SciShow Tangents - Carbon

Episode Date: August 16, 2022

Carbon gets a pretty bad rap these days, what with global climate change and, but every living thing on Earth owes their very existence to this multitalented little element! And heck, that's not even all it does! Click play to find out more. SciShow Tangents is on YouTube! Go to www.youtube.com/scishowtangents to check out this episode with the added bonus of seeing our faces! Head to www.patreon.com/SciShowTangentsto find out how you can help support SciShow Tangents, and see all the cool perks you’ll get in return, like bonus episodes and a monthly newsletter!And go to https://store.dftba.com/collections/scishow-tangents to buy your very own, genuine SciShow Tangents sticker!A big thank you to Patreon subscribers Garth Riley, Tom Mosner, Daisy Whitfield, and Allison Owen for helping to make the show possible!Follow us on Twitter @SciShowTangents, where we’ll tweet out topics for upcoming episodes and you can ask the science couch questions! While you're at it, check out the Tangents crew on Twitter: Ceri: @ceriley Sam: @im_sam_schultz Hank: @hankgreen[Trivia Question] Gigatons of carbon in the atmosphere https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/736161 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/336261451_A_Framework_for_Understanding_Whole-Earth_Carbon_Cycling/link/5d99c82da6fdccfd0e7bd8b6/download [Fact Off] Spider/silkworm silk reinforced by carbon https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1806805115 https://www.digitaltrends.com/cool-tech/spiders-graphene-silk/ https://newatlas.com/bionic-spider-silk-graphene/50908/ https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/09/170915165253.htm https://phys.org/news/2016-10-silkworms-fed-carbon-nanotubes-graphene.html https://futurism.com/graphene-fed-silkworms-produce-a-super-strong-silk-that-conducts-electricity https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.nanolett.6b03597 Carbon foam made from burnt (pyrolyzed) bread https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/materials-science/foam-material https://www.acsh.org/news/2016/07/08/burnt-bread-makes-an-excellent-carbon-foam https://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/acsami.6b03985 https://www.fs.usda.gov/features/revolutionary-carbon-foam-wood https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S016523701630256X http://www.cfoam.com/wp-content/uploads/Carbon-Foams-amp16111p029-3.pdf [Ask the Science Couch] Eating carbon (pure forms, organic compounds that are/aren’t toxic) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5307002/ ​​https://medlineplus.gov/ency/article/002817.htm https://www.livescience.com/34190-what-happens-when-you-swallow-a-diamond.html http://www.nanomedicine.com/NMIIA/15.1.1.htm https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/natural-toxins-in-food https://med.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Anatomy_and_Physiology/Book%3A_Human_Anatomy_and_Physiology_Preparatory_Course_(Liachovitzky)/03%3A_Molecular_Level-_Biomolecules_the_Organic_Compounds_Associated_With_Living_Organisms/3.01%3A_Organic_Compounds https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/ershdb/emergencyresponsecard_29750019.html

Hello and welcome to SciShow Tangents, the lightly competitive science knowledge showcase. I'm your host Hank Green and joining me this week, as always, is science expert, Sari Riley. Hi. And our resident everyman, Sam Schultz. Hello. So, as you two know, the world is in quite a state. But one of the main ways it's in a state is because of this little carbon dioxide problem we got going on. We took a lot of stuff that was created by life and then fossilized and got all that energy that the life stored up and chunked it together

and then we started burning it. And one of the things that that does is it re-releases all of that carbon dioxide that those things put into themselves to make themselves one way or another. And now it's in the atmosphere. And every day is a little more. And I was thinking, they put it in the soda.

So why don't we put it all in soda? We can have so much bubble wine. In one big soda for everyone. How big of a soda do we have to make? It can't be the whole ocean. Why not? I know that for sure. How do you know that?

Well, because I just feel it in my bones okay well this seems like a math question and i don't know how to answer it but probably enough soda that it would really like put a dent in people's drinking water i would imagine that wouldn't be good but they could drink the soda. You could drink carbonated. You don't have to put syrup in the soda. Basically, you're making fizzy water. No, we don't want to do that. Because farming sugar beets and sugar cane, that's a lot. Or corn is, I guess, the main way that we get the sugar in the sodas these days.

It's a pretty heavy industry, so we don't want to do that either. We just want bubble water. Put a big soda stream in every water treatment plant that somehow collects the atmospheric carbon and then just so then all everybody has a sparkling tap water. Is that basically what you're saying? Yes. And then the real trick is that you can't burp. Yeah.

