Science Friday - Declining Insects, Sunny Day Flooding, Liquid Rules. Feb 15, 2019, Part 2

Episode Date: February 15, 2019

 That once vibrant forest has gotten quieter and emptier, as many of the insects— and the animals that depend on them—have disappeared. In a worldwide report card on the state of insects in the journal Biological Conservation, the conclusion is dire: “This review highlights the dreadful state of insect biodiversity in the world, as almost half of the species are rapidly declining and a third are being threatened with extinction.” We discuss the consequences of the "insect apocalypse." By 2035, scientist have predicted that over a hundred U.S. coastal communities could experience more than 26 days of low level floods. Researchers at Stanford University determined the economic impacts of this type of flooding in the tourist area of Annapolis, Maryland. Climate risk scientist Miyuki Hino, an author on the study, talks about the impacts of these small-scale effects of climate change. Fluids are all around you, of course—but how often do we take a moment to think about how liquids work? What makes one slippery and another sticky? Why does one make a good salad dressing, but another a good rocket fuel? Materials scientist Mark Miodownik tackles those questions in his book Liquid Rules.  Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato. Later in the hour, the liquids that rule our lives. But first, decades ago, when my next guest surveyed the rainforests of Puerto Rico, he says there were butterflies everywhere, birds and lizards, too. Sticky traps put out to catch insects turned black. They were so covered with so many bugs. Not so today that once vibrant forest has gotten quieter, emptier as many of the insects and the animals that are. depend on them have disappeared. His study has now been compiled with 72 others in a worldwide report card on the state of insects out in the journal Biological Conservation. Its conclusion, and I quote, this review highlights the dreadful state of insect biodiversity in the world, as almost half of the species are rapidly declining, and a third are being threatened with

extinction. Joining me to talk about it is Brad Lister, an ecologist and researcher in the Department of Biological Science at Rensselaer Polytech in Troy, New York. His Puerto Rico work appeared in the proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences back in October, and we have links to his study and the new review up at ScienceWrida.com slash insects. Welcome, Dr. Lister. Well, thank you. It's great to be here. You know, give us an idea just how bad this is. I don't think I'm overstepping the bounds by saying it looks worldwide like a catastrophic decline in one of the most important groups of species in the food web. They're right near the bottom, and a lot of other animals and insects and plants depend on them.

So give us a quick rundown of what this new review study says and what the reason is for the decline. Well, there are many reasons depending on what part of the planet you're in. What the new study, the biological conservation study, was really pointing the finger at a global problem. And that wasn't clear. We thought it was widespread, but they really had the data to say this is a whole Earth phenomenon and all the more frightening because of that. So they were able to measure rates of decline. in a lot of different insects groups from very precise studies,

and they found that the rate of decline was astonishing us 2.5% per year overall. And that's about the same decline we got in the Luquia rainforest for our, you know, more limited study at one elevation in the Luquillo Mountains. That's interesting. You studied the interconnectivity of the food web in Puerto Rico's rainforest. how does the disappearance of insects ricochet up the food chain? Yeah, we weren't expecting such a dramatic crash of the insect population. We thought it would change.

It's been 30 years or more. But when we saw that there was a 98% reduction in biomass compared to the 1970s, we thought, well, this has got to be having an effect on the insectivores, the birds, the lizards, and the frogs, which were always super a bunch of, in that forest. So we started taking a look at long-term data. We had data on the lizards, the Anolis lizard populations from the 1970s, and they declined in biomass by about 50%. And there were also data from the long-term ecological research station at Leverde. And that data was on birds, on frogs, and also on other insect groups. So we analyzed that,

and everything was in decline. And the vertebraic, the insectivores were in decline in parallel. with the insect declines. So is the fear here that this is not just limited to one locality you've been studying, this might be a worldwide phenomenon? Well, with regard to rainforests, yeah, I think this is why people were so astonished and actually frightened by our study because there's so little data on tropical rainforests, and, of course, they harbor 75% of the world's species, and this would be yet another insult to the integrity and functioning of tropical rainforests.

I'd like to bring on another guest with some perspective on what we know and don't know about the insect world and why there's still some uncertainty about the fate of the world's insects. Erica McAllister is senior curator of flies and fleas at the Natural History Museum of London. She joins us by phone from a fly conference. Welcome back, Dr. McAllister. Hello, thank you. Thank you about having me. Before we talk about the insect study, I understand you're working with a species called Dancing Flies at this fly forum, you're at. Yeah, no, it's a weekend course where a lot of the fly specialists in the UK all get together.

