SciShow Tangents - Bonus Backlog Bonanza - Ep. 29

Episode Date: August 8, 2025

This bonus episode was originally posted on Patreon on July 28, 2023 titled "Shell Questions (the Lightning Round Version)."Original Patreon description: Welcome to the show, a lightning round of bonus questions focused on ONE episode! Here are all the runner-up questions from the shell episode.SciShow Tangents is on YouTube! Go to www.youtube.com/scishowtangents!And go to https://complexly.store/collections/scishow-tangents to buy some great Tangents merch!While you're at it, check out the Tangents crew on socials:Ceri: @ceriley.bsky.social@rhinoceri on InstagramSam: @im-sam-schultz.bsky.social@im_sam_schultz on InstagramHank: @hankgreen on X

Hey, everybody. Welcome to the Tangent's Patreon, Patreon, Patron Bonus podcast. Name TK. We ain't thought of one yet. We'll get there eventually. I think used to spin them off every time we recorded an episode. Okay, I'll try it like, Hank. The diarrhea hour. How about that? Welcome to the show. Yeah, that's perfect.

The diarrhea hour. It's all the diarrhea that comes from straight from my brain into your ears. Yeah, and out of my mouth, into your ears. We're just puking and. And ESP. And ESPing diarrhea teleported right into the old noggin. Well, Sari, I have a little, kind of a little surprise. We're going to do things a little bit different.

this time. I think you've seen on the show flow that things are a little teeny, teeny, teeny bit different. So for each episode of tangents, we ask our audience for science couch questions, and every week we get a lot of them, but we can only answer one per episode. We're only human, but we don't want good questions to go away. So each month, starting now, we will answer some of your questions that didn't quite make it on the show, Lightning Round Style. But now, they're all about one episode, and we're going to try to get through as many other runner-up questions as we can. And I'm going to hold you to Lightning Round, Sarah. We're going to answer all these questions and we're going to do it within half an hour okay okay yeah that's the new thing is

that I have to be short yeah you have accountability now I got a timer and then tuna's go play a baseball sound after a little bit and I'll be scared out of my mind and stop talking okay I can set a timer new rule instituted tuna this is tuna this is engineer tuna uh hanging out with us today and this is sari of course you know one of the hosts of sysha tangents and I'm sam I didn't introduce any of us. So yeah, Tuna's going to play a scary baseball sound every time that. It's time for you to stop talking. How long do you want it? Three minutes? Five minutes? Seri, how long do you need three minutes? Does that sound good? I don't know. I'll follow the difference and go four minutes.

I'm a gas that fills up the space that you give me. So. Okay. You ready, Sarah? You ready to do this? Yeah, go for it. I'll do it lightning, for real. Yuzoo drink asked on Discord. What's the difference between soft shell turtles and non-soft-shell turtles, and Bear Stravaganza on Twitter asked, are there any flaccid shells? Are leatherback sea turtle shells actually soft? Now, this is something I pulled out of my ass a couple days ago. I told somebody on the YouTube comments or something that I thought soft shell only was soft

shells in comparison to other shells. A crab specifically is what we were talking about. But I'm not sure. Like a soft shell. Yeah, well, a soft shell crab is an undeveloped crab shell. So it's like the crab has molted and is still squishy a little bit and hasn't had a chance to harden up. So it's not its own type of different guy. No, it's not a different guy.

It's the same guy, just soft. So yes, it is relative to other crab shells. But it's also soft enough that you can serve soft shell crab and eat it. It wouldn't be a really unpleasant experience to crunch through a crab shell and you'd probably hurt your mouth. It'd be like biting crusty bread, but. yeah 20 to 2,000 times worse because you get hard shell in your teeth yeah but soft shell crab you can just like eat it because the proteins haven't I don't know made that really solid crunchy outer coating yet uh-huh uh and turtles I guess are are sort of the same they

so turtles evolved with hardish shells like they the shells evolved from ribs and they first evolved like a hard shell on the bottom to protect their their bellies and then the upper ribs followed. So they started to be wide on the bottom and then they were wide on both and formed a shell. So all turtles had these like bony hard shells. And then as time passed, there were turtle species that made other evolutionary tradeoffs. They wanted to like swim faster or I guess want in the evolutionary sense. They gained more evolutionary fitness, had more babies because they were able to swim faster and their shells were slightly softer. So they evolved to have a more like leathery skin instead of scales or scutes are what they're called.

Why would that make them faster? I think because they're less weighed down. They're less heavy. Oh, okay, okay, okay. Like if you throw a rock in the water and you throw like a less heavy rock in the water. Okay. Then the lighter thing will have an easier time like paddling and gliding through the water. Sure, sure.

