SciShow Tangents - Acid

Episode Date: August 13, 2019

This week, the Other Couch's high-school-level understanding of chemistry is really put to the test as we talk about acid! What is it? How does it dissolve things? It has something to do... with protons? It seems way simpler in the movies!Follow us on Twitter @SciShowTangents, where we’ll tweet out topics for upcoming episodes and you can ask the science couch questions! If you want to learn more about any of our main topics, check out these links:[Truth or Fail]Formic acid (general):https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/compound/Formic-acidFire ant antivenom:https://science.sciencemag.org/content/343/6174/1014.abstracthttps://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/invasive-crazy-ants-are-eating-up-invasive-fire-ants-in-the-south-65189409/https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-rise-of-the-crazy-ants/Bone-house wasps:https://www.wired.com/2014/07/the-spider-eating-bone-house-wasp/Electricity-generating wasps:https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/12/101221-solar-power-hornet-science-animals/[Fact Off]Internal sensor:https://www.seeker.com/when-swallowed-this-sensor-is-powered-by-stomach-acid-2248294501.htmlPregnancy gif:https://giphy.com/gifs/pregnancy-baby-fetus-WS91RYT47sA6Ihttps://imgur.com/gallery/d7n3eIHMoss bandage:https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/how-humble-moss-helped-heal-wounds-thousands-WWI-180963081/https://images.app.goo.gl/TWkw555pqQcRF4Ap8[Ask the Science Couch]Battery energy storage:https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-do-batteries-store-an/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IV4IUsholjg&list=PL8dPuuaLjXtPHzzYuWy6fYEaX9mQQ8oGrLead-acid batteries:https://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/lead_based_batterieshttp://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/electric/leadacid.html

Hello and welcome to SciShow Tangents, it's the lightly competitive knowledge showcase starring some of the geniuses that make the YouTube series SciShow happen. How did I do? Oh, yeah! We need a soundboard or something. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, yeah! Stefan Chin is here

as usual to join us in a fun episode of SciShow Tangents. What's your tagline? Uh, crispy feet. Sam Schultz is joining us as well. Good day. Sam always working on graphics for SciShow, editing things, also editing this podcast. Thanks for doing that. You're welcome. I just do everything.

Do whatever it needs doing. Yeah. Until the day is over. Until my life is done. Well, you put it all in context for us. What's your tagline? No matter where you go, there you are. Oh, agreed.

I'm right here on this couch. On the science couch with Sari Reilly. I'm here. What's your tagline? Not a co-parent. Ah, yes. And I'm Hank Green, and I'm so happy to be here with these people to talk about science this week. And my tagline is tickle nose.

Every week here on Size Your Tangents, we get together to try to one-up, am. And my tagline is tickle nose. Every week here on Slice Your Tangents, we get together to try to one-up, amaze, and delight each other with science facts. We're playing for glory, but we're also keeping score and striving to destroy the other science factors. Would you like to know the scores? What are the scores? We have a major development.

We had a major development in that you're not in first anymore? Well, maybe. So, in last place, care to take a guess stephan jim still me with 45 points and next sari with 46 points after that sam what 51 points and in first place hank with 52 points okay so the spread has tightened yeah yeah. Yeah. It's all about taking down Sam. Well, you don't already. No, now it's you. Eat the rich.

Well, I'm just going to invest it in the stock market. It's going to appreciate my crazy. We do everything we can to stay on topic here on Sashow Tangents. But judging by the fact that I just said invest my Hank bucks in the stock market, we won't be great at that. So if the rest of the team deems a tangent unworthy, we'll force you to give up one of your Hank bucks. So, tangent with care. Now, as always, we introduce this week's topic with the traditional

science poem. This week from Sam. Okay, nobody can look at me while I do this. Oh, nobody can look at Sam while he does it. I have to sing again. Hide behind your computers, everyone. You have to sing it? I have to. You make these choices, Sam. I know, I know. But, I thought of this one in the shower and I could not do it. Okay.