We pick a family of flies to study, and then we spend all weekend trying to learn as much about them as possible. Well, to put it, I guess it's a bug-like. Antomologists have been a buzz this week talking about some issues they have with the latest report. What is the concern? Tell us. The concern, what, with the report, or about what it's telling us? Well, let's talk about the report first. Well, the report is amazing because it is the first time a lot of this data has been collated together. So this is great.

It's finally been something, all these little studies have been lumped together and it's like, look, seriously, we haven't been making it up when they're telling you that things are going wrong. What it also has done, though, is highlight what we don't know. And this has been interesting in its own right. So a lot of these studies are looking at biomass because we don't know about species richness. and the reason we don't know about species richness is we don't know what's there in the first place. So we have lots of issues that we haven't got long-term data, and that is because people haven't really been interested in insects.

We've been ignored by, I mean, your previous talk was saying, you know, that we've got lizard data going back. We can look at bird data going back. We can look at all of these, but it's very hard to find insect data. Hmm. And will insect data tell us about, about what the possible effects of climate change might be? Insects are going to be better than anything else because insects are the ones who react.

Insects are more. I mean, what I personally was like, what is shocking about this report is the lack of flies. And obviously I'm a little biased about the flies. But because the flies are so critical in every part of an ecosystem to leave them out is just a shocking behavior. If you ask me. And the thing is, they react really quickly to environmental change. and they're ecosystem drivers, and they're so important. And if you're destroying that part of the ecosystem,

you're basically wiping out a huge component of it. Brad, you studied insects in the tropics. How comprehensive is our knowledge of how insects in the tropical forests are faring? Well, there's virtually no other data points. I think there's one place that we've found. We're looking for more because we want to follow up on this. So it's a posity of data would certainly be the way to say it. And it's sad that we don't have any because they're such a crucial part of the ecosystem.

So it's a very daunting and very disturbing trend if it's applicable to other rainforests because then we're really in trouble. Dr. McAllister, butterflies, moths, bees are all in grave danger according to the new review. But flies, not so much. Well, that's because no one looks at flies. I mean, flies have a problem. is that they're really hard to identify. They're not these charismatic insects that everyone else goes,

oh, look, it's the bees, they're pollinators, which is unfair because they are some of the best pollinators. And there's just more species of flies that haven't been discovered. There was a brilliant paper that came out last year in Costa Rica, and it was looking at species diversity of flies in a rainforest. And one of the world's expert, Brian Brown, who does fords, he looked at the fords there, and they identified 136 new species,

only four for forids, this family of flies, were on the Costa Rican list already. Wow. So just showing you like how many unidentified species are there, it's a lot for us to get our head round. You know, Brad, it's been hard to find political consensus for fighting climate change, but at the same time there is business interest because you're going to make money on solar and wind and so on. Is there any business case to be made for saving insects? Nothing then other than the collapse of our food supply, perhaps, is one consequence that might have some economic consequences. Pollination of our crops and also wild plants.

We rely mainly on wild bees and other wild insects. There's just a host of ecosystem impacts that insects declining are causing, not only the loss of species higher up in the food web, but a lot of their, these species are symbiotic, a lot of them interact with many, many different plants and will be literally heading towards a major collapse of ecosystems, apparently globally. They provide the ecosystem services that we rely on to sustain our existence. So, yes, it's going to be bad. Sounds apocalyptic. I mean, so where should we focus our efforts to turn this trend around and try to prevent

the wide-scale extinction? of insects, Brad? Well, look, so much of this decline of insects and the problems with the vertebrates that the World Wildlife Fund pointed out in their report on the Caribbean and Central America, where about 80% of the vertebrates had declined precipitously. So it's really, at the heart of it, is over-exploitation and over-population. I think unless we get a handle on those two factors, along with the emissions, but that really comes from our industrial activity

and the way we raise crops and food and the number of people that we need to support. You're saying pesticides. You have to take care of those big pesticides and industrial agriculture and all that kind of stuff that we've heard about. All that kind of stuff, yeah, all of that. But all of it emanates from over-exploitation,

over-population, and our incredibly wasteful lifestyles. Erica, your last thoughts on this? No, I mean, I will concur with a lot of that. We have to do something quite quickly. Land use change is seen as one of the biggest drivers for species extinction, and the idea of we waste so much land is a really valid point. And as far as the insects, can we expect an increase, maybe in the house flies and cockroaches? Yeah, species that hang around us, because they've adapted to hang around us,

they love us. We're wasteful with dirty creatures, so they're going to just benefit. for us moving around and doing that. But in many ways, it's like you're targeting by saying, yeah, we're going to have some of the horrible flies and therefore we've got to get rid of all the flies. And it's like, well, that's like saying all the primates are bad just because of one species. So we have to be slightly careful about that. And we also have to remember that a lot of the house flies are important pollinators.

