088 = Tired Tires and Curvy Cubes

Hello and welcome to A Problem Square, the podcast which is a lot like a crow

in that we can make rudimentary tools with which we can solve simple problems.

Yeah, like crack a nut.

Like crack a nut, get an ant out of an anthill, that kind of thing.

Get an ant out of it.

That's what crows do.

I'm joined by my crow host, Beck Hill.

Thank you.

Did you come up with that first and work backwards?

No, I didn't.

You know, I had the crow thing first, and then I realized crow host was right in front of me.

Yeah, nice.

So Beck Hill, a lot like a crow.

If you feed her often enough, she'll become your friend.

And occasionally bring small shiny gifts

in exchange for food.

Yeah, I also take a lot of shiny.

You do take a lot of shiny gifts away.

That's also very true.

And I am Matt Parker, a lot like a crow, in that I'm uh it's been proven i can count and i can communicate vocally a specific quantity yes only animals other than humans that can vocalize a specific quantity unlike crows yeah

not direct are crows direct well as the crow flies as the crow flies good point also unlike crows we probably don't have a great memory for faces i'm glad we're workshopping my introduction dude you opened up like you started with crow host and then i was like oh god this is all i can think of now

on this episode what happens when tires get tired oh that's nice i've got a new spin on the rubik's cube nice

and any other burdeness

so beck how have you been i am i'm great oh my gosh i've had such a great day you know when you just have a good day yeah you talk about today specifically yeah it has been good.

It has been good.

But even before I saw you, and you were a highlight, Matt.

You continued an already great day.

But I have a lot of issue with time management, which you are aware of.

Yes.

It is something I am working on.

Yesterday I showed up for a podcast record doing Ali Plum's movie podcast.

And I got there absolutely on time.

What?

And then Ali realized that he'd meant to say four o'clock, not two o'clock.

Oh.

Yeah.

Rare occasion where I was not the problem.

and he felt awful but honestly I just felt relieved it wasn't me who made the mistake and you're there early yeah so I was actually thrilled he felt awful I was thrilled because suddenly I'm two hours early so I did a bunch of life admin and then I went and like looked for some stuff in the shops and everything I felt amazing like a gift of time yes so to get there and suddenly have the gift of two hours.

Yeah.

That's pretty special.

Because at first the part of me was like, oh, I should have brought my laptop or something.

But I was like, no, actually, this really limits me to what I can do.

And that's actually what I need because I get the workload paralysis.

And so that really helped me get a few things done.

And then also, I bumped into two lovely friends and comedians, Jos Norris and Howard Reed.

I also ran into Robin Ince on the way out.

Oh, wow.

So I had lovely day of seeing friends.

Anyway, this morning, as I was on my way just down my street, there was a woman in her car.

She was looking for a mechanic.

Now, annoyingly, I'm on a cul-de-sac, but there's bollards at the end.

So there is another street, but cars can't get to it.

You can only walk through it.

And there's a mechanic around the corner.

And it's such a long, convoluted way to get to the other street.

Like it is a series, like it's basically driving backwards for quite a long time and then a lot of the way around the houses.

Yeah.

And I was explaining, and she was like, basically, the reason she had to get the mechanic is because her car won't reverse.

Oh.

It stopped reversing.

But I could tell she was really panicked and stressed.

So she's like, could you push my car?

Because she couldn't turn the car around.

It was really, really tight.

And I tried, but

I could push it a tiny bit.

But also there was a curve of the road.

So then when it got to a point, it started to roll back.

But thankfully, someone else was walking around the corner with their like tennis gear and stuff.

And I was like, oh, excuse me.

Can you come help me push this car?

And he was like, of course.

And we start pushing.

But again, it starts starts to like roll a bit and then just as we're like oh what are we gonna do and she's so upset this um guy had obviously been watching us and so he he starts walking down going all right i'll come help and we're like oh thanks so the three of us managed to push her car backwards so she can then

go forward a bit and then we'll push it back again yeah and then when i got to the tube there was a woman struggling with her suitcase and she had a kid in tow everyone was just walking past her so i was like do you want some help she was like oh yes please so i helped carry her suitcase down and i like just the endorphins you get from like helping people.

You've just been wandering London, helping people.

Helping people.

And look, I wasn't going to tell people all about this, but it put me in such a good frame of mind because a lot of time we can be very embarrassed and we don't want to bother anyone, but you forget what a gift it is to let people help you because it makes them feel good.

And so, yeah, so I

got to Waterloo 15 minutes to kill before I had to get my train, which is unlike me.

Normally I'm like, it's just been a great day.

Good day.

How about you, Matt?

I also had some people push a car that I was in.

No.

Yeah, like two or three days ago.

Wow.

I went to EMF camp.

Yes, which is Electromagnetic Fields.

That's the one.

And it's a lot of fun.

It's kind of like hackers and makers and doers and builders.

Oh my.

Exactly.

And I did, this is the second time I've been there.

The first time I did a big installation.

I had 2.4 meter long bits of wood that I painted different colours to make four intersecting tetrahedra that were then covered in leds so at night they would light up different colors and this huge kind of like people do installations big sculptures yeah stuff my favorite installation this time there were some great ones my favorite one it was actually quite a small one they have a place called the null sector it's like a lot of shipping containers and it's like that kind of post-apocalyptic industrial-esque place.

Yep.

And my favorite installation was in one of the shipping containers.