I'm melting away. All my molecules are now breaking free. New bonds are forming. Till there's nothing left but a puddle of me. Things with low pH pH to my surprise will donate some protons and melt my eyes and now I, oh lord

now I am a skeleton man laughter Sari, do you know what that is? I don't know that song Come Sail Away by Styx about acids somebody got melted by acids in a shower i did

you were in the shower no no i just thought of it in the shower i thought i thought i was like what's my poem gonna be and then like an angel whispered to me i'm melting away but also i was looking up acids on wikipedia and i don't even know what the hell they are it's very confusing acids Acids aren't that complicated, but I guess maybe I'm better qualified to answer this question than Sari. An acid is something that donates protons easily

and protons react with stuff and so things that exist in a stable form when you add a bunch of protons to the solution they might prefer to be something else in the presence of those protons and so you get a bunch of protons to the solution, they might prefer to be something else in the presence of those protons. And so you get a bunch of chemical reactions that happen, a bunch of acid-based chemistry. So if it's melting me, what's it pulling out of me?

It's basically turning your complicated long-chain molecules into simpler, breaking those molecules into little pieces. Okay. And that's bad. Yeah, yeah. All your And that's bad. Yeah. Yeah. All your proteins become not your proteins anymore. Another thing that's, there's strong acids and weak acids, which might be relevant to this discussion. So strong acids dissociate more completely in water. So like they donate more protons in whatever reaction while weak acids stay bound together

a little bit more. So that's, I don't know, that's why strong acid will dissolve things more easily because it itself dissolves. Comes apart more. Yeah. And now it's time for Truth or Fail. Sari has prepared three science facts for education and enjoyment,

but only one of those facts is real. And the rest of us have to figure out either by deduction or wild guess, which is the true fact. If we get it right, we get a Hank Buck. If we get it wrong, Sari gets that Hank Buck. Hit us with your fake facts. Formic acid, also known as methanoic acid, is structurally very simple. It's just H-C-O-O-H, so carboxylic acid with a hydrogen. But it has a lot of uses by humans and in nature. For example, we synthesize it and incorporate it into livestock feed as a preservative,

but it's also the active component of some hymenoptera, which is the order with bees and ants and wasps, stings for attack and defense. So which of these uses of formic acid is true in the animal kingdom? Number one, as an anti-venom or soothing smear, kind of like sunscreen.

Number two, dissolving holes in bones to make nests. Or number three, to generate electricity through biochemical reactions. So number one, topical antivenom. Yeah. Number two, holding out some bones to make your nest inside. Or number three, generating electricity. I feel like making nests and bones that seems like sure like somebody's gonna make a nest in a bone and formic acid seems like it'd do that job

just like the nice thing about formic acid is like the simplest thing to synthesize for an animal so easy to make so is something present when bees sting you is that what you said or so like not all hymenoptera but a lot of st stings involve formic acid as a burn. Can I eat it? Does it taste good? I don't think it tastes good. But I think because we put it in animal feed as a preservative, at small concentrations, it can be like antibacterial. Right.

And it's not necessarily like bad for me. Yes. It's not necessarily bad. But high concentrations, it will dissolve you. Right. Okay. That's what I think. I feel like somebody's got to build a nest inside of a bone.

I don't trust that one. You don't trust? I like that one. I feel good about that. It seems like it would be too much or something, like too much fluid for them to make to melt the bone. Ah, they're tiny. Yeah, you need just little holes.

Yeah, and also bones aren't so dense, especially once you get inside. You can make a little hole. They're so light in the air. And then hang out inside. Okay. Well, I guess. You can make a little hole and then hang out inside. Okay. Well, I'm not going with that one. Okay. Topical anti-venom.

I guess, like, if venoms are complicated, you sort of, like, hit them with some acid. It breaks it down. Huh. Makes sense. Is that how they work? I'm saying it could work. Okay. But I don't know, like, who's spraying venom on people?

Maybe. On the outside. Usually venom's injected. Yeah, but there's exceptions to everything. Yeah, you're absolutely right. In the animal kingdom. They just spread it on themselves and they're like, I'm going to be protected from you spitting your venom on me. Or it's like a frog or something.

Oh, frog. Squirts it out. I want to know the answer. We have to guess and find out the answer. I'm going to go with the electricity one. Electricity one for Sam. Squirts it out. I want to know the answer. We have to guess and find out the answer. I'm going to go with the electricity one. Electricity one for Sam. I know too little. That's the human condition.