I was going to ask what happens to it after it goes in you. You have to not burp yeah i was gonna ask what happens to it after it goes in you you have to not burp have you seen those videos on tiktok or the there's a challenge and like drink a liter of sprite without burping it's fantastic have you done it it's really good no i haven't done it it looks deeply unpleasant should we all do it for the show should we start doing tiktok challenges for the show that's not a terrible idea. You two can slap each other for tears. We got to get viewership somehow.

Yeah, what happens is as you get through it, you discover that you have to burp and then they don't burp. And then about, I don't know, maybe 5% of the time you do sort of projectile vomit sprite. Okay, I'll have to cover my computer up with a tarp before I try this next week. A little splash zone poncho for my computer. Like the front row at a Gallagher thing. It's in the splash zone for sure, yeah. But the rest of the time,

you just have the most epic burp. And I've never burped the way these people burp. So part of me does want to experience that. Could we make stuff that breathes carbon dioxide besides plants? Could you make a bug do that or something? Well, we got plants. And that's really good. People make artificial leaves too.

But that just kind of sequesters carbon. We are working on the artificial leaf thing. And I think we're going to keep getting better at it. The plants got to start pulling their weight a little better though. They're pulling so much weight. The plants are doing great, Sam. The seaweed, the trees. All plants listening, try harder.

All of the... No, they're so tired. They're going as fast as they can and then it's getting hot and they're like the little single-celled ones single-celled autotrophs in the oceans doing all that good you bums we can't man they got so many they're doing so much more work than we are yeah you know who's hindering their work we are because they try to grow big and then we're like your flesh looks good for our uh for our construction paper and homes yeah so we're gonna freaking kill you i think i'll turn you into the stuff i wipe my butt with uh how does that sound congratulations on working so hard to counter climate change no we gotta get plants into the marketplace of ideas

come on we gotta get plants yeah plants yeah of ideas. Come on. We gotta get plants. Yeah, plants. Yeah, look, we're never gonna truly respect you until you start having takes on Twitter, plants. This is the only path forward for your species. Plants, pull yourself up by your bootstraps. You gotta. Your root straps. Oh.

Alright. Well, every week here on Tangency, get together to try to one-up a maze and delight each other with science facts while not staying on topic. Our panelists are playing for glory and for Hank Bucks, which I'll be awarding as we play. At the end of the episode, one of you two is going to win.

And I hope that whoever it is feels awful good about it. Now, as always, we're going to introduce this week's topic with the traditional science poem this week from Sari. I think I've got it in my hair and on the bottom of my shoe. It's in my mac and cheese, I swear. And even there in super glue. In shells and bats, nylon and grass, in credit cards and parchment sheets, in paint and squash and petroleum gas, in astronauts and big athletes. But it's not table salt or a titanium ring,

nor water, nor ice, nor aluminum foil. So that narrows it down from everything to a subset within the Aerecean soil. The answer, my friend, if you've had enough, is one of the elements, atomic number six. You'll find carbon in a lot of stuff, everything living on Earth, plus some tricks. So when you talk about chemistry, you talk about us.

Our weird inventions and squishy bits. Microscopic or global, let's discuss. And enter this battle of Hank Bucks and wits. Wow. You missed the outtake where Sari said Hank Bucks. Yes. How embarrassing. he said hank buck yes how embarrassing so the topic for the day is carbon which look you can't really play yeah you can you can you can play favorites with with the elements absolutely you

can and if we are gonna play favorites with the elements it's gonna be a carbon like oxygen. Also good. Hydrogen, nitrogen. Good. Fine. But carbon. Oh, my God. All of your favorite foods. Carbon. All your favorite foods.

Yes. Also all foods. Yeah. Yeah. All your favorite foods are a subset of all foods. So. Yeah. So finally, we have reached a definable topic. I know. It only took us a hundred something episodes.

We know what carbon is. Sari, what is carbon? Yeah. It's a chemical element. It has the symbol C. The atomic number is six, which means it has six protons and carbon-12 has six neutrons and six electrons and it's like neutral uh non-charged state there are other isotopes of carbon which means the number of neutrons varies in the nucleus so you can have carbon 13 carbon 14 and that's the stuff that decays yeah but this is great because like the whole idea of chemistry is we were like, what are elements? It is like it is defined by the number of protons it has. If it has six protons, it's carbon.

It might be a carbon ion. It might be a carbon isotope, but it is carbon. So we know what carbon is. The easiest definition ever. Thank you, chemists, for making such a precise borders around the thing element. Yeah. But why is carbon so great? Why is carbon such a big deal?