So we're in a mixed bag of what we should expect. We need to be re-educated. We need, yes. Education is a really big point here. We need to reconnect ourselves with the environment. Okay, that's a good last word. Erica McAllister, senior curator of flies and fleas at the Natural History Museum of London, Brad Lister and ecologist and researcher, Department of Biological Sciences at Rensselaer Polytech up there in Troy, New York.

Thank you both for joining us today. We're going to take a break and look how much hotter. Your backyard barbecue will be in a couple of generations due to climate change. We have a map you can play. plug your city in and you can get a prediction of the future climate right where you're going to be and it's going to be different. We'll talk about the details after the break, so stay with us. We'll be right back. This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato. If you read the big climate reports from the U.N. or the U.S. government, you see figures like 3 degrees Celsius increase in mean global temperature.

Or you have a map of the world painted in orange and red in the Arctic. a deep shade of purple. But what does that mean for you? How do you translate that life into your neighborhood in your backyard? Special ecologist Matt Fitzpatrick wanted to make those numbers and charts come alive to people feel a little more real, and he found his motivation in an unusual place. I was at a relative's house, and I happened to see a book by Anne Coulter on the bookshelf, which isn't something I would normally pick up, but, you know, for fun, I was paging through. it. And I came to the section talking about climate change, which, of course, I was interested in, so I started reading that. And she said something to the effect of, you know, what's the big deal

about this? You know, imagine you're outside at a cookout. It's 70 degrees. All of a sudden, the temperature warms up to 73. What's the big deal? You know, and I kind of laughed and said, well, of course, right? Like, that's not what that means, but then I thought, well, what does it mean? Fitzpatrick, who's at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, decided to actually figure out what your backyard barbecue will feel like, 60 years from now, under climate change. And he expanded that projection to more than 500 urban areas around North America. Under our current level of emissions, he says,

Portland, Portland, Oregon will feel more like Sacramento, 15 degrees Fahrenheit warmer, and half is wet, Los Angeles will be more like the southern tip of Baja, California, hotter, and 20 times wetter. Washington, in D.C. and New York will feel more like Mississippi and Arkansas do today. And in some cases, climate change is dialing in new combinations of temperature and humidity that have no modern equivalent. You know, one thing I like to do is think about this in terms of my daughter. she's 12. And, you know, these results to me really speak to the dramatic transformation of climate that's going to occur over her lifetime. And that's going to have all sort of effects for the systems that we depend on. And then, you know, if I think further ahead about grandchildren, if they live in the same place that I live now, you know, if they had a time machine and came back to today that us speaking, I don't think they'd recognize the climate that I'm currently living in. And you can find out your city's future climate.

We have a link to Matt's interactive map at Science Friday.com slash climate map. And just as global temperatures estimates might be hard to translate to your backyard, what do global estimates of sea level rise mean for you? Well, yes, of course, some cities will flood. Some communities will have to pack up and move. But that's the extreme case. Higher sea levels always don't show up that way. It could be a puddle in a parking lot or a couple of streets with overflowing sewers that last for just a few hours.

Something called sunny day flooding. Scientists estimate that hundreds of coastal cities could experience more of these type of floods in the future. What does this slow drip-drip of liquid climate change add up to economically? Researchers wanted to figure out how much this might cost a city. And their results were published today in the journal Science Advancement. Manses. Miyuki Hino is an author on this study and a PhD candidate in the environment and resources at Stanford University. Welcome to Science Friday. Hi, Ira. I'm happy to be here. So what is the definition of a sunny day flooding? Sure. So sunny day flooding is also called high tide flooding or nuisance flooding. It's flooding that happens when there's no storm in sight.