Yeah, I don't understand any of them. I'm going with Sam's too. I'm going with the electricity. Wow, I'm going with bones. I'm going to stick with my first impulse. You're all wrong. No! This is my first sleep.

Sweeped again. Wow. Yeah, so the antivenom is the true one. Look at my first impulse. You're all wrong. No! This is my first sleep I've had. Wow. Yeah, so the antivenom is the true one. Was it a frog? Pretty fake. No. Is it an insect? Insects.

They're all, yeah, based on insects. So I'll do the two fake ones first. Oh, hit us. So dissolving holes in bones to make nests. There are wasps that are called. Of course. The solitary wasps, they make a nest anywhere. Yeah. They're called bone house wasps.

Oh, yeah, they are. So they're very cool. But they don't actually bury into bones. They just collect the bodies of dead ants and fill up their nests with them when they lay their larvae inside. They collect the bodies of dead ants. Yes. They don't kill them, officer. No, I just found them.

But they don't eat them, which is what's weird. Yeah, it's like a bed out of them or what? Yeah, it's like a barricade. So it's like in a zombie apocalypse, you like barricade with, I don't know, something. Not the dead. Not the dead. What are they keeping out?

Parasites. Okay. So the barricade of dead ants according to studies reduces parasitism sure a lot ants are hard and they've got phantom yeah and they think the yeah the formic acid of the ants act as a repellent to parasites and predators so it's like i've got this acid barrier or it distracts them with the smell it smells like ants instead of like gooey wasp babies, which they might want to eat. Are they just too freaked out? They don't want to mess with that.

Yeah. Absolutely. You look at that and you're like, ah, that guy's crazy. That guy's weird. Well, why'd they call them bone house wasps? I don't know. Ants don't even have bones. They don't have a single bone.

What a terrible name. There's not a single bone in that house. They eat spiders. What do you do for a living? Oh, I collect dead ants and eat spiders and then the electricity one that doesn't have to do with formic acid there's just a species of wasp a hornet that makes electricity through solar power that is very neat and so because it's in hymenoptera i just made it up but they like produce electricity inside their exoskeletons. To do what with?

We don't know. So if I bite them, I'm like, ow! Yeah, just a very small amount. They're pigments in their tissues that trap light, and then organelles, probably, and other tissues that generate electricity. And the researchers have no idea. They've measured that electricity gets produced,

but they're not sure how the wasp uses this. When it doesn't make any sense, it's sexual selection. That's just how they look sexy. Such amplitude. And then the antivenom is the true one. The ants that use formic acid as an antivenom are called tawny crazy ants, and they use it to protect against fire ant bites.

And so fire ants are an invasive species from South America, and they've sort of taken over they're very hard to get rid of and their bites hurt a lot because the alkaloids that are inside the venom are mostly piperidine which is related to the pepper chemical ingredient but they're also like just like proteins inside that's what makes the bites burn so much. It's a spicy ant. Yeah, it's the one spicy ant. And tawny crazy ants are also an invasive species from South America.

So scientists think they could have co-evolved in some way. They know each other. Yeah, but they like spit up formic acid and then rub it all over themselves after they get bitten by the ant bites or like before somewhere in the middle of this interaction. And the ones that do

that have almost like a zero percent rate of dying but without that like over 75 of them die so they they tested that by putting nail polish over their glands that spew out formic acid and so when their glands were covered up then they more ants died but and so it's like it's a cool thing because it's the the evolutionary arms race that everyone likes bringing up. But also kind of a scary thing for people who are already being overrun by fire ants because now these like even more intense ants are going and wiping out fire ant colonies and are like. Are they worse? I don't think they bite worse for humans. They spew toxins too.

So they're not great. And they. Hide your babies form their nests in similar places so like in houses in human structures where we don't necessarily want ants and they're harder to exterminate so like the poisons that we're using on fire ants aren't working on the tawny crazy it's wild to me to think that like florida now has worse ants yeah than when i was there it like, oh, you thought fire ants were bad? Wait till you see tawny crazy

ants. We call them crazy ants. We couldn't think of something worse than fire ants. So I was just like, these ants, they're crazy. At least they're not giant yet. You know what I've noticed is that the big ants, it doesn't feel good when they bite you.

