The Weird Waves of Wi-Fi

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I'm Dr.

Adam Rutherford.

And I'm Dr.

Hannah Frye.

And you are going to send us your everyday mysteries.

And we are going to investigate them.

Using the power of science.

Science.

Science.

I like it.

Welcome to the next episode in this series of Curious Cases of Us and Her, me and Har.

After a while, you think they could just use us saying that exact sentence in any of the previous 4,000 episodes.

It is 4,000 as well.

You being a county-type person, that's an accurate number.

Anyway, this one is all about tech, and I'm really, really out of my depth.

Enjoy.

A technological curious case today, the story of something we've become almost entirely reliant on without even noticing.

Yes, Abby wrote in to us asking to investigate, and I quote, something that we all know very well and probably use every day of our lives, but I reckon the majority of us would be hard-pressed to explain how it actually works.

Is it waves and science or just some mystical magical force?

Well, Abby, I suspect I'm in the mystical magical force category there.

She is, of course, talking about one of the wonders of the 21st century: Wiffy.

Wiffy, don't look at me like that.

You know, when you connect your phone to the internet without wires.

I think you mean Wi-Fi, Adam.

Well, my mother-in-law called it Wiffy once, and that's what I'm sticking with.

Along with 8% of Americans, apparently, who pronounce it like that, all of whom are wrong.

Do you know why it's actually called Wi-Fi?

I presume it's like hi-fi in that it's high-fidelity but wireless.

Incorrect.

Here is Edgar Figaro, who's the CEO of the Wi-Fi Alliance.

If you want to make an electronic that works with Wi-Fi, you want to put the logo on, he's the guy whose permission you have to ask.

And this is what he told us.

You know, engineers understandably use technical jargon to refer to their work.

And therefore, for a long time, Wi-Fi may have been known as wireless Ethernet or wireless local area networks or IEEE 802.11.

We recognized in the early 2000s that a technology that was intended for the masses needed something more catchy, more memorable.

We hired a company called Innerbrand.

These are brand experts that have come up with brands like PayPal and Viagra.

And they proposed the name Wi-Fi, which we promptly adopted.

And today, Wi-Fi is part of the lexicon and found in dictionaries of most languages in the world.

Wi-Fi does not mean wireless fidelity.

The term Wi-Fi was developed, as I mentioned, in the early 2000s during a time when another term, hi-fi, was popular.

So that provided an easy mental reference at the time where people could easily remember this new term, Wi-Fi.

Right, so if it's nothing to do with hi-fi, I'm going with wiffy.

I've got a little factoid here.

Do you know how Bluetooth got its name?

Something to do with blue on the spectrum?

No, completely not.

It actually is derived from the 10th century Danish king Harold Gormson, who the one who brought, of course, famously brought Christianity to Denmark in the 10th century.

I'm struggling to see the connection here.

Well, his nickname was Blaton.

I think my Nordic pronunciation is spot on there, by the way, because he had a slightly blackened or blue tooth.

So he's called Harold Bluetooth.

Yep.

You're making this up.

I'm absolutely not making it up.

I think that's hilarious, Harold Bluetooth.

And the symbol for Bluetooth is the younger Fultark runes for HB Harold Bluetooth.

What does that have to do with the technology?

Nothing at all.

It's just that nerds are really into Danish folklore.

And so are you, apparently.

Anyway, back to the question.

So, okay, we can agree that Wi-Fi isn't magic, obviously.

Although I should say that signing into the BBC's Wi-Fi network does require casting a a magical spell.

Wi-Fi is in fact powered by radio waves.

Now, a little bit of history for you.

The wireless age of communication actually began with this frenzy of new discoveries in physics in the late 19th century.

First, James Clerk Maxwell transcribed the mysteries of electricity and magnetism into four elegant equations, and then Heinrich Hertz proved that electromagnetic waves swim through our surroundings like invisible light.

But it was an Italian electrical engineer with no formal scientific training who brought it all together.

What was his name, madam?

It's Gugliomo Marconi, isn't it?

I see you would do well in a pub quiz, a very specific pub quiz.