So soft is like relative. If you touch a leather back turtle, like a sea turtle, it'll still feel tough. I think I haven't touched one, but I assume leather is a good comparison. Yeah. So it's not going to be like you can stick your hand and crush the turtle shell immediately, but it is less protection if something were to like open it and bite down. Are there any flaccid shells? What do you mean by flaccid?

I'm not bear stravaganza, so I couldn't possibly tell you what he means by flaccid. I guess like, is there like a snail that used to have a good shell, but now their shell is like a slimy tube that's on their back or something. I don't think there's any like in that way, no. Like a soft shell crab is the closest thing to it where it's kind of like goopy, preformed shells are like that. But a lot of mollusks secrete their shells

and just build them up over time to be hard rather than molting and then growing a hard shell. Like those are the two ways you can kind of get shells are either building the hardness over time or letting it harden over time. Okay, okay. Wow, that was perfect. So Eve has joined us in the meantime.

Eve, the new rules of the game are that we're going to try to answer as many of these, of the questions that people asked us about a specific episode, and we're really putting Sarah to, we're really putting accountability on Sarah this time and making her answer the questions within a reasonable lightning round amount of time. And when the time is up, whichever, however, long tuna decides we need to have when tuna pushes the baseball button we're out i was wondering why sari was talking so fast she's scared i'm terrified uh here's a fun fact when when my friends were

in high school this is about turtle shells i'm going to flip out no it's about the word flaccid they would use it as like oh good in that case continue and i think it was because of dicks but they used it to mean like un that's uncool like man that's So flaccid. I like that, actually. In the way that people jokingly say, like, oh, man, this, like, really good movie made me rock hard. Like, they did the flip side of that. And we're like, man, this test, so flaccid.

And I think that's very funny. All right. You ready for the next one, Sari? You ready to hit go, Tuna? Oh, yeah. Chris on Discord asks, how did we figure out the shape of electron shell orbitals? Oh, boy. Do you know what an electron shell orbital is?

Well, I think I've heard you and Hank say that they're more of just like a conceptual way to picture the bounds of an individual electron or something, right? Like this is how big it can get. This is the outer. No, I don't know. Basically, kind of, yes. So it is like a probabilistic probability based on math and probability where an electron might be around the nucleus of an atom. So, like, the way that an atom is structured, there are protons and neutrons forming the nucleus of it. And then electrons occupy some amount of space outside.

And there have been a lot of different models of atoms. And this is the one using, like, concepts about quantum physics, which is why it's very, like, mathematically complicated. And I take a lot of shortcuts slash high school chemistry classes take a lot of shortcuts explaining it. specifically to answer the question we figured out the shape of electron shell orbitals using schrodinger's wave equations so erwin schrodinger uh scientist physicist oh i don't know he might be the cat guy there's two different cat guys there's two different guys no he's the same guy he's the same guy okay okay good at cat experiment he he liked probability and so that what is the cat experiment but also probability he also uh really liked the idea of cow

calculating probabilities of wave systems and wave functions over time. So, like, is a cat there? Is it not? Where is an electron? Is it there? Is it not? He had all kinds of similar. All questions we need to know the answer to.

And so he postulated this wave equation in the 1920s, won the Nobel Prize in the 1930s. And we still use it today to, like, model how electrons are, where we guess that electrons are relative to the nucleus of an atom. And the idea of orbitals is that energetically, there are, depending on the number of electrons that an atomic nucleus has around it, there are different spaces that they can occupy. Some of them are S orbitals, they're spherical,

some of them are P orbitals, and they're like an hourglass shape almost when you see them drawn. Some of them are D orbitals, there's another shape, and there are different subsets of those orbits. as they exist, like, rotated in space. And so when you get like a bunch of de-orbitales, then they can look, I don't know, weird blobs and rings and whatnot

of areas of where electrons might be. And the reason that they're that shape is because of math. And I can't get into it and more than that because I don't really know. I always was taught them as like, you need to memorize these shapes. but it has to do with things like what is the charge of the electron so it's like a negatively charged particle or wave so how does that repel against nucleus where is the like the position where in what range could the position be why do you need to memorize that who would ever use that except like Albert Einstein I think it's useful to know it like properties about the atom and how it bonds and whatnot. And I think it's mostly taught in chemistry so that you can get a better sense of, instead of like the Big Bang Theory opening credits diagram of an atom or a diagram of an atom

with nucleus and then electrons in orbital pathways around it, understanding that electrons occupy clouds. And then as those orbitals are half-filled or like partially filled in various ways, that affects what a given atom can bond to because really all atomic bonding is is electrons sharing orbitals between two atoms. I'm pretty sure. That's all you got to know.

