Well, hello and welcome to this English lesson about handy machines.
The other day I saw a news article about something called a reverse vending machine.
A vending machine is a machine you put money in and it gives you a snack or something to drink.
A reverse vending machine is where you put empty bottles in and it gives you money.
It's kind of cool.
So I thought hey, I should do an English lesson about all of the handy machines that that we use each and every day.
Not the appliances that you have in your house, not the machines that maybe you use at work, but the machines we use when we go out in public.
So I think you'll enjoy this English lesson.
And once again, welcome to this lesson about handy machines.
A car wash.
So there are a couple of kinds of car washes.
There's something like this where you pull your car up And it pulls you through on a track.
And all of these spinning things kind of come and clean your car.
First, a whole bunch of soap is put on your car.
These little nozzles will shoot soap on your car.
And then the soft spinning fabric brushes will clean your car from the side.
So that is an automatic car wash.
There are some gas stations here where you can buy gas and then, if you pay a little extra, you can go through the car wash and it will automatically wash your car.
There's another type of car wash though, where you yourself have to walk around and you have to shoot water onto your car or spray your car with water in order to clean it.
But this is the automatic car wash that we see sometimes.
I think they were more popular when I was a kid.
Honestly now I think a lot of people wash their car using like a car wash bay, where you drive in and then you use a pressure washer to clean your car.
And then, of course, there is what's called a vending machine.
This is one of the most common machines that you will see in life.
You go to a vending machine and you put money in, or you use your card or you use your phone and you can use that to make a purchase, and then whatever you buy falls to the bottom and you reach into the slot to take it out.
Vending machines are often found in public places.
When i go to school, there's a vending machine in our school.
If you go to the arena, there's a vending machine in the arena.
It's just a handy way to buy a snack or buy something to drink.
And then we also have what are called ticket vending machines.
If you want to take the train to Toronto, you can go on the GO train.
You can buy a ticket online or you can go to a ticket vending machine and you can actually buy a physical ticket, still using that machine.
So you use money or your card.
And then the machine will give you a ticket that you can use when you go on the train.
And then this is the machine that caused me to have the idea for this lesson.
This is a reverse vending machine.
So in Ontario Canada, if you have certain bottles, like beer bottles, you can return them and they give you money.
And now you can actually return those bottles to what's called a reverse vending machine.
You put the bottles in and then the machine will give you.
It doesn't give you money, but it gives you a little voucher that you can use in the store.
Okay, so it'll say like five dollars and then that works like money when you buy something in the store.
I think there are places where they're expanding reverse vending machines so it will give you money for any type of bottle.
But pretty handy, a good way to encourage people recycle and to not throw their bottles in the garbage.
A reverse vending machine.
So, you understand how it's reversed.
Instead of you putting money in and getting something, you put things in and you get money.
Very very cool.
Very very handy to keep the planet cleaner.
An air pump.
When you go to the gas station, you can get gas from the gas pump, but you can also get air from the air pump if your tire is low.
So the tires on your car have air in them and you need to use an air pump or an air compressor to put air into your tire if the tire is low.
Sometimes you can tell the tire is low because it looks low.
And then sometimes you know the tire is low because your car tells you that it doesn't have enough air in it.
In that case, you go and find an air pump, and you put money in, and it goes...
And then you use the little nozzle to put air into your tire so that it's pumped up to the right pressure.
In Canada, we use PSI.
I think in other parts of the world you use kilopascals.
Is that correct?
I'm not 100% sure.
Here we use PSI.
A tire takes 30 or 40 PSI.
And I think that in other parts of the world, that might be what you use.
This is not a handy machine.
When I I added this one to the list, this is considered the opposite.
This is a machine that takes your buddy and you have a chance of winning more money, but you need to be aware that the chance of you winning is very, very slim.
So definitely a machine.
I don't think this is a handy machine.
I actually don't like slot machines, because a lot of people will spend a lot of money on a slot machine and never win And then I feel bad because they could have invested that money in a in an interest bearing savings account or something and been further ahead.
So I use a couple of words there.