Why are we not doing an episode on tungsten right now? Why can it be everything? I mean, I can answer this question if you can. Yeah, go. You do. Because this is my whole bag. Yes. Lignin fan, pink green, please.

Why is carbon so carbon yeah because it uh because of the way that um electrons like jiggle with each other around atoms carbon has six electrons and the way that the electrons like to jiggle around for physics reasons is that there's like a couple there's like a bunch of different balls where they jiggle inside of called orbitals. And the first jiggle ball gets two and the second one gets six. And so carbon has a total of six. So it's got two in the first one and then four in the second one. And so it wants four more electrons. So it's got four different opportunities to bond to four different things. Sometimes it double bonds. So it bonds to, it can can bond to two different things, like carbon dioxide is two double bonds to two oxygens.

Because of that, it can do so many different chemistry things. So there are other things that have this property where they can bond to four other things, but carbon is little, and so it doesn't take up very much space. There's also lots of it, but a big piece of it is like it's physically small which allows it to uh to you know create more complicated chemistry they make like a it's like a scaffolding upon which like everything yes it's a great scaffolding so you can just like imagine carbon bonded to carbon bonded to carbon and that gives you uh since it's one carbon molecule one carbon atom bonded to two and that gives you uh since it's one carbon molecule one carbon atom bonded to two others that gives it two more opportunities to do something else so you have

this like long chain and it can be it could be double bonded to an oxygen it could be bonded to an alcohol which is an oh group and something else it can be bonded to another carbon and then you get carbon split into a bunch of different ways uh and you could you could do anything we can make these like you can make giant molecules that you could literally hold in your hand or you can make tiny molecules that are you know the in the air all around us right now causing global warming and making your soda bubbly and making your soda bubbly and feeding the plants yeah sari where does the word carbon come from? Because I find elements have excellent etymologies often.

This one is, I don't know if you'd call it excellent. It exists. I will. Okay. So, we actually knew about carbon or knew about the idea of carbon as an element before the periodic table was solidified into a thing. Well, as a thing, not an element. Yes, as a thing, I guess. As a thing that existed.

As a thing that existed, as an essential principle. A pure and essential principle is what it was called. Oh, okay. So in French, it was carbone, which is just carbon with an E. Which might have been pronounced carbon. I'm sure that's how they pronounce it. Yeah, carbone with the emphasis on the bone, which was then anglicized to carbon in 1788 when some French chemists, as they were want to be, were adopting a bunch of words from French to English for English chemists to take,

take advantage of. Oh, it was coined in 1787 by Lavoisier. Great guy. As char bone, which kind of makes sense. Like a Pokemon. Yeah.

It's Q bone, but burnt, which comes from Latin carbonem, which means a coal or a glowing coal or charcoal, which the ash from that is a carbon residue. So it comes from what it is, which is we burn something. There's like a carbonized layer left over or dust. And that's carbon i thought that was a great analogy i don't know what you're talking about yeah well now it's time for us to play a little game are you guys ready for this game that i have for you yeah yeah it's called

carbon this or that carbon is a vital ingredient in our world of course which means that there are tons of ways to measure and quantify it. There are common things like measuring our carbon footprint, but also less typical things. And that's what we're going to talk about in today's game, This or That Carbon. In each round, I'm going to present you with some way that we've been measuring carbon and then giving you two things to compare. And it's up to you to figure out which of the things is bigger. Does it make sense? I hope so. Are you ready? Yeah, we got to pick one of two things.

50-50 chance of success. 50-50. So first, we're going to talk about radiocarbon dating, which is a widely used technique that shows up in archaeology and forensics, allowing people to estimate the age of a sample based on the amount of radioactive carbon-14 in it. In 2020, researchers at the age of a sample based on the amount of radioactive carbon-14 in it. In 2020, researchers at the University of Glasgow published a paper titled Using Carbon Isotopes to Fight the Rise in Fraudulent Whiskey.

According to their calibration curve, which of the following should have more radioactive carbon-14 in it? A whiskey distilled in 1966 or a whiskey distilled in 1980? Those are both after atomic testing which I was like, that's gonna be the trick! Does that affect things? Yeah, no. I think there'd be more in the one from 1966

because something is breaking down or something like that. Ah, damn it. I think I'm wrong. Okay, I'm gonna keep it though. I also think 1960, I think it's the older one. But, I don't know. I feel like the wood has something to do with it maybe. Because I think it, but I don't know. I feel like the wood has something to do with it, maybe. I'm changing my mind.