As sea levels are rising around the world, it doesn't take a big storm. to cause flooding. All it takes is a little push, right, an extra high tide or the wind blowing in the wrong direction. And all of a sudden, you have the sea spilling onto roads and swamping drainage systems. And that kind of thing is happening 30, 40, 50 times per year in some places. So the sea is actually backing up, the drainage systems, is backing up onto the streets or the barking lots? Yeah, we see a lot of different kinds of sunny day flooding. Sometimes it is the is coming in over an edge. Maybe we have a seawall or a promenade and it's higher than that, so it's flowing over. But in other cases, it's actually coming in through our drainage system

and up and out of the storm sewers. There was a study out of Miami, and actually documented by the Herald, that by 2040, 64 percent of county septic tanks down there, almost 70,000 could have issues every year due to flooding. They're backing up. Yeah, I think we're just starting to learn about a lot of emerging risks that are coming from climate change in all forms, not just sea level rise. We're used to thinking about climate change in relation to our extreme weather events. But increasingly, we also have to worry about these slow-moving gradual changes. And you wanted to find how much economic, this slow-moving gradual change has on a community. and your study focused on Annapolis, Maryland,

used some creative ways to measure how much sunny day flooding was costing the city. You used a parking lot, not your usual metric. Tell us what you did. Yeah, well, it's tricky to study these kinds of floods because they often last just a few hours at a time, and they're not destroying houses and infrastructure. So all of the impacts are happening in a couple of hours, and you have to measure something really frequent.

to detect those kinds of impacts. In Annapolis, one of the main places that floods a lot is down in their historic tourist district. It's called City Dock, and it's a parking lot that charges for parking. So we could actually use that record of parking transactions minute by minute to see how flooding was affecting visits to downtown. And you found that the more it flooded,

the less people were coming in the parking lot. Yeah, absolutely. Downtown Annapolis in 2017 saw about 3,000 fewer customers, fewer visitors than they would have in a year with no floods. And those numbers add up really quickly as sea levels start to rise even further. And of course you pay to go park, so when you don't pay, you're losing money. Sure, the city is losing money just from the lack of parkers, but those businesses that rely on the people coming downtown, they're losing customers, They're losing diners. They're losing tourists.

So it really is an important metric that the entire community really relies on. Could you put an actual figure on the economic impact? It's trickier to do that because that depends on a lot of things, like how many people are paying for things and what are they paying for and how much are they spending. But we estimate that the 16 businesses that are most affected by these floods in Annapolis lost about $100,000 in revenue in 2017 due to these floods. That's a lot for a small business, isn't it? Yeah, and a lot of these businesses are staples of the community. They've been there for a really long time.

And fortunately, the city of Annapolis is really on top of this problem. they're putting together plans, they're raising money, and they're trying to tackle it. In what ways? How do you keep the water out or what ways do you tackle it? Well, there's a lot of ways that you could tackle these kinds of problems, and I think it's important to highlight that we're not just going to sit there as sea levels rise. We can act and we can adapt and we can reduce the losses from these kinds of events. In Annapolis, they're looking at installing pumps in that area to remove the water. In other places, you might think about elevating structures.

For some businesses, they might be able to shift some of their sales to being online, or they might have communication strategies to bring in customers when it's not flooded. So there's a whole range of things that you could do to ensure that these businesses remain a vibrant part of the community well into the future. You know, an interesting lesson about this is that when we talk about climate change and sea level rise, we think of giant ocean waves crashing. We see giant icebergs breaking off. But this is going to drip very slowly and creep very slowly into people's lives, isn't it? Well, it's a slow rise, but the impacts once they're here will rise up really quickly.

So, for example, in Annapolis, the impacts that we've seen to date, that's the impacts that we've seen to date, those 3,000 lost visits, those came from about one foot of sea level rise in the past. But it's only going to take three more inches of sea level rise to lose another 3,000 visits. And so we see this steep increase in losses that means adaptation and really planning ahead before these impacts are already upon you is really important. Just three more inches to do that. Wow. And the community is aware of this and willing to act? Yeah, they were fantastic partners for us throughout this study.

When we met with them initially, they were clearly concerned. They were already working on how they could deal with the drainage in this particular area. And we're hopeful that this evidence that we've put together will help them and also will help a lot of other cities around the United States that are dealing with this problem to prepare appropriately. Have you gotten interest from other cities who read about this? Well, we know that this is a problem that affects a lot of cities. Right now, the East Coast is suffering from these types of floods a little bit more than the West Coast. But cities like Miami, Charleston, Norfolk, Virginia are all coping with these kinds of floods. And the precise impact, the way that they materialize

are going to differ from place to place. But the more evidence we have about how they're affecting businesses, how they're affecting public health, how they're affecting traffic, all of that evidence is going to help us make better decisions about where and how to invest. Well, we wish you good luck and keep in touch. Thanks for having me. You're welcome.

Miyukihino is a Ph.D. candidate in Environment and Resources at Stanford University. Think back to the start of your day, You check the time. A shower, some coffee, maybe a glass of juice, maybe a gas-powered vehicle was involved. What do these things share in common? Of course, chances are liquids of some kind were all involved. They're all around us. How often do we take a moment to think about how the liquids work and what makes one liquid different from another?

