Hey guys, Trusty here. You know one of my favorite things about summer?
Backyard hangs. Hanging out with friends, having burgers, playing frisbee.
It's the best. And that's when our outdoor space becomes the main event.
So this year, I finally upgraded my setup.
Thank you, Wayfair. I got this awesome outdoor dining table that seats eight.
Eight! It came fast, it looked perfect right out of the box, and now it's where we eat, play games, and, you know, just hang out.
I also grabbed a set of string lights and a giant umbrella, so now it feels like my own little vacation spot without leaving the yard.
And you know how much I love not leaving the yard.
Wayfair seriously has everything. Grills, games, planters, even trampolines.
And the shipping? Free. Always free, even on the big stuff.
So I got that table in under a week, and I didn't pay a dime for the shipping.
So if your summer plans involve kicking back, out back, head to Wayfair.com to shop outdoor furniture, grills, lawn games, and way more for wayfair.
Way less. That's Wayfair.com. W-A-Y-F-A-I-R.com.
Wayfair. Every style, every home. Hello, Smarty Pants.
You're listening to the first edition of Smarty Q's, a bonus segment just for our Who Smarted Plus subscribers, where I, the trusty narrator, answer questions submitted by you, the Smarty Pants.
Our first question is from Charlie in Brisbane, Australia, who asks, how is stained glass made?
Well, Charlie, before you can make stained glass, you need to make regular or plain glass.
Plain glass is made by heating up sand. That's right, the stuff you make castles with at the beach, to a super duper high temperature until it melts into a molten liquid state.
How hot does sand have to get before it melts?
Roughly 3,090 degrees Fahrenheit, which is about how hot a space shuttle gets as it reenters Earth's atmosphere.
Once the sand is in a molten state, various metallic oxides are mixed in to color it.
Copper for red, cobalt for blue, manganese for purple, antimony for yellow, and iron for green, turning plain glass into stained glass.
Now, if only I could get this pizza stain out of my favorite Who Smarted t-shirt.
Next, we move from the sandy beach, or as we just learned, countless itsy bitsy grains of future glass, to take a dip in the ocean with a question from our good friend, Jake O., who asks, how is water made?
Furthermore, can you just add oxygen to hydrogen to make water?
Well, as you probably already know, water is made of two hydrogen atoms, H2, attached to a single oxygen atom, O, otherwise known as H2O.
To answer H2Jaco's second question first, yes, to make water, you can just add oxygen to hydrogen.
But, and this is a gigantic but, doing so would be super dangerous.
For water to form, the electron orbits of hydrogen and oxygen need to link.
This requires a lot of energy. Since hydrogen is flammable and oxygen aids combustion, the energy applied to link the atoms could result in a huge explosion.
The truth is, water isn't made. It's just here on Earth in a finite amount.
How Earth got its water is unclear. Some scientists think water may have been present on Earth when it formed, and others think a ball of H2O hurtling through space crashed into us.
It's a mystery to this day. Next, we have a question submitted by Ezra, also in Brisbane, Australia.
Ezra asks, how do dogs go woof? It's a great question, Ezra.
Dogs go woof, aka bark, by using vocal cords very similar to those that we humans use.
In humans, two bands of muscle in the throat close and vibrate to create sound or speech.
Vocal cords in dogs do the same, but instead they bark or woof.
But if human vocal cords and dog vocal cords are so similar, why can't dogs talk?
Simply put, dogs aren't smarty pants enough to learn and vocalize language.
However, research has shown dogs may alter their barks to express different meanings, like growling over food, alerting people to strangers, or just saying hi.
Well, that concludes this edition of Smarty Cues.
To have your questions answered on future installments, just email us at whosmarted at whosmarted.com.
From me and all your friends at Whosmarted, thank you for subscribing and smarting to Whosmarted.
Hey, Smarty Pants, Trusty here. What if your watch could call your parents, text your friends, play games, and still help you ace the school day?
Say hi to Pinwheel, the smartwatch that's built just for kids.
Whether you're walking to school, riding your bike, or hanging out with friends, Pinwheel lets you stay in touch with the people that you care about and blocks everyone else.
No junk, no spam, just the good stuff. You can pick your favorite color band, play fun games, and even chat with a super cool kid-safe AI if your grownups turn it on.
And when it's time to focus, your watch knows thanks to custom schedules that your parents set.
Right now, you can get awesome deals on watches for back to school plus free shipping and returns.
Check it out at pinwheel.com slash smarted.
That's P-I-N-W-H-E-E-L dot com slash smarted and gear up with the coolest watch made just for you.
Who Smarted is brought to you by Squarespace.
Now, you know I'm good about creating new adventures and episodes of Who Smarted, but you don't know that I procrastinate on other stuff, like a website for one of our new projects.