The chance of winning is slim.
When you say the chance of winning is slim, it means it probably won't happen.
And then interest bearing bank account is an account that gives you money because you have money in the account.
So slot machine, Shouldn't be on this list, but I left it there anyways.
A machine that where you put money in or you can use your bank card or credit card or phone and then you can pull the lever or push buttons.
Things will spin and maybe you will win something.
A kiosk.
So I have to be honest.
I don't think we're 100% finished deciding what to call these things.
Because when I go to McDonald's or another restaurant, sometimes I order from the ordering kiosk or I order from the kiosk.
I might say I'm just going to order from the screen, or I might order from the self-service screen, or I might order from the self-service kiosk.
So when new things are invented, it sometimes takes a while for us to decide what to call them.
I think probably the best name for this is the self-service kiosk.
So when you go to a fast food restaurant now, you can walk up to the self-service kiosk and you can order your food on the screen, and then you can pay for it right at the kiosk or you can pay for it when you get your food.
But honestly, more and more I hear people just saying screen.
I'm just going to order on the screen.
I'm just going to order from the screen.
So we're not even sure which prepositions to use yet, because they are so new and honestly, I'm not sure these are going to last, because more and more people are ordering on their phones.
So, if they go to McDonald's, they order on their phone and then they go in and pick up their food.
People are doing that with Tim Hortons as well.
What did I drop?
Oh, it's just my glasses.
So, a kiosk, a place where you can order food or other things.
There are a variety of things where you'll see these new self-service kiosks.
An ATM, an automatic teller machine.
We usually just call it a bank machine.
This is something I have taught in previous lessons.
An ATM is a place where you can put your bank card into the slot punch in your PIN number and then you can withdraw money from the bank or you can deposit money from the bank.
Honestly, These are being used less and less because we are becoming a cashless society.
I do have a little bit of money in my wallet, but that is not how I normally pay for things now.
I almost always pay for things with my phone or I pay for things by tapping my bank card on the checkout on the bank machine.
So, yes.
An ATM, a bank machine, we still have them.
We still sometimes use them, but becoming a little bit rare.
And once again, ATM, automatic teller machine.
A teller is the person who works in the bank, and this is kind of the computer version of them.
A photo booth.
So this is kind of a fun little machine if you want to create memories.
So outside of the movie theater where we go as a family sometimes there is a photo booth.
Can go in a photo booth by yourself or with another person and then you pay money or you use your bank card or phone to pay and then it will automatically take four photos and you'll get this little strip of photos that you can use to put in your scrapbook as a memory or just for fun.
So photo booth a little machine that will take photos of you if you pay it some money, and usually people do like They smile.
And then for the second photo, they do something silly.
I don't know what that was.
That's me being silly, I guess.
But a photo booth, a machine that will take your photo and then it prints them out right away or develops them right away.
You'll get them within minutes.
A cash counter and a coin counter.
I've never seen one of these.
I think the only place I've ever seen them is in a movie called, where criminals are counting the money that they've gotten or that they've stolen.
Basically, a cash counter or a money counter machine is a machine where you put money in the top and then it counts the money for you and tells you how much you have.
You would put it into a cash counter or a cash counting machine and it would count it for you.
And it makes kind of like a, like the money flips through.
And then on the screen on the front, it will tell you how much money it is.
And then obviously we have the same thing for coins.
Not as popular with criminals because I think criminals prefer large bills.
I don't think they're going around counting their nickels and dimes and quarters.
But this machine would count coins.
If you owned a vending machine, people would put coins in it to buy what's in it.
And then you would go and get the coins and use a coin counter to count the value of those coins.
So cash counter counts bills.
And a coin counter obviously counts coins.
Self-checkout.
So this is another new thing.
When I started teaching English on YouTube, these were very rare.
We were just starting to see these here and there, and now they are much more popular.
When you go to Walmart, when you go to the grocery store, you will have self-checkout, usually available.
It's not everywhere now, but I would say 80% of the grocery stores have a self-checkout machine.