I've been bit by some big ants. it doesn't feel good when they bite you I've been bit by some big ants but like it does not hurt the way that fire ants did those carpenter ant bites like they'll make you bleed they got big enough mouth parts but fire ant bites hurt so bad bullet ants are big though and they are big and they are the worst apparently the worst of the stings but they're not here yet are they I don't think so I hope they don't make it to America but luckily we live in Montana where ants won't be able to survive in the wintertime for at least another 20 years or so. Then we'll have roaches, and then I'll have to leave here, too. Oh, no, we'll have to roach.

I'll keep going north until they can't get me anymore. All right, everybody, it's time for a short break, and then we'll be back with the Fact Off. Welcome back, everybody. Our Hank Buck total so far, I got nothing, and I'm tied with Stefan. So you also got nothing. I was so confident, even though I knew nothing. Sam's got one for the poem and Sari swept the fact off. That's all right. Underdogs coming back.

Oh, yeah. I'll pull you up with me, Stefan. Yeah, sure. Don't like think about that during this next section where I am competing with Stefan in the fact-off. We've got two panelists presenting facts, and the presentees each have a Hank Buck to award to the fact that blows their mind the most. The person who's going to go first is the person who likes acetic acid the most. How do you feel about vinegar? I don't. You don't eat it at all?

Because that's like pickle juice, right? You don't like pickles? No. I also don't like pickles. Fuck pickles. I do sometimes wash my hair with apple cider vinegar because they told me to on Queer Eye. I've heard about this. What, does it make it shiny or something?

It helps with dandruff. Oh, okay. I haven't done any research. Sounds like you like vinegar the most. Don't you like salt and vinegar potato chips? I like salt and vinegar potato chips. Do you? I do.

Not really. You don't like vinegar at all, right? I'm not really into vinegar. All right. As a cleaning agent, sure course obviously outside the body you know all right i guess i'm gonna go first everybody i've got news from scientists who want to study the inside of your bodies from the inside of your bodies because if you want to know about the inside you can cut into there and look that's a pain and dangerous so if you want to know about the inside, you can cut into there and look. But that's a pain and dangerous. So ideally, you want to look on the inside of somebody's body

without cutting them open. So if you want to learn about the inside of somebody's body, you could just like make somebody swallow something. But then you have to have a battery inside of that thing so it can wirelessly transmit the information out and also do all of the recording and stuff. And batteries aren't the safest thing all of the time. So this is where a team of MIT scientists creating what they hope will be the next generation of medicine turned to

an elementary school experiment. So, a lot of you have probably made a lemon battery out there. I think I'm gonna say a volcano with this baking soda. So you stick two electrodes, usually like a piece of zinc

and a piece of copper, into a lemon and connect them with a wire and you get electricity. This is a fun experiment we use to teach kids about electricity, but it is also

the inspiration behind a set of ingestible sensors that are powered by our stomach acids. Because the thing about the lemon battery is that the lemon is important, but it is replaceable. The acid in the lemon oxidizes the zinc, which frees up an electron to move from the zinc

to the copper, so from the zinc anode to the copper cathode. But you could just as easily accomplish this with someone's stomach acid. So instead of creating a whole device that's powered by a separate battery, the researchers took their ingestible sensors and attached zinc and copper electrodes to the surface. When the device enters the stomach, the acids surrounding it are able to drive the same reactions that a lemon does, creating a current between the electrodes and driving power to the sensor. When they tested these sensors out in pigs they

were able to get enough power to wirelessly transmit temperature data every 12 seconds for six days well how does it stay in your stomach so it does move through the body so it's getting some different temperatures for six days yes this is my question are you 98.6 degrees all over inside of you that's a good question i bet there are some areas of you that have different i know that your testicles are lower temperature right that's a thing they got to be far away apparently and i've always this has always confused me people are like there has to be a lower temperature to make the sperm and i'm like, then just do the enzymes differently. Yeah.