I'm changing my mind to the new one. 1960 something. All right, you can do that. Yeah. So 1966 for Sarah and 1980 for Sam. Yeah. Well, I would have gone with 1966, but I'm about to read you the answer, which I have not read yet. So I'm also in the dark.

read yet. So I'm also in the dark. When it comes to radiocarbon dating, researchers have been making calibration curves that go back thousands of years. And very broadly, the older a sample is, the less carbon there is due to decay. But in 1955, there was a spike in carbon-14 in the atmosphere because of above-ground bomb testing that lasted until the Limited Test Ban Treaty that was signed in 1963. So a whiskey distilled in 1966 would have incorporated more of that carbon-14 than a whiskey distilled in 1980 after much of that carbon would have decayed. This is called the bomb pulse, and it's given scientists a more recent curve to fit their samples into in the last century, helping them study a bunch of stuff and do forensics on things like fraudulent

art and dead bodies and even fake whiskey. So yes, whiskey distilled in 1966 should have more carbon-14. So that's a point for Sari. Now, researchers have been developing new materials from carbon, including carbon nanotubes. And of course, they want to make sure that those materials are not toxic. So in 2009, a team of scientists from Brown University decided to see how the fruit fly Drosophila responded to different types of carbon nanoparticles at different points in their life. So which of the following was more toxic? Carbon nanoparticles that were fed to Drosophila larvae, or test tubes filled with carbon nanoparticle powder and then loaded with an adult Drosophila.

Oh. Oh, well, that feels like different. You're drowning the adult one in carbon. And you're giving a little snack to a larva. Yeah. That's just a snack. That's just a potato chip given to a baby. I'm glad that the Drosophila larva are like,

yeah, I'll eat that. I'm a maggot. Yeah. Whatever. Just putting them out. I don't know. I'm glad that the Drosophila larva are like, yeah, I'll eat that. I'm a maggot. Whatever. I don't know. It's made of carbon. Carbon's good. Yummy. I think that I agree with your reasoning, Sari. I think the adult one's breathing

in there and being like, no good for him. Yeah. I think the adult seems like it would struggle more because carbon also isn't, I can't see it doing something like mutating or weird in the larva's body, but maybe we'll find out. Well, you are both correct. It turns out that being fed carbon nanoparticles didn't do much to the larva. And they did just fine physically and reproductively later on in life. Meanwhile, the researchers also put adult flies into test tubes that contained one of four different types of nanoparticles.

And while two were fine for the flies, the other two ended up coating the flies and keeping them stuck like they were in some kind of tar pit. And the flies died within six to ten hours. You all right, Sam? Are you sad for the flies? I am sad for the flies. I could use some of that. We have fruit flies in our apartment. Give me those nanotubes.

There's probably a store-bought solution that might be a little more economical, but I don't know. Who knows? So they weren't quite clear on what was actually killing the flies, but the researchers found that the nanoparticles covered the flies and might have been weighing them down

while also clogging all of their breathing holes. That's how insects breathe. They just got a bunch of holes in them. I had imagined, yeah. That's how the air gets in there. Now, the fact that some of the nanoparticles caused problems in others didn't suggest that the form of the nanoparticle itself

was important in the final toxicity to the adult flies the experiment also doesn't necessarily say much about how they're going to affect us because we do not have wings or breathing holes i guess we have we got a couple breathing holes but we can cover them up it's kind of strange to have three breathing holes it's kind of weird we don't have four i should be able to breathe out of my butt actually you can did you hear did you hear about this oh i maybe did was there a pig that breathed out of his butt or something like that yeah they they like put they put they like found that you can help something that is not able to breathe right at that moment by putting oxygen into its rectum in one way or another.

And that actually does help keep blood oxygen levels up. Okay. So much like the bug, I am also full of holes there. I could just get it. You're full of breathing holes. Yeah. Round number three and our final round. African naked mole rats are cold-blooded, which means that they are not able to regulate their own body temperature.

To understand how these animals move around their homes to control their temperatures, researchers from City University of New York studied their underground lairs and found that the different chambers within them have different levels of carbon dioxide. So within a naked mole rat's underground home, which of the following has more CO2? The nest chamber or the toilet chamber? And yes, they have both of those. Naked mole rats are cold-blooded? How did they end up this way? Okay.

They lost their fur and they lost their internal homeostasis. I love it when you name an animal and you're like, what does that look like? Well, it looks like a naked rat mole. Yeah, it looks like a naked rat and it lives underground, so it must be a mole. Put them all together. Yeah, it's a naked mole rat.