We've dropped the word machine when we refer to it, and we just refer to it to the self-checkout.
Do you want to use the regular checkout or the self-checkout?
So again, I use the self-checkout if I don't have a lot of stuff.
Like, if I'm buying five things, I will use the self-checkout because it's very convenient and it's very fast.
But if I have a grocery cart full of food, i will usually go to the regular checkout because it just works better to i can put everything on the belt and then the cashier can scan everything.
An automatic door so when i go to visit my mom.
My mom lives in a retirement apartment building so she has her own apartment, but she's able to go and get two meals a day where she doesn't have to cook.
When you go to the front entrance, they have an automatic door.
Automatic doors are cool.
When you push a button, the door will open.
There's also automatic doors where there's a sensor and it senses that you're there and the door will open.
And a long time ago there used to be.
When you stepped on the mat in front of the door, the door would open.
That's how automatic doors used to work.
But I think they all have motion detectors now.
So an automatic door.
And then there's the garage door opener.
I do not have a garage door opener.
But when you have a garage door opener in your vehicle, you have a remote.
And when you drive in, you push the button and your garage door will open automatically, because you have one of these things on the ceiling in your garage.
So a garage door opener, very handy.
I kind of wish I had one, especially in the winter.
That would be handy, wouldn't it?
Notice I'm using the word handy a lot.
I would drive in, push the button, and just drive my car into the garage.
And I should have explained the word handy.
This lesson is called handy machines.
When something is handy, it's useful, it's convenient, it's helpful.
A garage door opener is very handy because you don't have to get out of the car and open the door.
You just push a button and it opens by itself.
An escalator.
When I was a child, I was afraid of these until I learned how to use them.
Then I thought they were like an amusement park ride.
An escalator is, of course, moving stairs.
So when you get on the escalator, it will take you to the next floor or it will take you down to the floor below, depending on which escalator you are getting on.
And basically it's a set of steps that moves from the bottom to the top or from the top to the bottom.
You can actually use them as stairs.
So you can get on an escalator and as you're going up you can use it as stairs and it kind of speeds you up.
But when you're shopping in a grocery store, you will most likely see an escalator, just a fast moving set of stairs that will take you from one level to the next.
Smart plug.
You might have a smart plug that connects to your phone.
And then you can plug something into the smart plug and you can tell your phone to turn it on or off.
Or you could even set a timer so it automatically comes on or off at a certain time of day.
If you, for instance, had a coffee maker and it was an old-fashioned coffee maker with no timer, you could set the timer.
So the coffee maker comes on at 6 am and starts to make coffee.
So smart plug, pretty cool.
We also have what's called a smart switch.
So a smart switch is very similar to a smart plug, but it replaces your regular light switch.
A smart switch will allow you to have a light turn on and off at a certain time of day.
If the light can dim, do you guys know what dimming is?
Let me get my little controller here.
So if you have a smart switch, you can have your light dim and then you can have your light come back to full brightness, depending on the time of day or what button you push.
So smart switch.
It replaces a light switch and then allows you to do more with your lights than you normally could be doing.
In fact, you could use a smart switch to have your bedroom light come on at 6 am to wake you up, if you wanted to.
And again, you can use your phone to control a smart switch.
And then smart thermostat.
If you have air conditioning or if you heat your home, you have a thermostat.
This is a little machine that tells your air conditioning or your furnace when to turn on or turn off.
And so when you have a smart thermostat, it can learn your schedule, like it can learn when you want your house to be the right temperature and when it should keep things turned off in order to save money.
So a bunch of different smart things, a smart plug, a smart switch and a smart thermostat.
Our houses and our apartments are getting smarter all the time.
A robot vacuum or a robotic vacuum.
Again, when things are relatively new, we don't know exactly what to call it.
I call this a robot vacuum.
Some people just call it a Roomba. even if it's not made by Roomba.
So Roomba is a company that produces robot vacuums or robotic vacuums.
What is a robot vacuum?
It's a little vacuum cleaner.
So it sucks in dust and dirt and it drives around by itself and it will clean your floors.
We do not have a robot vacuum.