What makes one slippery, another sticky? What makes one a good salad dressing, but another good, good one. rocket fuel. Well, my next guest has taken some time to think about those and other questions, and he tackles them in his new book, Liquid Rules, the delightful and dangerous substances that flow through our lives. Mark Mia Dobnick is the author of Liquid Rules. He's also director of the Institute of Making at the University College London, Professor of Materials and Society there. Welcome back to Science Friday. Thank you. Hello. Great book. Let's start with some definitions, what makes something a liquid? Yeah, well, I mean, this is a strange thing is you'd think

that would be a very easy question to answer, wouldn't you? And actually, doing the research for the book, that's the one question I found increasingly difficult to answer. I mean, the normal definition is a liquid is a substance that will flow, and if it flows into a container, it takes the shape of that container. But, you know, quite quickly, your listeners were probably thinking, well, you know, That works for water or beer, milk, orange juice, gasoline. But, you know, is my, this is the gel I use on my hair? Is that a liquid? Or is peanut butter a liquid?

I mean, you know, and you start thinking out these other substances, and they seem to sit somewhere between a solid and a liquid, right? Right, right. Let me get our listeners in 8447248255 if you'd like to talk about liquids. 8455. 8455. This is Science Friday from WNYC Studios. talking with Mark, I'm Mia Davnik, author of Liquid Rules.

It's interesting you brought up peanut butter because we don't think of peanut butter as a liquid. I know, and in fact, I didn't either until I was going through airport control, and I got it confiscated from my luggage. And actually, that was one of the kind of spurs of writing this book, because, of course, airport control, the security, they are really up on liquids, aren't they? And we've all lived through this, you know, because they didn't seem to be bothered about liquids,

15 years ago and suddenly, whoa, liquids were enemy number one. And we all get frisked for them. And peanut butter, they confiscate. They confiscate. In fact, your book is based on a sort of a flight. You take a transatlantic flight and you talk about all the liquids you encounter on the flight. Yeah, because, I mean, you know, once you get frisked at the airport for your liquids, you then they take them all off you.

Then they try and sell them all back to you, don't they? You go into this cornucopia of liquids, booze, They try and give you coffee. You know, there's a toilet there. You can get rid of your liquids. They give you, you know, there's perfume. There's creams of all sorts. Now, while creams are liquids, you know, they are actually liquids.

And then you get on the plane and then you get to the pre-flight safety briefing. And then the whole safety briefing fails to mention the one liquid that you absolutely rely on to get anywhere on a plane. It's under your seat. It's in the wings. It's aviation fuel. And, you know, if you saw a plane the way you see a disposable lighter, you know these transparent disposable lighters you can buy, and you can see the liquid fuel in them,

that's what a plane would look like if it was transparent, right? There's a lot of liquid in the bottom of a plane. And you spent an interesting amount of time, and I was very fascinating to learn about the kerosene, the jet fuel. How that was invented and sort of let go. Yeah, I mean, that was invented a thousand years ago. by a Persian chemist, alchemist, who stumbled across it, and he was sort of investigating and discovering lots of new chemical processes.

And he looked at this tar that was bubbling up outside Baghdad, and he did all sorts of chemical processes on it, distilled it, found this very clear liquid you could get from it, which turned out to be kerosene, put it into an oil lamp and found that it was a smokeless fuel. And at the time, of course, that was very significant for him, because smokeless fuels were associated with a myth of the gin or the genie. And the genie in the lamp is a recurrent myth in Middle East about the magic of something that can burn with a smokeless fuel.

So he was very, very excited about discovering this thing. But at the time, you know, they didn't have the industrial processes to actually take advantage of it. So it sort of got lost in time for a thousand years. And now we use it for jet fuel and all kinds of stuff. It's very, very important. And in your book, we only have been admitted to the break. I want to get into the ideas of why you can have a liquid that will explode, gasoline, or why the liquid, you know, is just like alcohol. And why some is some sticky?

Why some glue? It's all very fascinating. I'm talking with Mark Mia Dobnick, author of Liquid Rules. And we're going to talk about this book. When we come back, our number 8447-24-8. 255. If you have any questions about what makes a liquid a liquid or any of your favorite liquids. And I'm going to get into, Mark, you talk about alcohol and wine a lot in this book. Of course. How could I not?

Spent a lot of time with the booze in this. I did the research. Yeah, that's good. 844724-8255. We'll be back after the break. So stay with us. This is Science Friday. I am I Refledo. We're talking with Mark Mia Dovnik, author of the new book, Liquid. He's also director of the Institute of Making at University of College of London, professor of materials and society there. We have so many people who want to talk about liquid.

