyon.
This is Mission Control to Canyon One.
You can start your single pencil drawing experiment in three, two, one.
And speaking of numbers, you might have noticed or heard of the infamous number two pencil.
But what does that number mean?
The answer is right after this quick break.
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This episode is sponsored by IXL.
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Now back to Who Smarted.
Smartypants, if your pencil is from the United States, you probably have a number on it, perhaps the number two.
But do you know what that number means?
Does it have to do with the pencil's quality, the color, or the softness?
If you guessed softness, you're right.
Back in 1795, a French engineer found a way to improve low quality graphite by mixing it with clay.
Different combinations made softer or harder pencil lead and the softer combinations made darker marks.
The number system was later created to label a pencil softness.
For students, number one pencils are too soft and smudge easily.
Number three and number four pencils are too hard so they don't make dark enough marks, especially on answer forms known as bubble sheets, where you have to fill in a multiple choice.
But number two pencils are just right.
They make nice dark marks without smudging too much.
Well, now I have number two pencil smudged all over my neck.
No problem.
You can get rid of that with a little bread.
Bread?
Yep.
People once used bread to erase pencil marks.
That is, until around 1770.
That's when a type of gum from trees in South America was discovered to be a better eraser.
Smarty Pants, do you know what this gum is called?
Here's a hint.
To erase a pencil mark, you use this gum to rub it out.
That's how this substance got its name.
Smarty Pants, are you calling out rubber?
Thought so, and you're right.
Chances are you have some version of a rubber eraser at the non-writing end of your pencil.
Of course, while pencils are mostly used for writing, some people have used them for more silly things like setting world records.
A man from Brooklyn set a record by snapping 102 pencils within one minute.
While another person took a minute to karate chop a record 164 pencils.
Hi-yah!
If you like collecting pencils, you can try breaking the record for world's largest pencil collection, which contains over 24000 pencils.
Or maybe you and your classmates or friends or family want to make a pencil tower.
A group of middle school girls set a pencil stacking record in 2017 by building a tower 419 pencil stories high, before it all came crashing down.
Oh, and for anyone wondering, a pencil story is made by laying two pencils across two other pencils and then alternating.
Kind of like Jenga.
419 pencil stories?
That's a lot of pencil counting.
I'd rather count sheep.
One, two, three.
Hmm.
A triple smarty shout-out to Carter, Beckham, and Jace in Harriman, Utah.
We hear you learn about all the cool things while getting ready for bed.
Now that is some top-notch nighttime smarting.
Thanks for listening, you three.
This episode Pencils was written by Dave Beaudry and voiced by Adam Tex Davis, Max Kamaski, Jason Williams, Charlotte Cohn and Jerry Kolber.
Technical direction and sound design by Josh Hahn.
Who Smarted is recorded and mixed at the Relic Room Studios.
Our associate producer is Max Kamaski.
The theme song is by Brian Suarez, with lyrics written and performed by Adam Tex Davis.
Who Smarted was created and produced by Adam Tex Davis and Jerry Kolber.
This has been an Atomic Entertainment production.
Who's smarter?