And it lives in Africa, so put that at the front. I just got to say, we're all so hairless, so we're kind of like naked monkey. Naked monkey guys. Naked monkey guys. That's naked and it's a monkey.

We look like monkeys, but we also, because we like walk around on two legs, we're kind of like birds. Oh. So we're like a naked monkey bird. Other animals call us that. Better. Yeah. More power to them. All right. Yeah. That all right yeah i deserve it probably

you can call me whatever you want after what i did to you when you're sleeping oh when you're sleeping you want to be breathing of course when you're pooping you don't really care as much. Maybe they go in there and hold their breath. Yeah, hold your breath. That's how, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, but that would make it lower in there. Well, anyway. What do you think it's higher? No. They're venting it out of the nesting chamber.

They don't care about the poop chamber. So that one has higher. Yeah, they're getting all that CO2 in the poop hole. Yeah. Okay. I think that they're all sleeping. So you're just breathing out a lot. And I know astronauts sometimes have trouble.

If they're not by a vent, they get like a bubble of carbon dioxide around their head and can asphyxiate. Just like a very scary idea that you can just breathe and not realize. And so I think naked mole rats are similar where they're just breathing and not realizing and then when they get out of the nest they're like wow fresh uh and don't realize that it's because they've been breathing in and out their old stale air well sari is correct congratulations i'm a genius this episode you're doing. That's the nest chamber where the queen rat spends much of her time with the breeding male.

There's apparently a queen rat. Has the highest concentration of CO2 of all the chambers with around 2.3% of the total atmospheric pressure.

In comparison, the toilet chambers are around 0.05 and the food chambers, there's a lot of chambers, are around a half a percent. The researchers were very interested in this because it seems like the naked mole rats seek out higher carbon dioxide levels, which they realized actually helps protect them

from having seizures. They spend around 70% of their lifetime in that nest chamber, and when researchers infused carbon dioxide into certain chambers, they found that the mole rats tended to visit those chambers more often. They like it that way. In addition, the researchers found that when naked mole rats were exposed to hot air with low carbon dioxide levels, the rats would start to hyperventilate and seize. But they did not do this when the hot air had higher CO2 levels. The researchers hypothesized that because naked mole rats lack the switch that many of us rely on to control electrical activity in the brain, they instead rely on CO2 to prevent seizures.

Wild. What weird little fellows. There's only one way to be a naked mole rat, and it's weird. It's a weird way. Yeah. It's like they read a book about ants and they were like, let's try that. Okay. Yeah.

it's like they read a book about ants and they were like let's try that okay well sari congrats on your three points to sam's one next we're going to take a short break then it'll get ready for the fact off. Our panelists have all brought science facts to present in an attempt to blow my mind. And after they've presented their facts, I will judge them and award them Hank Bucks any way I see fit. But to decide who goes first, I have a question. Are you ready Bucks any way I see fit. But to decide who goes first, I have a question. Are you ready? Who cares? Not me. Okay. So carbon cycles through many different reservoirs through our planet, including the crust, the ocean, the soil, the atmosphere, and using models and various other methods, scientists are able to estimate the amount of carbon in these different reservoirs.

Around 85.1% of all above-surface carbon is in the deep ocean, making up about 37,000 gigatons. Meanwhile, our atmosphere has a lot less carbon. How many gigatons of carbon are there in the atmosphere? Again, there's 37,000 gigatons in the ocean where there is more. How many gigatons are in the atmosphere? Again, there's 37,000 gigatons

in the ocean where there is more. How many gigatons are in the atmosphere? And that's 85.1. So hypothetically, we should be able to figure out the right answer. Well, you could get close using math, yes, but I don't expect you will. That's a problem for me.

Are you going to do math, Sam? Yes. Did you get out your phone? Are you doing a calculator? I'm writing it down on a piece of paper. Wow. Oh, wow. I'm going to assume that it's part us, part atmosphere, bigger part atmosphere. Maybe like...

There's also not deep ocean. Yeah, that's true. So shallow ocean, atmosphere, life. Dirt. That's above the crash. Dirt, also a big deal. Yeah. Okay, I'm going to say 5,000 gigatons of That's above the crash. Dirt. Also a big deal. Yeah.

Okay. I'm going to say 5,000 gigatons of carbon is in the atmosphere. Uh-oh. I ran out of time to do math. I'm going to say 4,999. Wow. Sam, you're the winner. It's 590.