There was a robot that would generate a complaint letter for you.

So what you would do is you walk over to it.

That's the most British invention ever.

It's so good.

You put a bit of paper in and you hit go and it would first of all randomly generate a complaint.

Something like, I had to wait too long for my coffee in the cafe in Shepton Mallet or something like that.

Right.

Like real niche.

Shepton Mallet.

I've never had that place before, but it's a great.

Great British place.

Yeah.

I think that's a real place.

Nodding is a real place.

I don't want to know if it's.

It should be.

Yeah.

It would generate a random complaint for you.

So you have to do that yourself.

It will then use the Chat GPT API to send it over and tell it to write a complaint letter based on that complaint and often give it like a prose style to do it in.

Yep.

That comes back from ChatGPT.

And then there's a pen with motors attached that will handwrite out the complaint letter for you.

Nice.

And then once it finishes writing, which for the record takes a long time, you then get your official handwritten.

That's great.

Such great.

Such all sorts of weird, ridiculous art installations.

They run a copper, like it's super digital, and there's like

power to every tent and very fast Wi-Fi across the entire site.

Like it's such a good festival.

That's amazing.

And they also run a copper network.

So there's rotary phones on

so you can pick up a rotary phone and like tick

and then dial other phones.

Or that's how you have to dial the organizers if you need anything.

You've got to use your rotary phone.

Right.

Someone this time brought a fax machine.

Put it on the copper network.

And if you fax it anything, it will OCR it, so convert it back into text from an image, and then assume it's C code, so like computer code, run the code as it can best work out what it is, and then fax you back the output from when the code runs.

So you can fax its C code for it to run for you and it will fax you back.

I don't know what that any of that sentence is.

As an analogy, is it like...

translating English into French on Google Translate and then translating the French into German and then translating it back into English?

Sort of, yes.

But what's particularly pleasing about it is way back in the day, early computing, you'd have to put your code into punch cards or whatever, send it off to be run overnight, and then you get sent back the output and any errors or whatever went wrong.

So it's going back to that kind of, you've got to write your code, then send the code off to someone else.

Oh, so you'd write the code for an image or something?

Yeah, code to calculate a thing or whatever, and it will go and run the code and send you back whatever the output is.

They run a sneaker net.

A sneaker net?

So if you want to post something to someone, you write it on a postcard or whatever, and then you give it to whoever you think is most likely to be able to give it to someone else.

That's good.

So if you get something on the sneaker net, you've got to look at where it's meant to go and think who's most likely to be closer to that person than me.

Yeah.

And then pass it off.

So it's like a physical representation of six degrees.

You can't get vacant.

I got sent a postcard.

Do you want to see it?

I do.

I've got my back.

Yeah.

Did it come to you via the sneaker net?

Yep.

Someone sneaker netted me a postcard.

So the address is just Matt Parker EMF.

Love that.

That's accurate.

Matt, thank you for being awesome.

Hope you're having a fantastic time at EMF.

From a problem squared fan, P.S.

Please send a heart emoji to Beck.

So this is me fulfilling the final step in the sneaker net.

So then

the regards onto you.

But when I arrived at EMF, I hired a camper van.

Okay, yeah.

So I was like, it's like a big metal tent.

Yeah, I know what a camp stand up in

so thank you for clarifying no this is my justification i'm like i don't want to stay in a tent i want to stay in a big metal tent yeah because it's not like a normal festival where the camping is like over there and the festival is over here it's all mixed in because people camping set up little villages there was like the lock picking village there's a bunch of people into lock picking all have their tents together and then they have a marquee and they run workshops They had one lock.

If you could pick it, they'd buy you as much beer as you could drink.

That's great.

Anyway, anyway i thought i'd drive the van but you can't go on site after the sun has set right and i got there with 10 minutes to spare okay i i turned to someone from the middle ages i'm like fellow traveler yeah the sun is still in the sky yeah albeit low yeah and then after a lot of negotiating i i've never been so close to a do you know who i am i know that's yeah i know

i was like i'm not going to do that And I got on with like minutes to spare.

They let me onto the site.

Yeah.

And immediately got the van bogged.

And so I had to get a guy.

Yeah, I forgot how we got to the story.

Yes, I bogged the van, but people were so helpful.

Loads of people came out.

People just appeared from everywhere to help.

Is it above average number of problem solvers at a festival like that?

So everyone, I was like, look, I'll just go use the rotary phone to ring the power people.

And they're like, no, no, we can work this out.

We got this.

They were doing a stock tape.

We got these cables of these lengths and it's here.

They're like, these extra activities are great.

Yeah, I know, I know.

So they were, I couldn't stop them from trying to solve the problem.

They're like, right, we'll put the cable and the fox in the canoe at the same time.

And then after a while, Steve messaged me and say, he had the same problem.

And he just reset the breaker that's underneath the box.

I was like, what?

Yeah.

I turned the box over and there's just four breakers on the back.

Great.

For the four outputs, and one of them had flipped.

So I flip it back.

Done.

Done.

Amazing.

I love how many people also went away.

No,

I can't tell you the number of people putting an undue amount of thought into solving this problem.

Yeah.

And nobody turned the box over to see that there are breakers underneath it.

Too smart for their own good.

100%.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Anyway, I had a great time at the festival.

That's why I'm at a good meeting.

Amazing.

Our first problem was sent in by, I'm going to say, Pytro.