This is pretty much the only thing I can bring to this programme, to be honest.

Okay, so we can repeat his experiment, sort of, but a modern version.

Do you want to take this?

So you've got a little receiver here, an antenna, and a receiver on the end.

And then a little battery.

Right, now while you're setting that up.

Yep, you're eating that, thank you.

So at this point in history,

people knew that if you had a really long wire, it was possible to detect electromagnetic waves that sort of flying through the air.

But scientists thought that you could only do it

through line of sight, really.

So that if you could see the transmitter, a receiver could receive it.

And up until this point, it was really only about scientific interest.

Is this possible something you can do for physics?

But Marconi was the first person who wondered whether you could use this for communication and whether you could do really long distance telegraphs.

So if you take that little radio and just turn it on so you you have static.

Okay, because I could just tune into test match special.

Oh, yep.

I mean, that's the sound of cricket.

So rude.

Okay, I'm on AM, yes.

Okay, now, if you pop that down on the desk and get the battery.

So, this is a standard nine-volt battery with, you know, one of the ones with

two bits at the top.

Exactly.

Now, if you take that little bit of metal, a coin will do here,

and you just place it over the two ends, it will just do a little discharge.

Oh, yeah.

I mean, that's...

Underwhelming.

I'm not going to go with impressive, given that we're in this amazing studio with Wi-Fi flying around us.

Yeah, beaming to you probably over DAB and buyer satellites and so on.

I'm going to switch that off as well.

But in the late...

Yeah, of course, dude.

In the late 1800s, this was really incredible because Marconi managed to get this to work first using his butler's help in his loft

and then slowly over time across a couple of kilometers and eventually hundreds of kilometers and that meant suddenly that you could use Morse code without having to have a physical wire connecting you so if you were out on a boat like the Titanic say and found yourself in trouble you could send out that SOS message and people with receivers would be able to hear it's really really revolutionary so did they actually do that on the Titanic yeah yeah yeah yeah totally that's the only reason why anybody survived the Titanic is because they sent out this this message to a ship that was four hours away and

came to rescue them.

But poor old Jack didn't make it because that dwarf was because

she was very selfish about the dwarf.

That's the main reason, I think.

Yeah, absolutely.

Okay, to really help us understand how Wi-Fi works, I thought we'd get back to basics with a bit of a weird waves boot camp.

And for that, I'd like to invite Andrew Nix, who's a professor of wireless communications at the University of Bristol, to join us in the studio.

Okay, Andrew, let's do some absolute basics here, because I know that Adam crumbles at the seams at the mere mention of anything to do with physics.

Correct.

If you could.

Let's start at the very beginning, then.

What's frequency and what's amplitude?

Okay, so when we're talking about waves,

the frequency is how quickly it vibrates up and down per second.

And we use the measurement hertz.

Think of a boy floating on the sea.

It might go up and down very slowly, 0.2, 0.3 hertz.

When we're talking about radio signals, though, these signals, these frequencies are very high.

I mean, they're typically quite crazy, in fact.

The lower frequency band of Wi-Fi goes up and down 2.4 billion times a second.

Pretty hard to imagine a boy on the water doing that, but obviously this is because it's electromagnetics.

And then the amplitude is just the size of the wave, the strength of the wave.

Okay, Andrew, I'm just going to jump in as the idiot in the room here, but these explanations are really helping helping me.

But the electromagnetic spectrum is enormous.

It goes all the way from, I don't know, X-rays at one end to radio waves at the other end, and there's a visible spectrum in between.

I know those.

What are the variables?

What's the difference between an X-ray and a microwave?

Basically, we were talking the frequency is one of them, the speed it goes up and down.

So things like X-rays go up and down at absolutely incredible, mind-boggling rates.

There's another parameter that is related to the frequency, which is its wavelength.

If you throw a stone into a pond, you will see the ripples flowing out.

We all kind of imagine that.

The wavelength is the distance between ripples.

So on the water waves, they're going to be, well, I don't know, a meter, two meters.

But when we're talking, obviously, radio waves, they are down into centimeters, millimeters, and in X-rays, submillimeter.