Make it so that they can do it at a different temperature. Are you yelling this at your testicles? I'm yelling this at the science teacher who's like, it only works at a certain temperature. And I'm like, well, then just make it work at a different temperature. There are animals who operate at a lot of different temperatures. Or just put them in a little bag. Well, I'd rather they be on the inside.

In a safe place. You have to have some kind of vulnerability. No! I don't! They are a little bit disposable. Like, you're not going to die. You won't pass anything on, but, like, you won't die. Evolutionarily, in terms of passing on genes,

like, not having your testicles is the same thing as dying. Well, sure, evolutionarily. But I'm still alive. Okay. How do they stay in your stomach? They don't. Yeah, that's... Because nothing stays in your body for six days unless you've got some issues.

That I don't... It's pretty big. Like an inch and a half long. And I don't know if these pigs just were not good at passing this thing or if they had some way of keeping it there. Sure. But once it moved into the small intestine, it was less acidic.

And so it didn't have as much power, but it was still able to transmit data. Is it other stuff it can transmit? Like they just were testing it with temperature? They were testing temperature because that's like an easy data point. So they could definitely do like pH for sure. It's an easy thing to sense.

Salinity would be fairly easy to sense in there. Could you map out like gut bacteria or something? Maybe you have a little camera on there. Yeah. Because they do that. They have swallowable cameras now. So that was my fact. They can power sensors inside of people with their own stomach acid.

Cool. Stefan. So in World War I, there was a shortage of bandages because the bandages were made of cotton, which was also used for other things like uniforms and apparently explosives. And in general, on like these World War I battlefields, there's a lot of infected wounds. I assume partially because these are like dirty places, but also because people weren't getting the treatment they needed right away so lots of nasty infected wound things happening and a shortage of bandages so doctors and surgeons were trying out different things

to try to like treat them like dousing things in chlorine or formaldehyde which probably didn't turn out the best but was maybe okay i don I don't know. You gotta try something. Let's just put some pool cleaner on it. So the thing that they eventually landed on was using peat moss. And there was sort of an anecdote story about a soldier who had a limb wound and they knew that he wasn't gonna be able

to get to the hospital for like a week. So they just like packed a bunch of moss into his wound and like wrapped it up. And then when they got to the hospital, they thought they were going to unwrap it and be like, well, we got to take the leg or whatever it was. But they unwrapped the wound and it was healed. They were like, huh, that's interesting.

So peat moss or sphagnum is a genus of 400 moss species that are found mostly in the Northern Hemisphere. And there's a couple of things that make them super good for bandages, apparently. And one is that they're super absorbent because most of the cells in the moss are dead. And I think that's most mosses that they create all these cells and then they die. But they use the empty cells to store water.

Instead of water, they can store blood so it can soak up a bunch. It's super absorbent. And also, apparently, peat moss was used by some Native Americans as a diaper material. they can store blood so it like can soak up a bunch it's like super absorbent and also apparently peat moss was used by some native americans as like a diaper material so they would line their baby's cribs number one super absorbent number two the cell walls of the moss are charged and so they end up absorbing certain ions and releasing hydrogen ions and that acidifies the environment around the plant these mosses are super prevalent in like bogs and that's why you're like peat bogs and that's where

we found a bunch of like human remains that are super the bog man who's super well preserved because that acidic environment is part of what helps prevent like bacteria from infiltrating these bogs and like decomposing that material. And so that also helps it disinfect wounds by creating this acidic environment in the wound. So they put out calls to like have volunteers collect all this stuff and they were like, put it in a bag and dance on it to get all the water out. And then they would process them and make actual bandages. So it wasn't just like stuffing plants into wounds. I mean, maybe they did that to some degree but but they were actually like mass producing bandages made of of moss that would like sort of be super absorbent and

disinfect the wound it's wild also no one reacted when you said put it in a bag and dance on it which i feel like it is not a normal way to squeeze water out of things. Early 1900s instructions. Seems like a wartime thing to do. Put it in a bag

and then like do a jig. It was like children back home who were collecting like school children would go out on their lunches

and collect moss. Do they make bandages now based on moss? So it seems like this has been used probably for a thousand years to treat wounds but it was sort of like used in ancient times and then was like fell out of popularity and then around the two world wars sort of we rediscovered it and used it a bunch but now now we don't really. It's kind of labor intensive to go out and collect moss. And so I don't think it's cost efficient. But also like peat bogs and peat moss is kind of important for biodiversity.