Spelt Pytro.

Pietro, maybe?

Pietro.

And they say, where does all the rubber go?

They elaborate.

We use up thousands, millions of tires every year.

So where does all the rubber go?

And by that they mean the dust removed by the friction on the road, the bits coming off.

They don't mean the actual leftover tyre carcass.

They mean the little bits.

They want to know how much material is it in terms of tons per year.

And is it now a significant part of atmospheric dust?

Will future geologists be able to identify it in the crust layer and name our time?

Oh, they've got some suggestions.

The Michelinik

bad.

Michelinik, period.

Or the Gooduronian.

Good uranian?

Good uranian.

I think you had it with Michelini.

Michelini.

Yeah, there's something.

Yeah.

So, Beck, you looked into this.

Yeah, so I had a quick look into this and I actually found that there's a scientific paper about it.

When you said you were going to do this yesterday, the same question occurred to me.

I was cycling behind some cars and I was like, I wonder how much tire dust I'm inhaling.

Because it's got to be like tires constantly wear out.

The tire is going somewhere.

It's not big chunks.

It's not like in racing where you see like whole chunks of tire flying off.

It's got to be dust.

Well, this paper is titled Where the Rubber Meets the Road, Emerging Environmental Impacts of Tireware Particles and Their Chemical Cocktails.

They're so good.

Obviously, we'll put a link to it in the show notes.

So it does cover what happens to full tires afterwards, but I'm not going to go into that.

Pietro has specifically said they don't care about the actual carcass.

Yes.

But one of the things that sort of caught my eye in the abstract of the article is tyre particles emitted during use are a major component of microplastics in urban runoff.

Oh.

And a source of unique and highly potent toxic substances.

Oh,

this is good.

I know.

Tyres represent a ubiquitous and complex pollutant that requires a comprehensive examination to develop effective management and remediation.

What's it going to be?

It's not going to be like, oh, it turns out they become, you know, like sprinkles.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Or it turns out they're a really good fertilizer

and support healthy, you know,

aquatic ecosystem growth.

Of course, yeah.

Well, it's funny you should say that because they were looking into what could happen with tire particles.

Yeah.

And later in the paper, it says that tie particles may be washed off by stormwater runoff into wastewater treatment systems there are no current data on fate or volumes of tire particles specifically in wastewater treatment plants oh

can also surmise that there's not enough data to say specifically how much

we're not tracking it yeah we're not tracked out or anything and the paper does later have a whole like data gaps and research needed segment as well but it says data suggests that a high percentage of other microplastic particles transfer from the water into sewage sludge sludge.

Even with high removal rates, significant annual loadings of tyre and roadware particles have been estimated in treated wastewater effluent in the UK.

So it makes it through the wastewater treatment plant.

Yeah.

Sewage sludge is typically incinerated, disposed of in landfills, or spread on agricultural fields.

Uh-oh.

Where tyre particles may remain in the soil or be mobilized and distributed by wind or by surface runoff to the aquatic environment.

That's not great.

Yeah.

So, you know, I know that you're like, oh, maybe that turns into manure and use it.

Yeah.

No, it's.

That does get

mixed into the field.

Yeah.

Not on purpose.

Because in the UK, well, London, I'm pretty sure.

They got like the final kind of wastewater treatment for the sewage.

Then you treat it a bunch, you put the water back.

You get leftover, you know, solids.

Yeah.

Stuff.

I think they used to put it on a barge, take it out to the ocean and just push it over the ice.

Wow.

I think they were told to stop doing that.

Because maybe somebody says, burn it.

But I guess you put it on a field.

i mean i think this is an exactly uh a good example of why that could be a problem yeah i was only aware of this maybe being a problem when

where we are now gottaming and the surrounding villages it's it's quaint as anything you're familiar with how quaint it is around here it's very quaint but there's also the a3 motorway it's a big busy road that was cut through here just under 100 years ago yeah is it would you say it's the british equivalent of a highway it's a highway light it's big road it's a big road it's got no traffic lights or roundabouts or anything.

You don't stop.

It's highway driving.

And it's a very busy road.

Yeah.

And it just kind of slams through the countryside, through villages, right across.

And so I'll often try and walk around and find the vestigial bits of road left from when it just got carved through the countryside.

Right.

I'm not saying it shouldn't be done.

People have to get places.

But now there's a bunch of quaint little villages.

They just have constant motorway noise.

And I was like, that's a real shame.

And I thought, I wonder, is that a problem that will solve itself once all cars are electric?

And so I did a quick bit of research.

And it turns out, no, like most road noise above a certain speed is the wind and the tire noise.

And then I saw a little bit about how going electric with vehicles is great in terms of carbon, but doesn't solve the tire dust problem.

And that's when I was like, oh, great.

Now I've learned about a new problem.

Yeah.

And look, I understand that I'm citing one paper and that's if I could get multiple, but they cite multiple sources.

And to me, that feels like that feels pretty legit.

Which also then brings me to the fact.

So I didn't go to university.

My only experience of reading papers is largely for this podcast.

Right.

And even then, I've had to like, it's, it's been a, like, if it's not something that you're used to, it can be a little bit of a.

You're right.

It is an acquired skill.

Yeah.

That opening sentence that I said at the beginning has so many massively large words that aren't necessarily needed.

They sound smart, but they could have said it.

Yes.

Yeah.