Oops. When the website builder Squarespace reached out about sponsoring Who Smarted, I decided to test it out.
And now I feel silly for putting off building that website.
Squarespace's Blueprint AI thing literally built me a custom website in minutes.
I just told it a few details about the project and boom, it generated everything.
And everything you need is right there. I can schedule guest interviews, send email campaigns, even sell merch all from one dashboard.
Now it's your turn to stop procrastinating and start building.
You can use Squarespace to launch that business site or any site that you've been dreaming about but putting off today.
There's no excuse anymore, especially since you can head to squarespace.com slash smarted for a free trial.
And when you're ready to launch, you can use code smarted to save 10% on your first purchase of a website or domain.
That's squarespace.com slash smarted. Code smarted.
SmartyParents, Trusty here, and I have to tell you about IXL because our whole team is absolutely obsessed with it.
My niece and nephew use it, my colleagues' kids are on it daily, and honestly, every homeschool parent I know has become a total fan.
IXL is an award-winning online learning platform that covers math, language arts, science, and social studies that adapts to each child's level.
It fits perfectly into homeschool routines, even summertime ones, and it keeps kids motivated and confident.
And IXL isn't just a sponsor. They've actually become part of our team's lives.
And here's why. Instead of spending hours hunting down worksheets, IXL organizes everything by grade and topic.
My nine-year-old nephew works on multiplication, while my colleague's 12-year-old tackles algebra.
Same program, totally personalized. When kids get something wrong, IXL explains the mistake and walks them through the right approach in an easy and fun way.
Plus, detailed reports show where they're crushing it.
Over 15 million students use IXL. WhoSmarted listeners get 20% off at ixl.com slash smarted with code WhoSmarted.
That's ixl.com slash smarted with code WhoSmarted.
Hey, Who's Smarted Plus subscribers. Welcome to another episode of SmartyQs, where I personally answer smart questions sent in by you, the smarty pants.
At the end, I'll tell you how you can submit a question of your own for me to answer.
And now onto our first SmartyQ. Our first question is from Meera in New Delhi, India, who asks, why do people get carsick?
Great question, Meera. Carsickness, like seasickness or air sickness, is a type of motion sickness that occurs when your brain can't make sense of the signals sent from the motion-sensing parts of your body.
When riding in a car, your eyes see passing objects and register movement.
Your inner ear, which regulates balance, feels the movement of the turns and bumps.
Yet, your muscles and joints think you're sitting still.
These contradictory signals confuse your brain and can make you feel sick.
Luckily, there are simple things you can do to counteract motion sickness.
The next time you feel carsick, try focusing on the horizon or an object in the distance.
Or, if it's safe, lie down and close your eyes.
These actions can help align the motion signals sent to your brain. feel better.
Our next question is from a Smarty Pants who asked me this question a long time ago.
They asked, how do cats land on their feet?
Well, when physicists began probing this question in the late 19th century, they were stumped for nearly 100 years.
After photographing experiments in which they dropped cats upside down onto beds, they observed the cats rotating midair and landing on their feet.
That is, not spinning, cannot rotate without external influence.
Yet the flexible felines, by rotating midair and landing on their paws, appeared to be doing just that.
The solution, discovered in 1969, lay in the subtle motion of the cat's body.
It rotates its upper and lower body in opposite directions, sort of like a pepper mill. by initially tucking their front paws when falling.
Cats cause their upper body to rotate toward the ground, while extending their back legs, causing their lower body to lag and rotate in the opposite direction.
Once the front paws are facing the ground, cats switch the effect.
They tuck their back paws and extend their front legs to complete the rotation, preserving the conservation of angular momentum and landing on their feet.
And if whoever asked me this question is listening, please write to me at whosmarted at whosmarted.com so I can give you credit.
This next question comes from another anonymous smarty-pants who, if you're listening, please email me so I can give you credit.
The question is, why do parents remember when you were a baby, but you don't?
The reason is childhood amnesia, a phenomenon scientists have known about for over a century.
For a while, scientists thought the brains of young children couldn't form lasting memories and left it at that.
But more recent studies have shown that children as young as two have clear memories of past events.
So what happens to all those memories? Sadly, they fade.
Further studies have shown that by age seven, children could only recall 60% of specific memories they recorded when they were three.
By ages 8 and 9, that number drops to 40%.
Scientists aren't sure what causes childhood amnesia, but the researchers behind these studies hypothesize that the systems of the brain responsible for storing events for future recall are too immature to work efficiently before age 4.
Later in childhood, when these memory systems begin to mature, lasting memories more easily take root.
Or do they? I forget. Thanks for listening.
And if you have any questions you want answered on Smart EQs, just email me at whosmarted at whosmarted.com and put Smart EQ in the subject line.
Thanks for smarting.