I like the analogy because it makes me think that, you know, dropping a pebble in a pond is effectively the same thing as a tsunami or waves on a beach.

Yes,

the frequency, the wavelength, the amplitude are all colossally different.

Except that these things are invisible and they're flying around all over the place.

And it's not just a sort of deliberate transmission from your radio.

Other things in your house, in your kitchen even, are transmitting these things all the time, aren't they, Andrew?

So yes, in their typical home, there'll be, I guess, the most common form of interference for Wi-Fi in the 2.4 gigahertz band.

The lower Wi-Fi band is your microwave oven, which rather inconveniently cooks your food on exactly the same frequency as

the lower Wi-Fi band.

So if you

start the microwave oven, it will jam a 2.4 gigahertz Wi-Fi signal.

That's fascinating, but I want to ask the reverse question, which is if you put

a bowl of baked beans next to my Wi-Fi router,

can I cook it on that?

Very ineffectively.

So

a typical Wi-Fi router will emit

100 milliwatts.

So 0.1 of a watt, compared to your probably one kilowatt microwave.

So you'll probably be disappointed at how long it would take to get any kind of heat going.

I think, yeah, no.

Okay, so so far then, we have got frequency, we've got amplitude, but there's also phase, isn't there?

So the phase is effectively where the peaks and the troughs,

the position of the sine wave.

Think about the ripples

on a pond, then the location, for example, of the peak

will move if you change change the phase.

So if you change the phase, you basically change where those peaks and troughs are.

But definitely it's a more difficult, particularly in radio, I think you can't show pictures.

So it's definitely a more difficult concept to get across.

Adam's still slightly pulling a phase, so let me try this one on you, Adam.

Okay, imagine you draw a wave, wiggly line on a piece of paper, and then you draw it again, but instead of drawing it directly on top, you just shift it along a little bit.

Okay, okay, now I get it.

Okay, then, so what we're talking about here, Wi-Fi in general, is a type of radio wave.

It's got frequency, it's got amplitude, and it's got phase, and somehow you can use that to convey information.

Okay, so I get this idea that there's enough variables in an electromagnetic wave that we can transmit pictures of, for example, me sending a picture of my dog to you.

Which you do relentlessly.

Which I do every day because he's a very, very handsome dog.

I understand how you can make a picture digital, ones and zeros, but how do you translate that information into a wave so that I can send you a picture of Jesse?

So, this is the question that I asked Andrea Goldsmith, professor of electrical and computer engineering at Princeton.

So, let's take the first bit of the image that you want to send over your phone.

Okay, the first bit is either going to be a one or a zero.

So, how do you modulate the wave to carry a one or a zero?

Well, the easiest thing to do if we think about the amplitude is you say, okay,

I'm going to set the amplitude to be either one or minus one.

And so if I set the amplitude to be one, then that's associated with the one bit.

And if I set the amplitude to be minus one, that's associated with the zero bit.

And then all I need to do is figure out is the amplitude of that continuous signal that I'm sending, is it one or is it minus one?

And so that's how you would send a single bit.

Okay, so if we vary the amplitude between low and high, then that translates into, for example, zero and one for that piece of digital information.

So how do we get more information into that wave?

Now suppose I wanted to send two bits simultaneously.

Well then I could look at having an amplitude of, say, two would carry the bit sequence 1, 1.

1 would carry the bit sequence 1, 0.

Minus 1 would carry the bit sequence 0, 1.

And minus 2 would carry the bit sequence 0, 0.

So now I've embedded two bits into the amplitude of that signal.

And you can see how, as I have a larger and larger range of amplitudes, I can carry more and more bits simultaneously.

And we do the same thing with the phase.

So I could say if I only wanted to embed a single bit in the phase, I could say, okay, a phase of zero corresponds to the zero bit, and a phase of 180 degrees corresponds to the one bit.

So that's how we embed bits into the amplitude and phase of the Wi-Fi signal.

And we try to cram as many bits as possible into that signal.

Okay, Andrew, let's unpack that a little bit, bit, if that's all right.

So we've got the amplitude and if you you play around with that, that helps you pack in more information.