A mere 590 gigatons of carbon. That seems like a solvable problem. Now that we've said it that way, somebody get the bottles. The plants are trying really hard. Sam, I need to apologize to plants. No, I think it actually makes the plants seem a little worse, because there's not that much up there.

Yo, what are you doing? See, now Hank agrees with me. No, the plants are doing so good. The next SciShow episode, the thumbnail will say, plants are lazy. We're calling them out. They're ruining everything for us. We put so much CO2 in the atmosphere,

and they're like, I'm trying. I'm full. Eat. Eat your dinner. So, Sam, who do you want to go first? I'm going to go first. Seize the day. I'm being brave.

I'm brave Sam now. Much like wood, silk from silkworms and spiders is very useful, but people suck at making it. Only in the ass of spiders and worms can such a wonder material be made. Silkworm silk has been used in textiles for forever because it's so smooth

and nice but it's also very strong and can be used in medical applications like sutures and probably other cool super science-y stuff and spider silk

as you've probably heard is frequently touted as the wonder material of the future and in fact we just made a big list show on SciShow about this but to summarize since it's so strong spider silk like one of the future. And in fact, we just made a big list show on SciShow about this.

But to summarize, since it's so strong, spider silk, like one of the main things, is that it could have tons of uses in material engineering, including for things like bridge cables or biodegradable plastics. And while sure, these materials are pretty dang strong already, we are humans and we must tinker.

So there have been many things tried to make these silks stronger. We've meddled with the DNA of these animals. We've replicated the silk in ways that make the proteins that give it its strength bigger. We've taken silk after it's been spun and messed with it to add various particles to make it stronger. But in the last several years, scientists have come up with a much simpler way to produce strong silks than by messing with the building blocks of life. to produce strong silks than by messing with the building blocks of life.

In 2016, a paper was published detailing an improved silkworm silk that was 50% stronger than regular silk. And when exposed to extreme heat, it could conduct electricity like you'd bake it into something that could conduct electricity. Such a silk could be used for tougher sutures,

components in bio-organic implants powered by the human body and even smart clothes filled with super light electronics. And how did the team make this super material well they made silkworms eat carbon nanotubes so carbon nanotubes are as the name implies very tiny tubes of carbon atoms with i think the highest tinsel strength of any material we know of tincile is it tincile tinsel is what you put on trees it's i think it is tensile, though. Okay.

They have applications in nanotech because they conduct electricity and they're real strong, but they can also be added to other stuff to make those materials stronger. I think we've talked about on this show how carbon nanotubes were found in Damascus steel, which is a famously strong type of steel that we don't really know how to make anymore. So anyway, inserting nanotubes into silkworm silk has been tried before, I think, with silk that's already been spun. But these scientists just mixed some nanotubes with water

and sprayed it on leaves, and then the worms ate it and crapped out super silk. So pretty easy. And then another group of scientists did the same thing with spiders in 2017 and got silk that was three times stronger than natural spider silk. What three times stronger than natural spider silk what which i think what spider silk they said on the same level as like carbon nanotubes in terms

of strength it became like one of the strongest things we've ever discovered so silkworms can make enough silk that making like super silk like this at scale is pretty simple just as simple as spraying leaves with water but spiders on the other, make way less silk and we're still figuring out how to make spider silk proteins without a spider, but since this process requires a spider to eat the nanotubes and spin it into a web, all we've done here, it seems to me, is given spiders super webs. Which, hey, I think that, why not try it out i don't know see what happens bad that's true there's a concern that they could i don't like walking into a spider web and i

wouldn't like walking into one that's made of super silk even more i think yeah so you just you they just like it's weird to me that you put a nanotube into a silkworm and that it ends up going, like, it doesn't just poop it out. No. It ends up going into the silkworm. Into this little thing. I would think it would just poop it out. That's great. That's very cool.

I'm confident that someday we will have a bunch of spiders that sort of make everything for us. And then aliens will come to our planet and see all of our spiders making everything and they'll go, these guys are weird. Don't mess with those guys. No, they'll be like, wow, that entire planet is run by spiders. That's weird. We've never seen that before. Almost everything on that planet is a spider or a chicken.

And then there's some naked bird guys walking around. I don't know what they're doing. Naked ape birds, yeah. Sari, what have you got for us? So foams are a weird and curious part of material science. They're kind of related to- Foams. Foams, F-O-A-M-S.

Okay. I don't enunciate, which is bad in a podcaster. They're kind of related to bubbles, if you listen to that episode of Tangents. But I'd argue that foam is a distinct category of thing. Yes, you would, because you had really strong bubble opinions. People have disagreed with you about your bubble opinions already. Oh, no. Yeah.