For like nature and stuff. We don't want to harvest all that. But I guess more like my question was, could they make a bandage that is slightly acidic and collected blood in the same way? And do they do that? Do you know? Not that I know of. I invented it just now.

Period, Mark. Let the hospitals know. Yeah. When I searched for this, the first thing that came up were menstrual pads. Also that they made at, like, turn-of-the-century times. They're called sphagnikins because that's the worst thing that they could think of. It sounds like we're trying to make a pun.

Yeah, yeah. But didn't get there. But bad, yeah. So yeah, it's sphagnikins and on the cover of the sphagnikins is a lady and it says, sphagnum moss girl. What?

There she is. She's a nurse in the war. Maybe she was, like, dressed in some wounds and she was like, actually, you know what I need right now? I would like to revise my tagline to be Moss Girl, though. I just really like the energy of that. She seems great. She does seem like she's got a lot going on for herself. Yeah, she's, like, living her best life. She went to medical school, is now a nurse, and then became a model she's got a lot going on. Yeah, she's living her best life.

She went to medical school, is now a nurse, and then became a model. She saved a lot of lives, and now she's just a hot girl on the sanitary napkins package. Honestly, I'm looking at her, and it looks like she's seen some shit, which I'm sure she has. That's how everybody looked right around that time. That's true. That's true. Jesus. Well, I'm going gonna give mine to Stefan

because that was a beautiful story and I just really enjoyed it I'm also gonna give mine to Stefan fine do it

very good I knew nothing about this moss and the way that you described it as a lemon clock was very good because then I could

clearly picture it in my mind but then I was like they're just swallowing a lemon clock these scientists really phoned it in they're like

you know what we're gonna invent a lemon clock. These scientists really phoned it in. They're like, you know what? We're going to invent a lemon clock inside your body. Maybe one of their kids accidentally swallowed their lemon clock. Now that'll work. I have a big paper due tomorrow. Might as well make it about this. I bet I can get a grant for this.

Really stressed out PhD student. Like, what am I going to do my thesis on? And now it's time to ask the science couch where we ask listener questions to our couch of finely honed scientific minds who have been not on their A-game today. But Sam, ask me a question.

At Bizdebeth asks, why is there acid in batteries? You know, so that... Good start. Hang the chem chemistry to go. Yeah, because you got to... Did you look at... I did look at this up.

I did look this up. I just thought you might be able to help because battery... Electrochemistry is my worst kind. I hated it. I'm very bad at it. I love to inspire the confidence in the listener before I give an answer. I hate electrons. Sari and I both hate electrons.

We wish they didn't exist. A battery, like the idea of a battery is you store chemical energy and then it converts into electrical energy, but inside is chemicals. And that's electrochemistry in a nutshell. Yeah, that was good. Let's stop right there.

There's a positive electrode, which is also called the cathode, which wants electrons. There's a negative electrode, which is also called the cathode, which wants electrons. There's a negative electrode, which is an anode that gives up electrons. And then there's redox reactions that happen inside the batteries, which are reduction reactions, which mean a gain of electrons. And oxidation reactions, which are a release of electrons. My organic chemistry teacher taught me, Leo the lion says ger. So like Leo is loss of electrons is oxidation. Ger is gain of electrons is reduction. Pro tip for anyone studying chemistry right now. So the cathode and the

anode are separated by an electrolyte. And that is a solution or sometimes like a paste in a dry cell battery that has ions inside that can move around and let electrons move around so that when the cathode and anode are connected like when a battery is plugged into a device to do work electrons can flow and that's electricity and so in batteries that have acid inside, that's the electrolyte. But not all batteries have acid. So there are alkaline batteries like Duracell and things like that. Alkaline means basic. And so the solution inside is something like potassium hydroxide.