So I'm going to go right to them because they're better than my questions. Let's go to Kyle in Augusta, Georgia. Hi, Kyle. Hi, how you doing? Hi, there. Go ahead. I've been told that glass is a moving liquid, and I just wanted to ask our expert on this. Yeah, now that's a good one because that's a persistent myth that glass, which we all see as a solid and looks solid enough, doesn't it? When you tap your finger on it and if you actually bash your head into it, it definitely feels like a liquid.

Now, the thing is that the myth, I think, comes from when people look at old buildings, churches and cathedrals from a thousand, two thousand years ago, they see often that the glass is thicker at the bottom than at the top. and so there's this sense that it might have flowed down over, you know, over a thousand years. And the reason that people then sort of wonder that might be possible is because if you look inside the glass at the structure of the atoms that make it up, they have a liquid structure. And what I mean by that is a random structure. It's not crystalline. And so that all the evidence seemed to stack up that glass was flowing, not in, not in seconds and minutes,

but over, over, you know, 10, 20, 100 years. But since then, it's been discovered that that really doesn't happen. That although glass can flow over geological times, it's not flowing at that rate. And the reason for the thickness of the glass in these situations is probably that the early ways of making glass were to pour it on as a puddle when it was molten onto a plate and then cut it up.

And there would be thicker bits in the middle, as you can imagine, right? imagine pouring toffee. You know, it's very hard to get it very flat. And so they arrange the slightly thicker bits at the bottom. So this is essentially the story so far. You know, I remember my engineering professor said, yeah, it does. It's called creep. It flows.

So we can change that now, right? Well, the thing is that, you know, things do flow. Most solid things will flow over long periods of time, or if you increase their temperature. Creep happens in jet engines of the plane that you play, And that happens over, you know, that happens over hours. And you've got to be really careful because the temperatures are very high. But it also happens under our feet, the rocks that we stand on, the solid rocks that we think of as, you know, as solid earth.

They are creeping. And that's the origin, of course, as I talk about in the book of earthquakes because they creep towards each other. And then, of course, the stresses build up. And releasing of that stress is an earthquake. and of course the continents drifting over again millions and millions of years that is that is this sort of flow of rocks the creep of rocks so it's a real thing creep and but it does take long periods of time unless the temperatures are very high let's talk about the most basic of all liquids and that is is water I mean I mean yeah that's amazing I mean water is really amazing isn't it I mean that the thing about water that I mean is it is It's this thing called the universal solvent. It's the only liquid, well, pretty much the only liquid we know of

that will dissolve organic carbon-like molecules as well as absorbing, you know, ions and things like salts. And so this means that it's a melting pot of lots of different molecular types. So normally you sort of think of, you know, as oils as being very separate. And of course they are. But actually, certain carbon molecules have a little bit. of polarity as it's called, which is that the structure of the electrons is not uniform. And this gives them a slight charge at one side or the other. And water is the same.

It's also polar. And so it will basically absorb pretty much anything water in some way. So it's this thing called the universal solvent, the melting pot of the universe. And that's why they think that life evolved from the oceans. and why when you look for life in the stars and on planets, that you always look for liquid water? Let's go to San Antonio, Gabriel, in Texas. Welcome to Science Friday.

Thank you. My question was if he was familiar with the pitch-drop experiment of Thomas Parnell in University of Queensland and Brisbane. And then the other question was, what role does viscosity play in defining something as a liquid? Or is it possible to have something that has a viscosity but is not a liquid? Yeah, that's a great question. So the pitch drop experiment is this amazing experiment, which is carried out.

So pitch, you know, you can call it tar. You can talk, and this is the stuff that we make roads from. Thomas, the Parnell experiment, is he put some pitch, this tar. And, you know, we all drive on this stuff, right? It looks pretty solid, right? We're driving on it. It can't really be a liquid. But anyway, he asked this question,

what would happen if you just put a blob of it and just waited for it? And he had a funnel. And he wondered whether if it was a liquid, well, then a little blob would come out of this funnel, a drop would come out. Anyway, years went by. And this material did sort of settle in the funnel.

And then a drop started to form, and then plop, it came out. But he had to wait about a decade. And in fact, that experiment's been running for about 100 years now, and there's been about, I think, nine drops. So this is an incredible thing. Each drop, if you pick it up, it's a solid. But clearly it was formed in a liquid process.