Well, no. Like me, for example. I expected that. Like me, for example. Yeah. Yeah. I expected that. So anyway, in engineering uses, for example, foams are often solid materials with pockets of gas dispersed throughout it. They're useful because they're generally really low weight, but strong and have different properties based on the atoms that make up the solid bits. And as far as I can tell, carbon foams aren't everywhere like styrofoams or polyurethane foams, but seem like pretty useful things.

Carbon is not super explosive because carbon structures have a really high ignition temperature. They can conduct electricity. And depending on how the foam is structured, it can either conduct or insulate from heat. So scientists are excited to use carbon foam for things like aerospace insulation or even in batteries. And the ever-present challenge with new materials is finding ways to manufacture them that are worthwhile to whoever's making them, whether that's quick or cheap or ethical when it comes to labor or environmental impact. Lots of different factors. And the main ways that carbon foams have been developed so far involve carbon-rich byproducts like coal tar.

By putting it under a lot of pressure, it'll foam up and then can be stabilized and shaped into the foam that you want. But a 2016 paper described a totally different method to create 3D carbon foam structures that felt extremely like something that we would joke about here, except it's real. To make carbon foam,

they baked and then burnt the heck out of a loaf of bread. So their materials and methods section. So they baked a loaf of bread. So that's the first part. You can't really get a loaf of bread without baking it. Yeah. That was kind of given. It was given.

And then they just cooked it. Then they burnt it. Yeah. So the materials and methods section of the paper is literally a recipe for baking bread playing with different amounts of yeast and flour and water to make the crumb different. For example, quote, in a typical process, five grams dry yeast was dissolved in 115

milliliters water by stirring. After completely dissolved, the mixture was poured into 300 grams flour, which was placed into a dough mixer in advance. That's just a bread recipe. That's on Google how to make sourdough bread. Except instead of eating it, they stuck it in an oven to dry for 18 hours at 80 degrees Celsius and then stuck it in a tube furnace with argon gas

at 1,000 degrees Celsius to carbonize it. Basically, they didn't put oxygen in there to help prevent flames and control the decomposition process to leave a carbon-rich husk behind. It's totally possible if you, like, leave a pizza in an oven for way too long, but this way does it quicker and ensures it. And that tasty breadcrumb became the pores of a carbon foam. They tried soaking chunks of their burnt bread in ethanol and setting it on fire, it maintained its shape so it was heat resistant and they found that this carbon foam shields electromagnetic radiation fairly well which is also seen as a plus for aerospace uses or other technologies so it's like planes are we gonna have bread spy planes i think we're gonna have bread camouflage

yeah i'm gonna like we're gonna surround our teslas and bread so the emps can't get us yeah but that's it it's light it's strong and super burnt bread is now the best thing since sliced bread these scientists are geniuses that's the end of my fact i love it this is so fun is it crumbly like this is my concern like if i just like squeeze it does it turn into a bunch of dust or is it good it's a good firm firm foam they toast it up real good it, does it turn into a bunch of dust? Or is it good? Is it good? Firm, firm foam. They toast it up real good. It's firm. It's like really, really burnt.

Did they call it bread or were they lying to themselves about what they were doing? No, they called it. They called it bread in the paper that it was called multifunctional stiff carbon foam derived from bread. Okay, good, good. So they knew what they were doing. Multifunctional stiff carbon foam derived from bread. Okay, good, good. So they knew what they were doing. Multifunctional stiff carbon foam derived from bread. This is fun.

I love it. That's really good, Sari. Oh, two high quality facts. I feel like I'm learning so much about, and I'm also gaining just an appreciation for the work of scientists and optimism about the future. It's a bread and spider silk future.

A bread super silk future. Oh, well, Sari came into that one solidly in the lead. Those facts are very equally good. So Sari is going to run away with the episode. Congratulations, Sam. Wow. I have every faith in you that you could come back. And I don't know what kind of deficit you're operating at right now,

but it feels like a bit of one. No, I think I'm doing okay. You don't know. I've seen you. You've gone on some runs this season. Yeah. We were tied and now I'm ahead by one, I think. Oh wow, look at that. So take it back. Wow. Preconceived notions about me.