I mean, that goes both ways.

Sometimes when you read a technical paper that's just outside your areas of knowledge, you're like, oh my goodness, they're just using obscure, obtuse phrasing to be annoying.

Yeah.

To sound smart.

to be more science-y, which is, you know, not untrue.

That said, once you're in the discipline, you're like, oh, it's because

what we assume are synonyms from the outside are an easy way to say it.

Everything's been assigned very specific meanings.

And so you're like, oh, I get if you're trying to convey really nuanced things to an audience that you assume is already fluent in what you're talking about, you can use

ridiculously complicated language.

Yeah.

Going through a paper properly and understanding it is a lot of work.

And if you're not already sufficiently

enough of an expert in that area, it might even be impossible.

But you do get good at like reading, you get pretty good at like

knowing what to ignore.

And I find people struggle with this with like mass papers.

Now, I can skim a mass paper and know, oh,

I understand

the essence of the working out they're going to do here.

Right.

I don't have to follow through it.

I can just skip right over that and ignore it.

I think it's just it's survivor bias.

Like you've had to look at some of your papers.

Yeah, because sometimes I have, I've used maths papers to research for this show.

And I find them, this one I actually find is a lot easier to navigate because.

It's got good diagrams.

It's got good diagrams and also it's largely verbal.

Like it's largely, well, not verbal, it's written.

Yeah, prose.

Whereas with maths ones,

I will scan, but I'll notice there's a lot of numbers and a lot of symbols.

And I'm like, no, I'm like, please use words, please.

Should I have a little look at this?

Yes, yeah.

So what I tend to do is look at the authors.

How many?

There's a lot of authors.

There's a lot of authors.

When I see that on a paper, I'm like, well, that's got to be good.

Well, it means it's, yeah, it's some kind of big, maybe even a review paper or something.

But then more importantly, where are they based?

Where's the paper from?

So.

Scientific papers, not always, but for most disciplines, will rank the authors in order of importance or involvement in the paper.

The first one mentioned, Paul Mayer, here.

Paul Mayer is going to be our most important person.

And they are based at the U.S.

Environmental Protection Agency.

That sounds good.

That sounds good.

I mean,

that's legit.

Yeah, that's legit.

Obviously, it's a government agency, so it could be biased.

No, it's government.

But at the same time, considering the stuff they're talking about, I feel like anytime the government says that something could be bad environmentally, I'm like...

What they're convinced.

Yeah, exactly.

Like, it's got to be, like at the very least, it's this bad.

So now I'm scrolling through the other places involved.

San Francisco Estuary Institute, Department of Fisheries, Wildlife.

Oh, more government departments.

Oh, wow, lots of government.

Department of Environmental and Molecular Toxology at Oregon State University.

A lot of different universities as well.

And some that I recognize the name of.

which obviously is my own brings in my bias of the universities I'm familiar with.

I'm not saying research doesn't happen.

That's very good in countries where I'm not familiar with it.

Of course.

But in this case, I I recognize a bunch of these.

So now I'm prone to believe this.

It seems like a good paper.

Strikes me as a paper that's meant to convince policymakers.

So it's been put together in a way and there's good summary.

Sources like me can understand.

It's been doofus-proofed.

Yeah, it's because people like me are the sort that would probably get voted to power.

Yes, one day because we're not as cleaning in some ways.

In power.

This episode comes out before the UK election, so we don't know if you become Prime Minister or not.

Yeah, yeah.

Thanks for everyone who voted for me.

So, what I'll then tend to do is read the introduction, scroll through the rest of it to get a sense of it, see if anything's interesting, and then read the conclusion.

And there'd be an abstract as well.

Sometimes the abstract kind of gives you all you need.

Well, because also the conclusion on this isn't necessarily the answer we want for the problem.

No.

It's more that the answer we want for the problem is throughout the paper in the research.

Conclusions are all doom and gloom now reading it.

Yeah.

I can answer the first part of the question, which is where does all the rubber go?

Yep.

So, as I mentioned before, a lot of it in terms of runoff will end up in sewerage.

Because it goes into the waterway, yeah, exactly.

And the stuff that doesn't end up in sewerage will just end up in runoff waterways and end up in like surface waters and stuff.

It gets washed off the road when it rains.

Yeah.

And ends up

in the soil, it's in the soil or it's in the water.

Some of it

is carried by wind uh oh which again tends to end up in soil or water yeah air transport and runoff may carry tire particles and associated chemicals into surface water drinking water sources

drinking water treatment plants draw water from surface water groundwater and or seawater all of which may contain microplastics including tire particles drinking water treatment typically starts with screening and grip removal so to get the bigger bits out the way followed by addition of fish

yes the addition of fish removal all right no first of all you filter out the fish I thought it's like what I said with the addition of no

take out the big bits put in the fish vitamin fish

salty

with the addition of alum to the raw water for coagulation great word coagulate flocculation which do you know flocculation sounds like it's part of an insult sounds like something medieval monks had to do yes that's it Anyway, it is currently clear that Tyreware particles and their chemical cocktails are emerging contaminants of global concern.

Chemical cocktails.

And that's not scientific wording.

I don't think.

I feel like that's talking to

scientists.

They wouldn't say cocktail.

They probably wouldn't.

Unless cocktail has a very specific meaning in a scientific context.

No, I think you're right.

I think this is a mix of...

This is like a deliberate pull quote.