So then you start thinking, well, actually, you know, the tar on the roads is a liquid. It's just a very viscous liquid, an incredibly viscous liquid, you know, a million times more viscous than honey. And so then you bring up this thing about viscosity. And I think essentially, people talk, viscosity is only really useful as a term when you talk about flow, and it's how fast things flow. and if things aren't going to flow over any time period that you can measure them, then you're not going to give something a viscosity.

It's going to be a solid. What turns something that's a liquid into a solid? For example, you talk about crazy glue in your book. What is it that's going on? I mean, suddenly you squirt it out. It's liquid and then sits there a while, and suddenly it's a solid. I mean, the glues that we now have in our lives are just so amazing. I really think that if there's one thing people should just sit in all.

of in a DIY shop they should just be in all of the liquids on this because you can glue anything together now and often it's stronger than if you bolted it together and it really is a huge step forward and you ask this thing about super glue and what is this happening if you take a drop of super glue it just looks like a drop of water in a way sticky water right and but 10 seconds later your your your your fingers are stuck together it's like it's so effective in that case what's happening is water is causing the individual molecule of the superglue, which is a cyanoacrylate molecule, to bond together into a polymer.

So it becomes a plastic. So you're turning something that is a sort of fluid liquid into a plastic in real time in about 10 seconds. And the thing that turns it from one to other, the thing that bonds the molecules together is water. And you don't need very much. In fact, the water in your breath is enough. So if you just breathe on whatever you're gluing together

before you join the two pieces, that's enough water to polymerise it. as it's so-called. But, you know, there are a lot of other things that people don't realize are glues that are polymerized. So, for instance, oil paint, you know, all those masters, the Rembrandt, the Renaissance paintings, all of that oil paint, that's all the same process. That's a polymerization reaction. Those are plastic paintings.

They're plastic. Yeah, because you put the oil on and it's reacting with the oxygen in the air to become a plastic. And that's what it is. and that's why you have to wait. Anyone who's an oil painter will know this, how frustrating it is, because you have to wait for it to polymerize, i.e. harden. It's a chemical reaction with the oxygen in the air. It becomes a layer of plastic, and then you can put the next one on.

If you don't wait for it to harden, i.e. you don't let enough oxygen get to it. Then when you put the next layer on, it will just mix with the previous layer, and you'll get a mush. Did the masters know that they were making plastic? What they knew, which is really amazing. is, and what they had discovered is that if you do wait and you get this layered structure, what you're doing is you're doing what nature does with beetles. You can get incredible colouring through by essentially reflecting different layers at different bits of the painting. And so they had 11 or 12 layers and you can get really deep blacks or luminous whites by having all these different layers.

And you see it in nature, but they sort of rediscovered. that and that's that's the that's the appeal of that technique let's go to uh let's go to pennsylvania let's go to is it jonell there yeah hello hi there go ahead i just calling to see is it true that almost metal like still in that and a liquid form before it's like formed you know as far as making like rings you know making frames for cars and stuff like that is that all like melt it down to like early hot temperatures and to liquid form I mean, they didn't put into a mortar. How is that formed?

What is melting all about? Yeah, I mean, I think you're asking about how the kind of wheel hubs and all of the bits of the metal car are, do they start out as liquid metal? And the answer is yes. And what is melting? I mean, you start with a solid, and in the case of metal, it's individual atoms, let's say, of steel, which is what most of the cars are made of. So you've iron atoms,

and they're all regularly arranged in a crystal and trillions of them in every direction. So what does that mean? If you look down, there's just long lines of them, all in the right cubic array. And then a little bits of carbon are stuck in between. That's the magic ingredient. And then if you, that's a solid, and that's a great solid.

And we all rely on it in our lives, our bridges, our tunnels, our railways, our cars, you know, everything. But if you heat it up, those atoms start to vibrate. Well, they're vibrating anyway, but they vibrate more and more and more. And at some point, the energy of vibration overcomes the bonds holding them together. Now, you'd thought that would just make them all fly apart and become a gas, you know. But actually, there's an intermediate state where they're bonded together,

but there's still so much heat that they can't really stay next to their neighbor for very long before zooming off somewhere. And so they're constantly being pulled together and then kind of, kind of allowed to mush around. And that's the liquid state. So liquids are the state between total chaos and total kind of prison for atoms. Atoms are either in a prison, in which case they're solid, or they're flying around the atmosphere. They're a gas.