That's fine. That's fine. Am I wrong? I feel like a good summary for a lot of things is it is the shape that it is because of math. Yeah, I think that that's a great lightning round answer actually. All right. next up at gin iradia on Twitter asked I've heard some shells are made with iron are there other metals used in shells what is the advantage of a metal as hell shell strength right is there iron in shells though is that even true the shell that this person is talking about is a snail shell it's called the scaly foot snail which lives near geothermal vents which are those really hot really metallic areas in the deep sea and specifically it incorporates the chemical compound iron sulfide into its shell

and into these little, I don't know, kind of like scaly bits called sclerites along the snail's foot. So if you look up a picture of it, it's got kind of this irony black as sheen on the top of its shell and these little, I don't know how to describe him. It looks kind of like chain mail. He's got like the skirt armor that like, you know, like a Roman guy. like a Roman soldier guy you know but instead of like walking around and it flowing it's just oozing around he's just going to the geothermal vent this guy is evil looking he's cool yeah and so it's like it's very cool it is less of intent like the snail didn't see much like I think it's easy

to assign to anthropomorphize animals like this and be like oh they saw iron and they thought I'm going to have this really cool strong shell and really cool strong plate male foot and no one's going to mess with me. But really. It was an accident. Yeah. A lot of biomaterials that incorporate elements

because of strength are just kind of by accident. It's based on what's available. And so iron sulfide in these like really sulfurous geothermal vents is just around. And that's why it evolved a way to incorporate these iron bits into things that already grow. Like it already is growing a shell. and it's just incorporating what's in its environment into that shell.

I couldn't find specifically other shells, so clams, other gastropods, other mollusks, other crustaceans or anything that incorporated metal into their shells. But there are lots of other organisms that incorporate metals to different parts of their bodies that they want to be hard. So like some mollusks like a limpid may have. teeth called a radula, I'm pretty sure, or maybe it just teeth, that they incorporate iron from the ocean as well into it, along with the chitin, because it makes it a little bit harder, it makes it a little bit easier to crunch the tiny things that it's eating. There's a parasitic wasp

that incorporated zinc from the environment into its stinger, also to make it a little bit more fortified, a little stronger, pierce a little better. So if you look around nature, there are a lot of organisms just like finding what is available in their environment and probably having some sort of symbiotic bacteria or biological process in them that over time and or randomly is just like, I'm going to take in what I eat and move those molecules around and put them in the development of some body part. If we put more mollusks in really heavily iron-rich environments and they didn't die, we'd probably see more organisms with irony shells just because it's around. But I don't think we could take a clam as it exists right now, put in iron-rich

water, and then make metal clams because they probably die. It's probably like, I will forge some armor for myself. And it would take like a billion, billion years too. I mean, I'll be dead. Yeah. Maybe not a billion billion, but definitely longer than a human lifetime. All right. Kelly L. on YouTube, how do the chocolate shell syrups for ice cream work? I think I can do this in less than four. So fats, you know, fats are all around us. They are made of fatty acid chains, and we see lots of different forms of them. So like olive oil is a fat, butter is a fat. Chocolate shell syrups are made from coconut oil, also a fat. And if you buy it in the grocery store, it is a solid, usually, whether it has like hair care

or in other other things. Oh, coconut. Coconut oil. Right. Yeah. Or the chocolate shell syrups. And all the chocolate shell syrups are coconut oil mixed with like the chocolate flavor

and maybe some other additives. But those are goopy. Yeah, they start out goopy, but usually they're like pretty solid and you have to microwave them to make them properly goofy. Uh-huh. And that's just because different fats

have different melting points and different points at which they solidify. So like butter, sometimes you can leave it on your counter sometimes you got to put it in your fridge for it to be solid and then you have to heat it up a little for it to melt coconut oil generally at room temperature is pretty solid um and you put it in the microwave you heat it up to melt it and ice cream and so when you pour that melted coconut oil and chocolate mixture on top of ice cream it lowers the temperature there are fewer wiggles in the coconut oil molecule and they freeze in place and it forms that hard chocolate shell So I think it just so happens that the substance existed. And it has a pretty neutral flavor that can be masked by the chocolate. Right. Or delicious even.

That sounds nice. I think we're going to fight for four minutes about if the magic shell is goopy or not. Because it's goopy. Well, okay, the ice cream one is goopy. The chocolate-dipped strawberry one comes in the little discs that you often melt. That's my experience anyway. Yeah, right. I think you're right.

I feel like I've always experienced it being in, like, the little, like, Hershey's chocolate squishy, squeezy bottle. Mm-hmm. With a little turtle on it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Got it, got it. Yeah. So I guess it's various stages of goofy or not. Thank you.

Depends on what. Depending what it is. Did you ever have that before, Sarah? It looks like you don't even know what we're talking about. My sister really liked it. I didn't. I don't like hard on my ice cream. I want, like, I like hot food on my ice cream.