Yeah, you're right.

Well, they do say action should therefore be given to reduce the risks to human health and the environment.

I mean, good point.

I agree.

So I think basically, where does the rubber go?

In the soil, in the water, and in us.

Great.

Essentially, our lungs, our systems as we drink and stuff.

It's the same story as microplastics.

Right.

That's the first one.

How much material is it?

Ton per year.

Now, that I sort of mentioned earlier, they are lacking some research into

how much ends up in waste treatment and stuff like this.

However, based on relatively limited data, country-specific tyre particle generation across size classes, 10 nanometers to 1,000.

This is where you come in useful for me.

Is it me?

Sort of a U, but with like a little...

Yeah, micrometers.

Micrometers.

Thank you.

See, this is why I have you, Matt.

So between 10 nanometers and 1,000 micrometers has been estimated to be as low as 0.23 kilograms per year per capita in India to as high as 5.5 kilograms per year per capita in the US due to its longer per capita annual vehicle travel distances.

Now, that's five kilos per person in micro-rubber particles.

Now I'm putting that out there for people like you who understand what it means.

Thankfully, they then say, thus, thus, approximately 1.7 million tons of tireware particles were produced annually in the US based on 2021 population size.

Wow.

Where automobile and truck traffic are higher, production of particles may be significantly greater based on empirical and extrapolated data synthesized from Europe, Japan, China, Australia, Brazil, India, and USA, annual global tire wear emissions across size classes, 10 nanometers to 1,000.

That's the size of the particles?

Yep.

Were estimated to be nearly 6 million tons.

6 million tons a year.

Of microware.

Tireware emissions.

Wow.

That's a lot.

I'm trying to imagine a million tons of microparticles.

That's a lot of tons.

That's just the particles, which is answering this question.

I should also say that it goes on to say a little bit afterwards, others estimate that globally 1.5 billion tyres are discarded annually currently with an expected to increase to 5 billion tyres by 2030.

So,

yeah, it's expected to really

1.2 billion tons by 2030.

So that's how much material it is per tonne per year for Pietro or Pytrophy.

As they requested.

They said, is it now a significant part of the atmospheric dust?

In the same way that microplastics are from what I see.

So will future geologists be able to identify it in the crust layer and name our time?

Possibly.

There's no signs of it getting better.

Does it break down?

Certainly not anytime soon.

So there's currently discussions going on with geologists about the amount of man-made materials.

Oh, stuff that we're going to leave behind.

Right.

Permanently in the geological record.

Yeah.

And a big part of that discussion is microplastics

of which particles are part of.

Yeah.

Oh, okay.

Age of the humans.

Beck, you have worn this problem down into tiny little pieces.

And I think you've successfully answered, I would say all of it to the best of anyone's ability.

Yeah.

So

I'm going to preemptively give you a ding.

Thank you.

I think it's dingable.

If Pytro has opinion, and if it's ding-worthy, they should let us know.

Yeah, I like to think the answers will one day end up in our waterways and lungs.

The point is we have to hurry up and invent hovercasts because that will solve the noise-ruining quaint villagers problem.

Oh, yeah, because I'm sure that they're not loud.

Oh, yeah, it's gonna be like

have you ever have you heard a tiny drone, Matt?

So true.

Have you ever heard a helicopter?

I'm pretty sure a hovercraft sounds like a hot air balloon firing burning all the way down the road.

A hovercraft is going to sound like a bouncy castle

with a motor.

Yeah, exactly.

Oh, so tranquil.

Yeah,

I'll solve the sound problem.

I've known you like a Jetsons-esque.

That's what you're at.

That's very loud.

Yeah.

Keep it down.

Our next problem is from Michael, who says, When you spin a Rubik's cube between your thumb and middle finger, as you must every time you solve it.

Okay, so I've just filmed you spinning it.

Yep.

And Michael points out the silhouette forms a diamond with a curved concave equator.

Yes.

Now I can see that when I pause the video and you can see it in the video as well.

We'll put the video up online.

What is the equation for this curve?

What is the name for this family of curves?

And how do you get curves from straight lines?

So is this kind of a bit like the Rubik's Cube version of the rubber pencil trick?

Oh, the rubber pencil trick where it looks like it's bending.

Yes, you hold a pen or a pencil from one end and you sort of like bounce your arm as you're waving it.

It looks like it's made of rubber.

That's pretty impressive.

I did it a lot as a kid.

What you're doing there is moving a straight thing around and you're making it look like the actual straight thing is flexing.

Whereas the shape made when you spin a Rubik's Cube is actually curved.

What?

It is a curved surface.

What?

So the Rubik's Cube itself is all straight.

Yeah.

So you mentioned just the edges.

I'm going to use the phrase straight line a bunch.

That just means like the edge is a straight line.

If you move a straight line around, you can make curved surfaces.

Like how the equator is a straight line, but it goes around a circle.

No, yeah, no.

Yeah,

I'm still struggling.

If I go, I'm going to brow you a pen,

holding it vertically.

Yep, I'm moving around and I'm tracing out a cylinder.

Yes, you are.

That's a curved surface.

A surface made by taking a straight line and moving it around.

That makes far more sense.

Because before you're like, you're creating a curved surface, and I'm like, no, no.

So the mathematical name for this is a ruled surface.

And a ruled surface isn't like a ruler surface.