So yes, I mean you can start with just having kind of two different amplitudes, one for a one and one for a zero, and that will get you going.

But if you want to pack in more information, you can have more amplitude levels.

So you could have four amplitude levels, eight, sixteen, and you can keep going.

The problem is as you add more and more amplitude levels, it gets pretty challenging at the other end to work out which of all these amplitude levels you've just received.

So you need a stronger and stronger signal in order to be able to differentiate the levels.

But theoretically, you can just keep adding amplitude levels and get higher and higher rates.

And then it's similar with this with this phase.

We can have, first of all, just two phases, basically the original sine wave and a sine wave with a 180 degree shift.

And that will get you binary, naughts and ones.

And then you can introduce more and more different phase shifts on top of, if you want to, the amplitude shifts as well.

So you can have lots of different phase shifts and lots of different amplitude shifts, in the end being able to convey maybe six, eight, ten bits in each what we call symbol, which is a particular transmission that we make on the modulated carrier.

I guess the final point here is that at the other end, you get all those ones and zeros, lots of clever techniques to be able to reassemble it back into a picture of a dog.

That's the essential point here, isn't it?

Yes.

Even though that got quite complicated, this is still the sort of simple version because out in the real world, things get much harder.

Yeah, right, because we were thinking when we were talking about this earlier, we were thinking about how we're in the BBC studios here and there's Wi-Fi flying around and people are streaming radio shows or listening to something on BBC Sounds and Hannah's probably what's happening with her mum right now.

So

how do we filter out the signal that is us talking to you compared to all the other Wi-Fi signals that are bathing us currently?

Okay, I think there's probably two facets to that question.

Firstly, Wi-Fi isn't just one channel.

There are multiple channels and multiple bands, a frequency band.

So there's a 2.4 gigahertz band and a 5 gigahertz band.

And believe it or not, a new 6 gigahertz band has been introduced in the latest Wi-Fi.

So when you're transmitting your data,

whether you choose it or whether it's done automatically, you'll use

one of those three bands.

And then within those bands, it's subdivided into channels.

So you will actually be using a particular channel in a a particular band, but other people will also be using that channel in that band.

So then the second part of your question is, you know, how do people share it without interfering with each other?

And they share in time.

So basically we separate the different users in time on a particular channel, in a particular band.

We basically don't all try and transmit at the same time because that causes chaos.

How do I know, though, when Adam's about to speak?

Apart from the fact that this is actually our job.

And we get it wrong all the time.

Yeah, and I'm waving at her.

But in terms of if we're both on our machines, how does my computer know not to transmit because Adams is transmitting?

So the classical approach to that problem was something called listen before talk.

Always good advice.

So basically, what you would do is you would stay quiet and listen to the channel.

If it was quiet and nobody was talking, you would transmit, you would talk.

But if you heard somebody talking, you would defer.

and wait until they had finished and then you would talk.

And so this is the basis on which Wi-Fi has built its protocol and how it basically avoids interference between the competing users.

So this idea of you listen before talk.

Doesn't that make it quite exploitable though?

I mean I wouldn't name any broadcasters deliberately but there are some who just will carry on talking regardless of what other people are saying in the studio.

Well, that's why it's a regulated standard.

You're not allowed to talk if you hear someone.

It's not permitted in the chip.

It's not permitted in the drivers.

If a product did that, it wouldn't be able to be certified as a Wi-Fi product.

It wouldn't be able to have Wi-Fi logos on it.

And it would probably be banned.

And we can think of a few broadcasters for whom that also applies.

In terms of that adversarial side of things, though, I'm also wondering about how hackable these signals are.

Because if you're listening to other signals before deciding whether to talk, then I mean, surely there's tons and tons of very sensitive data that's whizzing around.

Can't you just sit there and read off what somebody's bank account numbers are?

I mean the short answer to your question is that we use encryption.

So we can't stop somebody listening to our packets, but we can stop somebody understanding what the data in those packets means.

So we would encrypt this digital data, these ones and noughts,

in a way that only myself and the intended recipient know what that rule is.