And the liquid state is somewhere in between. And as I said in the book, the liquid state is kind of, has elements of both, you know? Yeah. You spend, before I write out of time, I want to get to one of you, looks like one of your favorites. subjects and that's wine as a liquid wine. You got very interested in that. Let me just remind everybody that this is Science Friday from WNYC Studios. Amira Flato talking with Mark Miodovnik, a really interesting new book, Liquid Rules.

Okay, tell us about wine, why you find it so fascinating and how you've done your homework on it. So, I mean, the thing about wine is, especially if you get on a plane and they give you some wine, it's always hard to resist, isn't it? and you're drinking this drink. And the truth is it's a poison. I mean, ethanol, which is the alcohol in wine, you know, really poisons your body. But it poisons your body in a pleasing way. And basically, you know, there's a certain percentage of it in there that, you know, for most people is it puts your body into a state where you're sort of intoxicated. And the word intoxicated is the clue, right?

Toxic. It's toxic for you. But actually, that then disables some of your systems, some of your nervous systems, and essentially relaxes you. And that's, I guess, one of the things we like about it. Not everyone likes it and some people feel out of control and some people abuse it. And of course, it damages your body and damages your brain. So the question is, why do we put up with that? Why do we just not have grape juice?

And, you know, you could have grape juice. And why is something with alcohol in it so much better? as a drink. And my, I think the thing I wanted to say in the book is that actually wine, the thing it really does really well, apart from making you drunk, is it's a fantastic accompaniment to meals. It really is the drink of choice for that. And the reason it is, is because it cleanses the mouth really well. And it does it in two ways. One is the alcohols are very good solvent. They'll take a lot of the fats away. And a lot of meals, if they're fatty, they're delicious for that reason, creamy, delicious. You know,

chips, salmon, steaks, delicious. But it coats your taste buds and it dulls the next bite. And if you want to get rid of that, then you want something that's astringent in there. You want a tannin. And wines convey that in them, especially the red wines. And so the tannins, it's been shown with experiments, that tannins will cleanse your mouth of the fatteness feeling. So this thing about having a wine with a steak or a hamburger or some fish,

you know, this really is good. It actually increases your enjoyment of that meal. Let's see if we can get one more call in. Tracy in Savannah, Georgia. Welcome to Science Friday. Hey, Tracy. Hey, how are you this afternoon? Fine. Go ahead. Okay, so I'm asking you to solve a debate that's been raging at the school where I teach for the entire school year. Is water wet?

Aha. Yeah, now that's a good one, isn't it? What does that mean? What do you mean, Tracy? Is that a debate in your school? Well, there is a group of people who say that water is wet because you touch it, you get wet. But then there's other people who say that it's not wet because wet is what happens when you touch the water. Aha. Yeah, and I'm with them on this. So wetting is a phenomenon where a liquid is how a liquid interacts with a solid.

So when you're in the shower, the liquid doesn't just bounce off your body. It wetts your body. And what does that mean? It means that the surface tension of the liquid means that it sticks to your body. So this is where a lot of stickiness comes from. And the sticking to your body is the wetting. And of course, that's where it comes from. But water isn't the only material that wetts your body.

Oils wet your body. And so, in fact, if you want things to be warm, waterproof, then you created non-wetting surfaces. And one of the best ones, of course, is Teflon. Okay, it doesn't wet many things. And so liquids sit proud on them. Well, while I have you there and I got less than a minute to go, I want you to talk about why you hate liquid soap so much.

Yes. 30 seconds. Okay, liquid soap came along as an advertising, as a marketing ploy. We didn't need it. We had bar soap, and bar soaps fine. There's nothing wrong with bars. And it doesn't need a load of packaging either. Liquid soap comes along and it's too good actually.

You don't need half as much as you get when you squirt that thing in your house. And when you put your hands under the water, most of the liquid soap goes down the drain without ever cleaning your hands. So because it's a liquid, you basically lose most of it down the drain, unlike with the solid. And so we've invented this thing that, you know, you buy loads of, you hardly use it and it goes straight into the environment. and then it pollutes it.

There you go. Very nicely done. There's so much very nicely done in your book, Mark. It's a great book. Mark Mealdavnik is author of the new book, Liquid Rules, The Delightful and Dangerous Substances that flow through our lives. You only touched upon them today.

Thank you for taking time to be with us today. It's a pleasure. It's a pleasure. We'll be looking for the follow-up. Yeah, of course. It's gas. Gas. Have a great weekend.

That's about all the time we have. B.J. Liederman composed our theme music. and if you missed any part you want to hear, this terrific interview we just had, you can ask your smart speaker to play Science Friday wherever you want. Every day now is Science Friday. Have a great weekend.

Nice to be back on my reflato in New York.