It means the surface can be thought of entirely as straight sections or taking a straight pen and moving it around to map out that surface.

Actually, I was sounding like I was understanding you and I'm still not.

And the reason is

because we're talking about a shape that is not physically present, aren't we?

No.

It's the total shape traced out by the cube moving through space.

Okay.

Well, I mean, every, you can make any shape moving something straight.

The definition of a ruled surface is you get a straight line and move it through space.

Okay.

Now.

But we're not talking about like

when you create that curve,

it's not creating a curve on the cube, is it?

No, the cube is just moving through.

It's tracing through a curve.

Yeah.

It's called a hyperboloid is the name of that shape made by the Rubik's Cube.

You know what?

A hyperboloid is the perfect name for it because it sounds like a pain in my butt.

I love a hyperboloid.

The diamond.

Moving on from your hyperboloid chat.

The tops and bottoms are cones.

We're tracing out a cone shape.

So if you follow just one edge as it goes all the way around.

Okay, so

in the way that when you're making a circle with a compass, there's two straight lines.

So you have the

point in the center.

Yes.

Comes up.

Yep.

And then back down.

And then you turn it and that creates a circle yep and what you're doing is essentially your top finger is on the the corner yep so pretend that that's you holding the top of the compass your bottom finger is what it is rotating around yes but instead of just the very tip of the compass drawing a circle on a flat bit of paper i'm talking about if you took the whole edge as like so if you're

going to circle with a compass you've just created a cone shape

yes if you keep one of them as long as the central one is completely vertical Correct.

Yep.

Yeah.

So you're creating a cone and that's essentially what you're doing with the top corner and then the middle corner.

Exactly that.

Same thing in the bottom.

So they're two cones facing each other.

Yep.

And then the joiny bit, the equator, the curvy looking bit, is the hyperboloid.

Yes, right.

Okay, yep.

And that's because I'm seeing the top cone.

which is between the top and the next corner down and then the bottom cone which if you're looking at a cube at the angle that it's a hexagon yep then the bottom corner coming coming up to the two corners you would see on the left or the right of it, that's the other cone.

And we're talking about the space between the two cones.

Correct.

Excellent.

All right.

That's why the podcast is called Between Two Cones.

Yeah, let's get Michael Sarah on here.

Is it Michael Sarah who's emailed us?

It's not.

I can see their surname.

So,

yeah, the middle bit is hyperboloid.

But I love drilled surfaces because they look like a very smooth flowing surface.

But actually they're made entirely out of straight lines, which I find very counterintuitive.

I find very exciting.

And the reason I specifically asked on the group, what's that?

To get props.

To get Pringles.

What on everyone?

I wasn't sure if Producer Lauren had already sourced Pringles.

Yep.

And so I got ready-salted because I know that no one ever buys plain Pringles.

I love them.

Plingles.

Plingles.

Plingles.

Plingles.

Is it because it's a plain surface?

Whoa.

And then,

sure enough, Lauren also picked up a tub, but it was the sour cream and onion, which I think is a sub-par flavor.

Come fight me.

I don't know.

You do say it vocally and often just spontaneously.

It's the first time it's been relevant.

So I'm glad this lined up.

Yes.

I'm now going to pop.

After which, we're going to just

stop.

Legally not allowed.

We're now in.

A Pringle is a hyperbolic paraboloid.

This is a ruled surface.

Oh, could you put a dot anywhere on this Pringle?

With pleasure.

Oh, she ate it.

Oh, my goodness.

This is going to take so long.

There's not even a flavor that I like.

Okay, Becca's drawn a dot on the Pringle, and I have a ruler here.

I should better find a straight line that goes through that dot.

There will be a line there.

The ruler contacts all the way across the Pringle.

Yes.

But yet goes through that dot.

Yeah.

Because I'm so, you know, this morning,

as we're getting ready ready to leave the house,

Lucy's like, oh, I can't be late because I've got NASA visiting today.

And I'm like, well, I have to go put a ruler on a Pringle.

So, you know, we're all

got real good important careers.

Anyway, as I've just demonstrated, this Pringle is a ruled surface.

Yes.

So you can make this.

Can I take a photo?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Because this is very visual.

You do have a habit of choosing very visual things for an audio based.

Send in very visual problems.

Can you hold it up so that it's level?

Oh, yeah,

down the line.

There we go.

You know, I'd never tried that before.

I just thought, you know what?

I know a hyperbolic paraboloid is a ruled surface.

And that's what a Pringle is.

And so I figured if you put a dot on it, I should be able to find a line.

And I could, because it's maths.

That's very cool.

It's maths.

Yeah.

So that's a hyperbolic paraboloid, Pringle.

So, yeah, so at any point I can put a dot and I will be able to find a straight, I will be able to put a ruler on it, basically.

When you get a line like one of these edges on the Rubik's cube and rotate it around

while fixing the angle it's on that maps out a hyperboloid yes so that means there are two things number one I can give you the equation for a hyperboloid because that was requested okay and all ruled surfaces are

kind of the combination of two curves And if you work out what the curves are, you can then work out what the equation of it is.

Now, a hyperboloid actually has quite a neat little equation.

The equation for the surface of a sphere, like a ball,

is for the x, y, and z axes,

it's all the coordinates such that the x coordinate squared plus the y coordinate squared plus the z coordinate squared equals

one or a constant, whatever the radius is.