That's a basic solution as the electrolyte. Still fuck you up if you touch it though? It's not great for you. But then there are batteries like lead acid batteries, which is I think the first rechargeable battery that existed that used lead compounds as the cathode and anode. And then sulfuric acid was the electrolyte in that. The electrolyte can vary. And so not all batteries have what's known colloquially as battery acid. But when acid is in batteries, it's just like a conductor is it

always an acid or a base does it have to be over or under a certain ph yeah like it has to be something that that i think it does have to be an acid or a base it has to be something that allows ions to move so the thing that's moving through the wire that's powering the car or whatever that's electrons and so electrons can just move through wires but ions can't move through wires so that's not how it works too big it's because they're too big it's because because electrons like are a subatomic particle whereas ions are a whole atom okay except that they're not an atom they're an ion if you want to yell at me about that but please just understand trying to teach a complicated thing. They've got nucleuses and they've got electrons.

So they have to have a substance that they can move through because for every electron that goes through the wire, an ion has to move through your electrolyte. Still seems like magic. Basically, yeah. This is why I hate electrons. It's so complicated. It's all magic.

All of it. The drungus, testicles, everything. Acid-based chemistry. All of it. The drungus, testicles, everything's magic. Acid-based chemistry. The three things. That's the first three things they teach you at Hogwarts. The three pillars of magic. While you're on the train there, too.

Like, okay, guys, we have to teach you magic. There's actually a lot of chemistry involved. All the wizard barns are teaching the muggles so you have to know about the drunkest you have to know about testicles and you have to know about acid based chemistry before you even get to a thestral this whole episode I've felt the feeling I haven't felt since high school

where my brain just like clenches into a solid block where nothing can get into it it's like I don't want it it's too many words battery work want it. I don't want to know this. It's too many words. Battery work. That's all I need to know.

If you take nothing else away from this episode, it's not even about acids. It's electrons moving is electricity. Electron move, battery work. Yeah. Yep. Sari, you worked really hard and you also won. So it all turned out

well for you I love electrons two points Sam with one me with nothing and and Sari you have three so

one of my favorite episodes we've ever done Sari and I got all the points ultimately that's what matters if you like SciShow Tangents and you want to help us out it's super easy to do that you can leave us a review where you listen that's what matters. If you like SciShow Tangents and you want to help us out, it's super easy to do that. You can leave us a review where you listen.

That's very helpful. It helps us know what you like about the show. And we'll also be looking at iTunes reviews for topic ideas for future episodes. You can also tweet out your favorite moment from this episode, which I love it when I see those. And finally, if you want to show your love for SciShow Tangents, tell people about us. If you want to read more about any of today's topics, check out SciShowTangents.org to find links to sources. Thank you for joining us.

I have been Hank Green. I've been Sari Reilly. I've been Skrispy Feet. And I'm Sam Schultz. SciShow Tangents is a co-production of Complexly and the awesome team at WNYC Studios. It's created by all of us and produced by Caitlin Hoffmeister and Sam Schultz, who also edits a lot of these episodes along with Hiroko Matsushima. Our sound design is by Joseph Tuna-Medish.

Our social media organizer is Victoria Bongiorno, and we couldn't make any of this without our patrons on Patreon. Thank you, and remember, the mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be lighted. But one more thing. In 2015, researchers looked at the poop of 15 participants in the Boston Marathon before and after the race. They found that after running, there were significantly more bacteria of the genus Vionella present in the poop. The researchers discovered this bacteria eats lactate, which is the conjugate base of lactic acid that builds up in the body during exercise. So apparently, according to PBS Nova at least, lactic acid doesn't build up in your muscles

when you're exercising, but lactate does. And it doesn't do what people thought, like burn you. It helps somehow. So they eat lactate and they excrete propionate,

which is a compound that is thought to have positive effects on blood pressure and metabolism. So they injected mice with samples from these runners' poop.

Whoa! And the mice that got injected could run 13% longer than the mice that didn't. But scientists aren't sure if the exercise encouraged the growth or if the people were better at running because they just had this bacteria naturally growing in them. Some people just seem to have more of it. I do not have this bacteria. Put the poop in Stefan. Give me

the poop. Send your poop to Stefan. We got a P.O. box for Stefan. P.O. box. P.O.O.P. box.