Well I know that I'm not contributing a great deal to this program, but there's another element to this which I do know a little bit about the history of well evading eavesdroppers and that's because it concerns the the great Austrian inventor Hedwig Eva Maria Keisler so famous so famous better known as Hedi Lamar so the Hollywood starlet amazingly beautiful actor from the 1930s and 40s she escaped Nazi Germany came to Hollywood and became a mega star in such great films as Algiers and Samson and Delilah.

Now, at the beginning of World War II, Hedie Lamar worked with composer George Antheil and developed a radio guidance system.

Hang on, are you reading from Wikipedia?

A radio guidance system for allied torpedoes that use spread spectrum and frequency hopping technology to defeat the threat of jamming by the access powers citation needed.

Well, thank you very much, Adam.

That's why you get paid the big bucks.

Now, the thing about Hedy Lamar, actually, although the US Navy, they didn't use this technology until a bit later, the 1960s, but those ideas, you do find them in Bluetooth and GPS technology.

And they're quite similar, aren't they, Andrew, to the types of versions that you used to find in Wi-Fi?

Yes, they are.

The very, very first versions of Wi-Fi were spread spectrum,

which would have exploited those properties.

So, yes, they certainly played a role in the birth of Wi-Fi.

So, Andrew, can you tell Hannah that I was right about that bit?

Wikipedia was right, I think, isn't it?

Okay, let me give you another scenario here because we've discussed talking over each other, as it were, in Wi-Fi terms.

But what about if we were standing in a very echoey cave and shouting at each other?

Because, I mean, these are just waves.

They are surely bouncing around and echoing off different reflections and surfaces.

Can that end up causing problems too, Andrew?

So yes, you're right.

Radio waves tend to find amazing ways of getting from the router to your devices.

You know, They're bouncing around, as you say, the walls, they bounce up and down staircases, they go out the window.

And a lot of people might think that just a single electromagnetic wave arrives at the phone or at the router, but actually it's not.

It's the sum of many of them.

And they've all, because they've all traveled different routes,

some have taken longer to get to

the end point than others.

If you travel different distances, there is a time delay.

And these time delays cause echoes.

And you may imagine that the echoes would be infinitesimally small.

And you'd be right in that they're very small.

But the trouble is, as we started to transmit such very high data rates, then what was called the symbol period, the time at which we apply a particular piece of modulation, has become incredibly small.

And then these echoes start to cause inter-symbol interference, basically just self-interference.

So yes, the echoey cave is a way of trying to get your head around it.

And I often kind of think, I always like to go back to a human analogy.

So, you know, literally, literally, if I was talking, if I was answering questions, you were asking me questions for some reason in an echoey cave, and my answer had to be a yes or a no, then I could, you ask me the question, I say yes.

And then a certain time later, you ask me another question, and maybe this time I say no.

The problem is my yes will be echoing around in the cave and will interfere with my next answer, which might be a no.

So what you would hear would be a no and echoes of a yes.

And you would be rightly confused as to whether I had just said yes or no.

And that's what happens to your Wi-Fi receiver.

It's like the Too Ronnie's clip, the mastermind clip.

The one where you answer the question

for the question that's already been asked.

Exactly.

So it becomes very amusing.

It's not amusing when it happens to your Wi-Fi, though.

No, not at all.

All right, so let's say that's the situation then.

How do you solve it?

What do you do to get around it?

So the echo problem is not surprisingly perhaps solved by something called an echo canceller.

So this is a very complex algorithm whose job it is to effectively kind of untangle all those differing delays such that we don't get the confusion.

So

in the very early days of Wi-Fi, they didn't have an echo canceller and they were limited to about one megabit per second.

And then as we moved to the Wi-Fi that we recognize today, these equalizers, as they're called, another name for the echo canceller, they were brought into the standard and they allowed the data rate to increase dramatically.

Once you can work out the true signals versus the echoey signals, those reflections can actually also be useful, can't they?

Aren't there some slightly unusual uses of this technology?

Maybe not with standard Wi-Fi equipment, but with more specialist equipment, you can kind of analyze these signals and effectively do things like see through walls, track where a user is, see if the user is static or moving.

So, yes, it can be used, for example, in law enforcement.