If you make one slight change, if it's the x coordinate squared plus the y-coordinate squared, subtract the z-coordinate squared, so instead of adding it, you subtract it.

Yes.

Equals one, all the radius.

Radius and quotes now.

That's a hyperboloid.

Okay.

There's a whole family of them.

So in fact, you can divide all of the x, y, and z coordinates squared by a constant, and that will stretch it in different directions.

So you'd have to...

Like there's like the it's like a ball, but you could stretch it into like an egg-shaped looking thing or whatever.

Yeah.

So you'd have to distort like the standard hyperboloid to be the one specifically traced out by this Rubik's cube, but you can do that, and that's the equation for it.

Can I ask a question?

So, Pringles, I mean, it is sort of,

it's not two-dimensional because it curves, but that would be

a crisp called a fins.

Yes, yeah.

But they are very thin.

But it's very, yeah, it's very thin.

And

for anyone who's done the duck thing where you put two Pringles facing different directions into your

duck.

And to look like a duck.

You'll know that it's not easy to join up the edges of a Pringle.

Is it possible to have a hyperboloid that is more chunky three dimensions?

Ah.

Like as a stacked, if a stack of Pringles

was one massive crisp.

Yep.

No, it's the surface.

It's the surface.

We're ignoring the thickness of the crisp.

Okay.

Lastly, I looked up buildings that are shaped like a hyperboloid.

Now, a building is generally much thicker than a crisp.

The surface of the building is a hyperboloid.

Yeah.

Okay.

Not a hyperbolic paraboloid like the Pringle.

Now it's a hyperboloid.

Oh, right.

Yeah.

That's where I'm getting confused.

Yeah.

So if you spent this whole time thinking, what does it look like?

Yeah.

I mean, how would you describe what these buildings have in common?

They're a bit like the stalk of a mushroom cloud.

Yeah, a cooling tower, like a cooling tower.

Yeah, like a nuclear cooling tower.

I've been to one of them, the Ray Thompson Hall in Toronto.

I've done a show there.

And there is a bridge in Manchester, the Coronation Street Bridge.

And the reason that they're often used in architecture is you can build them out of straight beams because it's a ruled surface.

So you can make the surface by putting a bunch of metal beams together.

There's a whole family of them because they're all stretched different ways.

We'll link to the Wikipedia page.

But if you flick through the pictures of the various buildings that are all hyperboloid, you're like, oh, I get a sense of the shape that we're talking about here.

So you that that's it it's a ruled surface it's a hyperboloid its equation is x squared divided by something plus y squared divided by something else subtract the z squared divided by something else again equals one

i feel like you answered that and it involves snacks pringles are a ruled surface shaped crisp packaged in a different ruled surface shaped tube

i'm going to give that a dingles a dingles well done Yeah, thanks.

I feel like we're giving them far too much advertising.

I do, yeah.

What I'm going to do is

they can be like, what's this spike in sales this month?

I would love that.

It is now time for any other birdness where we pick through shiny things left behind from previous episodes.

What have we got this time?

Beck?

We have some feedback about the what to get someone at their billion second birthday.

Oh, yeah, their billion second birthday.

Yeah.

So we heard from.

I suggested a book with a billion letters printed in it, which I call it a birthday card.

We heard from Fakhruden,

F-A-K-H-R-U- Thank you.

D-D-D-I-N, who said, May I recommend getting a billion of some very low-value currency?

For example, at official rates.

It may be much cheaper at unofficial rates.

You can get one billion Venezuelan boliva for about $273.

I'm guessing that's US dollars.

Is it USDs?

Or thereabouts.

It may be too much for a single person to gift, but if multiple friends band together, it could work.

And there's even cheaper currencies out there, I'm sure.

Well, here's my problem with that.

Okay, yep.

Would you have to get a billion

one currency unit notes for that to count?

Or would you accept a single note that says this is worth one billion?

Oh, because that's, again, that was your issue with the one billion micro hams, micro shams.

Yeah, it's one thing i want a billion separate things yeah that it like in itself is a whole thing on its own it's not the part of a whole thing yeah yes and i know me saying individual letters printed in a birthday card is in the mix because it is just one birthday card albeit tens of thousands of pieces of paper but there's a billion discrete letters printed on them and you can look at one and go there's one there's one there's one I mean, I would argue that different parts of a ham.

Okay, we know your micro ham argument.

We're very familiar with that.

But this does also remind me of a problem that I have, if anyone wants to help solve it for me.

Oh, a stealth problem.

Stealth problem.

I'm just tacking this on now because,

you know, obviously getting a billion Venezuelan bolivar.

Let's say it was notes.

So that's a lot of notes.

Yeah, that's a lot of notes.

I had a similar thing recently where I was...

gifting someone there was a whip round and we ended up with $700

American And it was all through electronic payments.

Obviously, I can just transfer it.

But what I wanted to do was give them 700 individual bills.

Very funny.

Until someone who used to be a bank teller pointed out to me that that actually won't look that impressive.

It's not that many.

It's not actually that many when you, when like, if you're presenting it in like a case.

Open a briefcase.

There's just like a few notes in the corner.

Well, 700.

700.

Yeah.

They're kind of going to switch it around.

It's not like it was stacked in the way that you would expect.

That wasn't going to have a good time.

So what I did was I then bought 700 fake bills that are used for like

educational purposes.

And then they were like, what's this?

And I'm like, it's representative of 700.