I think you know, once the kids are all older and moved out and our house is is a little more tidy, we might get one.
Right now there's too much stuff everywhere, I think, for this to work well for us, although the idea does interest me.
And then we have a robot lawnmower or a robotic lawnmower.
Again, the term is still being decided on, but you could use either and people would know what you're talking about.
This is similar to a robot vacuum cleaner, except this drives around and mows your lawn.
So she has her phone.
She is programming her robot lawnmower to tell it where to cut the lawn and where not to cut the lawn.
And then it will automatically charge itself and then also mow the lawn every three or four days.
So I do not have a robot lawnmower.
I have the opposite.
I have a really big lawnmower that I drive.
Actually, I haven't driven it all summer because of my collarbone.
But a robot lawnmower is a mower that is autonomous.
That means that it knows what to do by itself.
Um and it will mow your lawn for you.
I probably will buy one or two of these in five or ten years.
I think, as they become better and more rugged.
Like, my worry is that it's not built well and it might get damaged.
When you say something is rugged it's, it's durable and it doesn't break very easily.
Water cooler, a water fountain and a water fill station are those all the water ones?
Yes, so let's go back to water cooler.
This is something that many people will have at their place of work.
So at work we have a water cooler and you can go and fill up your cup.
You can go fill up your water bottle from the water cooler.
You put a water jug on the top and then you can.
I think you can get just cold water out of ours.
See, now that I think about it, I don't even know if the water cooler is there anymore.
Maybe we used to have a water cooler, but we eventually replaced it with these.
These are much handier.
But anyways, a water cooler, a place where people can get water at work or at school or another place.
If you watch TV shows, sometimes people will stand and talk around the water cooler.
It's kind of like a it's not a meme, but it's kind of like a where people in the 80s used to talk when they were at work.
If you saw the Blue Jays game the night before, you might stand by the water cooler and talk about it with your colleagues.
A water fountain is a place where you can just get a drink.
So you push one of the buttons.
There's usually one on the left, right and on the front.
And then water comes out and you can drink directly from the water fountain.
We are starting to see more and more water fountains like this.
This water fountain will put out cold water.
So it actually has like a refrigeration unit attached and if you drink from it, the water is very refreshing and very cold.
But more and more we are seeing these which is a water fill station, a water filling station.
This is a place where you can refill your own water bottle.
So water bottles have become very popular, I think, around the world.
And people are trying to drink a good amount of water every day.
And they might have something like this in their apartment building or at their place of work, where they can go and they can fill up their water bottle.
And I don't have a picture of it, but there's actually more water fountains that also have a water fill nozzle.
So you can either drink from the water fountain or fill your bottle.
I should have found a picture of that, but it's kind of like a combo.
It's a combination of the two.
So you can either drink from the water fountain or fill your water bottle.
We do not have one of these.
I think if we had one of these, Walter would break into it to get out the dog food.
But an automatic pet feeder is a machine where you put all the pet food in and then, on a schedule, it dispenses the pet food.
In English, when you say something dispenses something, it means that it has a lot of it, and then it comes out.
So, you can have a candy dispenser or a pet food dispenser.
Uh, it will on a regular schedule, maybe morning and night will dispense a certain amount of dog food or cat food, depending on what pet is eating it uh, and then they can eat it.
But again honestly, if we had one of these, Walter would know the food was in it and he would destroy the machine uh, to get the food out.
And then a sewing machine.
So a sewing machine is a machine used to either make clothes or to fix clothes or to connect fabric to other pieces of fabric.
Maybe you're making curtains or a blanket or a pillow or a shirt.
This machine will sew.
In the olden days, you would take a needle and thread and you would sew.
You would put the thread through the fabric and you would sew the fabric together.
Most people today would use a sewing machine.
We have a sewing machine.
We don't use it very often but if I needed something to What was the last thing?
I think Jen made pillows one year for our kids.
So she got fabric and then she was able to sew it together with the sewing machine and give that to the kids as a Christmas present.
So a sewing machine, a machine that will sew fabric together.