Hmm. I just... That's not it at all. Sam, you didn't go to MIT, so surely you don't know anything. Surely you're bad at to MIT, so surely you don't know anything. Surely you're bad at game shows, Sam. Congratulations, Sari. Now it's time to ask the science couch where we ask a listener

question to our virtual couch of finely honed scientific minds. Sam's dad suggested that since Sari and I are theoretically the science couch, that Sam should ask the science couch question. So Sam, what's our science couch that sam should ask the science couch question uh so sam what's our science couch question today's question comes from at ryan laser who asks can i eat it which i guess means carbon yeah yeah i think the answer is yes because we've talked about so many

times you can eat it so well if you didn't eat any carbon you would die well sure i mean you could do it for a while pretty pretty quick yeah like you can spend a day the same amount of time i'm on a carbon the same amount of time that you could eat yeah survive eating nothing yeah it's a necessary ingredient for being alive yes and it and it can be dangerous like that's the other thing you can eat you can eat it you need to eat it uh you can also just swallow it and it'll pass right through you so if you eat a diamond it's just gonna pass right through you yeah that'll be fine um but there's ways to eat carbon where it would be bad for you yeah and there's always a chance like so i was i fell down a rabbit hole of diamond dust and there was a lot of anecdotal stuff about grinding up

diamonds and then feeding it to people as poison because the shards would cut up your intestines a little bit there wasn't any like there weren't a lot of confirmed deaths it was more like you think you think maybe that just sounds cool yeah people wrote about it yeah yeah during the renaissance they were like ha ha ha my evil plot i'm gonna assassinate someone by grinding up diamond lots of cheaper poisons out there yeah i feel like it's i feel like we know about a bunch of ways to to let people kick it yeah including plenty of other carbon containing compounds you got plenty of toxins that are made naturally by plants and animals fungi uh and you don't want to eat those because those will be bad for you.

Yeah, so can I eat it? Sometimes, if it's food. If it's a pizza, yeah. Yeah, I don't know. Can I eat that baked bread? Ooh. I bet it would cut your mouth up so bad. You know, you have too much of a toasted piece of toast

and it hurts you. It'd be sharp, probably. It'd be like swallowing a Mr. Clean magic eraser, probably. Like sandpaper your guts. I don't want to do that. So, yes, eat carbon, but not every carbon. Yeah. Only sometimes.

If you want to ask the Science Couch your question, you can follow us on Twitter at SciShow Tangents, where we'll tweet out topics for upcoming episodes every week. Or you can join the SciShow Tangents Patreon and ask us on our Discord. Thanks to Emily17 on Discord and at LuluLo715 and everybody else who asked us questions for this episode. If you like this show and you want to help us out, it's so easy to do that.

Please do it. First, you can go to our Patreon. It's patreon.com slash scishowtangents. There's a bunch of amazing stuff that you get access to, and you help us continue making the show. Second, you can leave us a review and let people know how much you like our show. That helps us also know what you like

about it. You can tell us what you think we should do differently, like Sam's dad, who gave us a great piece of advice there years into making the podcast. And finally, if you want to show your love for SciShow Tangents, just tell people about us. Thank you for joining us. I've been Hank Green. I've been Sari Reilly. And I've been Sam Schultz. SciShow Tangents is created by all of us and produced by Sam Schultz. Our editor is Seth is created by all of us and produced by Sam Schultz. Our editor is Seth Glixman. Our story editor is Alex Villo. Our social media organizer is Julia Buzz Bezio.

Our editorial assistant is Deboki Trocavarti. Our sound design is, of course, by Joseph Tuna-Medish. Our executive producers are Caitlin Hoffmeister and me, Hank Green. 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. Activated charcoal is a super porous form of carbon where each particle has a huge surface area.

So it's really good at adsorption, which is where the surface of one substance sticks to other molecules like poisons in the human gut, dissolved organic substances in water, or even gas particles in air, including some, quote, odiferous rectal gases, aka stinky fart compounds. So naturally, there are products out there like underwear made of carbon fibers or activated charcoal pads that you can insert into the underwear to help people keep their gassy butts odor-free. We could eliminate fart stink from the world, and we choose not to. Why? We do.

You gotta pay to play. Yeah. Pay to play underpants. They should give it to astronauts, though. Absolutely. Oh, yeah. That makes a lot of sense it's gotta be so stinky in that tin can

but like we said earlier you can pick a corner and you're like that's the fart corner everybody go over there and fart in that corner and it's all gonna be in there it's fine you can fart into a box and close the lid and that's just your fart box can you imagine being like the one astronaut

with the stinkiest farts and everybody knows it? Yeah. Like, there's only so many people up there at any time. And so everybody must know what each other's farts smell like. That fart is directly next to your butt. He farted that part. There's no other way we could have done it. Yeah.