Yeah.

And my friend was like, brilliant.

And immediately went to put them in the recycling.

And I was like, wait, wait, they're not worth nothing.

That's like, that was like 30 bucks worth of paper there.

It's a prop for me.

I have no idea what to do with it.

I don't know what to do with 700.

700 fake, very fake looking pieces.

Bright green.

Yeah.

educational money yeah

wow so if anyone has any suggestions

at the problem posing page yes uh but we also heard from errors in regards to the billionth second thing uh and eras said now this is from episode 86 eras suggested alternatively to give a billion of something is to give a gigabyte usb stick or file and then you've given one billion bytes

here's the here's the problem

computers use base two for a lot of things.

And so I forget the distinction because sometimes like a megabyte is a million bytes.

Sometimes a kilobyte is a thousand bytes and sometimes it's a thousand and twenty-four because that's a power of two.

Stanford website says one gigabyte is about one billion bytes.

About.

Yeah.

So maybe.

Does that appeal to you more?

That appeals to me more because I know in the memory

all the bits are in there and in groups of eight.

But now you're actually giving them eight.

You're really giving them eight billion bits.

Is anything worth one byte?

Was there ever a file that was worth one byte?

Oh, yeah, definitely.

Back in the day.

What would it have been?

Like a Unicode character.

So, yeah, so you could have a billion Unicode characters.

I don't know if it would count as a file, but yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, you could probably make a real.

I don't know.

Could you even make...

Could you make a file that's fine?

No, no, I take it back.

You couldn't make a file that is a single byte.

no you wouldn't have room for the header and stuff to say this is a file yeah

yeah yeah

okay i'm gonna put that in the maybe pile but still i do like the idea of being like here's a billion bytes

it's a useful gift i'm a big fan of things that are also practical a document on it a gigabyte is still not like

we're still in a stage where a gigabyte is it's a decent amount semi-useful yeah i don't think it's even have space to do a billion characters because you're gonna need more than a byte each yeah Exactly.

Yeah.

Oh, you're thinking of the bird.

I've gone right off the idea.

You've put the file on there.

Yeah.

No, no, no, no.

I'm saying that you're going to...

Just email them the birthday card.

They can print it themselves at EMF camp.

Oh, yeah.

Someone called Olivia

me with a backpack

that was displaying a lot of enamel pins.

Excellent.

So there's like a transparent section.

There's like a zippable giant pocket on the back of the backpack.

And inside that, she'd put all the pins like through the

fabric, and then had the clasp holdie bits on the inside of the backpack.

I took photos.

We would share the photos.

And one of the benefits, Olivia explained to me, was

this way,

if a pin falls out, it's like your case where it just vanishes, it's gone.

Now it just falls to the bottom of that section.

And also, what was great was Olivia and her partner Robin were driving to EMF camp.

and they happened to listen to that episode of the podcast, heard the problem and realized they were already bringing the solution with them.

That's awesome.

To EMF and I was going to be there.

And so they closed that loop.

You got some photos?

I got photos of the bag.

I got a photo of Olivia holding the bag.

Amazing.

In fact, we have another listener who's done precisely that.

Zeph said, I just finished 085 and have a good solution for not wanting to take pins outside in case you lose them or they get damaged.

I have a collection of over 30 enamel pins and badges, and I sewed a pocket onto my backpack with a clear panel

so that the pins can be seen, but will be caught in the pocket if any fall off.

i i think that's a great olivia did say the backpack she's got is just purchased off jeff bezos's website oh yes bezos backpackpacks that's the one yeah

so you can either do a zeph and make it yourself or you can um do it olivia have a chat to jeff yeah zeph or jeff yeah zeph they're your options in life yeah you go the zeph way or the jeff way Thank you so much to everyone listening to this podcast.

We really appreciate it.

Whichever hacker and maker festival Festival you may be driving to, we particularly want to thank our murder of supporters

who make this whole thing work by funding it on Patreon.

We really appreciate that.

We pick three names at random from all our supporters to mispronounce over the course of thanking them, which this episode includes

Ochre

Orange

Key ith

row ben

see thank you so much to everyone else who supports us on patreon everyone who listens and interacts sends us problems sends us solutions and the like um i've been matt parker you've been listening to beck hill and i originally wrote the fun fact about lauren was going to be that she can recognize human faces

you already brought that up at the beginning so i had to frantically google fun facts about crows because i use them all up at this point i love you because i if that had been me i would have gone no you can't say no

you have to pretend that you didn't say that no i know the podcast happens the way the podcast happens i would like to thank our producer lauren who can solve puzzles on par with a toddler

perfect

bye

That's the end of the episode, by the way.

Yeah.

I don't know why we're still here.

We've, yeah.

We haven't got anything else to do.

We're done.

Yep.

We've picked cards,

eaten twisties.

We are a Muppet.

We, yep.

And

you guessed how many dice are in the jar.

Yes, that's all of the things.

Do you know that was originally a suggestion?

Someone said.

Someone sent in,

you should at the end of the episode in the post-credit little bit, see if

they can guess how many dice are in that jar that they see in the background of my videos.

Did I know this?

Has it been that long since we've done it?

I'd forgotten too.

I came across it by accident and I was like, that's why we were doing that.

Because I was like, why are we even doing this?

That was why.

Well, I mean, who knows?

Maybe by next episode,

we have something else.

We'll find out.