The, like, the Dairy Queen, like, dipping, Dunkin. Yeah, the dilly bars. Yeah. Dillie bar, dillie bar, dipped cone, any kind of, yeah. Hard and ice cream is great. Just a plain soft serve or like a chocolate vanilla swirl soft serve. No shell. Then it gets too messy.

I think you got sensitive teeth. I don't really have sensitive teeth. I'm sensitive to mess. And I think it's so much easier to stay tidy with like a plain old soft serve than it is a chocolate dip soft serve. Where you like crunch it and then it goes every. The little pieces can fall off, get on your shirt. Curious if the difference here is, like, the ice cream one can start out a little goopier because you're putting it on ice cream, which is very cold.

And then the one for, like, chocolate-dipped strawberries has to start off a little harder because you're bringing it to room temperature again to harden that. That's got to be right. Yeah, and it's probably more proportionally chocolate, too, because, like, chocolate has cocoa butter in it, which is solid at room temperature. So that is also my guess. Like there might not even be coconut oil in the chocolate of strawberry version.

It could just be like chocolate chip. I looked it up there is coconut oil. There's coconut oil in it. All right. Play the baseball sound. Thank you. Perfect. All right.

One more. Cavia, Vigia, Morali on YouTube asks, why do certain shells sound like the ocean when you put them to your ear? Do you know why? It's a sci-shu kid's kind of question. I think we've done it on Syshow Kids, in fact. It's the blood rushing through your head, is that right?

Or just like reflecting all kinds of sounds back at you? Something like that. Yeah, I think it's more, I guess you can kind of hear it if you just like cover your ear. You hear like a little rush and that's gathering sounds and directing them at your ear though. But yeah, with a shell, then it's like a big hollow object where it's this idea of resonance. where if you have any hollow object, whether it's a seashell, I don't know why I can't say that word. It's not even a tongue twister by itself, but seashells do resonance where it's like ambient noise

in the environment that like sound is waves and they just reverberate and echo around and the inside chamber of the shell. And it really isolates those sounds that reach your inner ear and get processed. So a lot of, like, the other background noises aren't registered, like the sharper noises, or the, I don't know, the ones that are farther away. I don't know a sound soon as you'll answer this question better than me. And you mostly just hear the amplified noise of moving air, because air's moving all around you, air is moving around inside the shell, and that in itself has a kind of, like, white noise background noise. And it just kind of like coincidentally sounds like the ocean because waves crashing against the shore kind of just sound like whooshing air. Sure.

I'm not crazy. People have like the one of the general answers to this is it's your blood and your head, right? That's like what? I've definitely heard that. Yeah. But that's not. That's overblown. Yeah.

Because I think that could be part of it, like especially if you're holding it up to your ear, you're going to catch a lot of that. But, like, especially if the shell is hard, that's going to reflect higher frequencies much better, which is how you end up with sort of that white noisy kind of sound, which is also the upper register of oceans sounds are very white noisy, lots of frequencies that aren't particularly tied to any harmonic series. When my ears are super clogged, I feel like I can hear my heart beating in my ears. Yeah, you can definitely, because they have the,

I'm sure I've brought this up before because it seems like a thing that I would bring up a lot. They have anechoic chambers, which are like the giant rooms where they have that big sound foam kind of stuff, but they're like feet thick. Right. And like basically it just destroys all reverberations, which are like super weird, but our brains automatically adjust the sensitivity of our ears, which is why when you're laying down at night, like, all the quiet sounds seem so much louder is because like that contrast isn't there. and so your brain is amplifying things. And so, like, if you're in a quiet enough spot, like, anechoic chambers, you can hear your own blood flowing in your ears and, like, include the, like, pulse of your heartbeat kind of thing.

But it has to be real quiet, because as it turns out, blood ain't very loud. Yeah, air, medium loud. Ocean, pretty loud. Blood, pretty quiet. It's so tiny. All right, yeah. play the baseball sound 15 seconds early

15 great first run at answering all these questions everybody we all did a really good job okay well thanks everybody for being patrons of our show and for listening to us and hanging out with us and watching the show with us on YouTube when we watch it and listening to it on podcasts

and we couldn't do any of this without you isn't that right sir that's so right especially we wouldn't even have any questions Sarah knows the answer to everything, so she couldn't think of any questions. Oh, absolutely not. I can barely do the answers to the questions. But no, we really appreciate it. It keeps us able to do it.

I'm not full-time staff at Complexa anymore, so I got to get... We're looking out for you, though. We're looking out for you. But we can only do this show and make it, like, sustainable because of patrons and because of this really lovely community that listens to it and decided that you like it so much that you decided to support us. Our lovely community of at this moment, 666 people. Nice.

Now that's fucking metal. Yeah. The snails ain't got shit. All right. Well, we'll see you next time. Bye. Bye.