If you had like a hostage situation and you wanted to know where how many people were in a room, you may be able to get a feel for whether they were moving, where they were located.

okay andrew look i'm i'm gonna bring it right back down to to ground level here that's super fascinating i think i've got a decent grasp on the physics and also the practicalities of it but the real question that i think a lot of other listeners will be will be thinking at this point is how do i get the wi-fi to work in my house i i just need some practical tips because there are some definite dead spots where you just can't stream and that's the real problem.

Well top tips include not putting your router on the floor.

Routers don't like to be low down.

They like to be high up, so height is always good.

Don't hide your router behind your T V.

Don't put it in a cabinet because you don't like the look of the router.

I have to interrupt you here because

Hannah knows my house very well and she's cutting.

I had to fix the Wi-Fi situation in Adam's house.

This is an absolute true story.

Because believe it or not, he had his router in a cupboard underneath the T V, very close to the floor.

Yes.

And was amazed at why this very fast high-speed broadband that he was paying for was not transmitting to any other areas of his house.

Yeah, yeah, that's not good.

At least you didn't have a fish tank.

It sounds like.

Yeah, okay.

Well, one out of four isn't bad.

Okay, what about this then?

So you mentioned earlier that Wi-Fi coming out of our routers and in our houses are operating at either 2.4 gigahertz or 5 gigahertz.

Which is better?

Which should we use?

So 2.4 gigahertz can,

we talked about wavelength at the beginning.

2.4 has got a,

basically, it's got, sorry, a larger wavelength.

And as a result, it can go through walls easier.

It sees the walls as thinner.

So at 2.4 gigahertz, you can propagate through walls and you can travel further in your house.

So if it's range that's your problem, 2.4 gigahertz is what you want.

But if you've got lots of neighbors all using Wi-Fi,

then you're suffering from congestion and interference, and you want to go to 5 gigahertz because there's a lot more bandwidth, a lot more channels.

And therefore, it's a lot easier to find a

freer channel that you'd be able to get get some good data on.

But the problem with five gigahertz is the wavelength is smaller and it struggles to get through the walls.

So you can't have it all.

You either have shorter range, but you can transmit good data rate and you're more resistant to the neighbors, or you can have great range and you have to fight it out with the neighbors to try and get a good data rate.

See, I mean I think I've identified the problem here, which is the aesthetic of having routers all over the house displayed as if they were works of art, which is incidentally what Hannah's house is.

No, no, no, no, no, no.

I've upgraded Adam to Wi-Fi 6.

That's what's happened.

Is it?

And it works really well.

He's got a lovely mesh grid in his house now.

And does it not work seamlessly?

It does, but I didn't even know you'd done that.

But you object to the idea that there's white plinths?

They are disguised somewhat in bookshelves.

In cupboards.

What people don't realise is that

Hannah actually is my tech support when she comes around to my house and basically laughs at how technologically incompetent I am.

Yeah, that's the price you have to pay, I'm afraid.

Well, thank you very much to our guests today, Andrew Gosmith and Andrew Nix.

So, Dr.

Rutherford, did you understand any of that?

Well, not much, but I do know that Wi-Fi is based on radio waves, which have been used for wireless communication since the early 1900s.

And that now we can cram tons of information into those waves using their frequency, amplitude, and phase.

Then there was Hedi Lamar's big contribution to frequency hopping.

And that modern Wi-Fi has a series of built-in procedures to deal with echoes and eavesdropping, but hasn't yet worked out how to get around someone putting their router in a cupboard.

And Dr.

Hannah Fryer is available on extension 58008 for all tech support queries.

Have you tried turning off and on again, Adam?

Okay, I actually really enjoyed that program and the listeners, the curios still listening on the podcast version, the best version, they really do need to know that all that stuff about Hannah being my tech support is 100% percent correct.

When she came around,

we were writing a book over the last two or three years, and she'd come around and we worked together, and she'd just be like, Why is the Wi-Fi so terrible here?

And I'd be like, I'm paying for the, you know, like the fountain of Wi-Fi, the fire hose.

Yeah, except, and it's true.

I mean, you couldn't have one of your kids would be on streaming some TV program while we were trying to work, and everything would fail.

I mean,

if you ever wanted to do anything, you had to shout through the entire house that no one was allowed to connect online.

So this fire hose of internet, this fire hose of information coming through the door then was sitting in this cupboard under his T V and just doing this.

Honestly, you could get signal about a meter away from his television, but uh any further than that, forget it.

Forget it.

I seem to remember it now though, even though I've upgraded you to a really posh swanky system.

Um I still think that the the one of your uh one of your hubs is in a cupboard above the microwave uh it's next to the boiler it's not the microwave it's at least two meters away from the microwave and as i understand it it doesn't extend that far anyway i mean the price of having such high-level tech uh support from professor hannah fry coming around and just fixing it is the absolute contempt with which she she deals with this situation looks at me tuts calls me names you're You're an idiot.

That's the thin end of the wedge, but it's utterly deserved.

When I have a genetics emergency, you are more than welcome to treat me in the same way.

Anyway, let's do Curio of the week.

I'm going to read this one.

Dear Doctors Rutherford and Fryer, love the show.

Good start.

And would like to join in the Interabang fun.

Okay, so for people who are new to this programme, first of all, where were you?

But also, welcome.

And also, Interabangs is a strange punctuation which

we, I mean,

at various times over the years, has become synonymous with

submissions by the Curious.

I believe someone suggested we had an album called Interabangs We did.

We became a metal band.

It's essentially a question mark and an exclamation mark superimposed on top of one.

Exactly.

And over the years we've issued various vague challenges which include putting an Interabang in some serious piece of scientific work, which Finley Strivens has actually done.

He goes on, please find attached a copy of my honours thesis, which includes not one, but two Interabangs.

They may be found on page eight.

Enjoy.

And indeed, he has included this section.

Section 2.2, how understanding the etymology of anatomical terminology impacts on understanding.

I'm liking it so much so far already.

Quote, clearly an understanding of the terminology of anatomy aids in the learning of the subject in general, but does an understanding of the etymology of anatomical terminology help?

Surely,

he goes on, surely it is enough to understand that the latissimus dorsi is that muscle there, right?

Interabang doesn't say interabang, he actually uses interabang.

You absolutely nailed it there, Finley.

I'm very impressed.

I'm very impressed.

What I want to see, though, is an examiner circling it and then putting an interabang on the interabang.

So, sort of, to be like, what is this?

And I think, you know, once we get to Interabang inception,

then we'll bring back the gold badges.

Meta Interabangs.

Listen, Finley also included a PS.

This is why I wanted to read this one.

P.S.

Adam, as a fellow Latin nerd,

got me banged to rights there.

Thought you'd appreciate the subject matter, looking at the use of Latin and Greek in science, specifically anatomy in this case, and how it can help with learning.

A little test for you, Hannah.

What does foramen magnum mean?

Sorry, I don't even understand.

I don't even understand that sentence.

What?

All he's saying is if you know where words come from, particularly their classical roots in Latin or Greek, does it help with understanding?

To which my argument is absolutely yes.

He's not saying anything interesting there, he's just sucking up.

As I said, it's very, very interesting, excellent thesis and man.

What was the word that you asked me about?

What does foramen magnum mean?

Come on, we've done this.

We've done this.

Iron.

Now.

It's at the base of your skull.

Yes, big hole.

Yes, there you go.

So does knowing the Latin foramen magnum increase your understanding of basic anatomy?

Maybe, but does your net enjoyment of life increase or decrease given the amount of work that you would have to put in just to have that as a payoff?

Anyway, Finley, you are Curio of the Week for your excellent etymology and Latin and Greek nerdery.

Until next time, send us in your questions, send us in anything you want to send us in.

Curiouscases at bbc.co.uk.

We will see you next week.

Hi, I'm Russell Kane, and I want to tell you about my podcast, BBC Radio 4's Evil Genius.

You can find it on BBC Sounds.

Although, I don't know whether you should or not.

It's one of the most confusing, exciting, surprising, infuriating, wonderful, enlightening lessons you can have.

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Because we take people from history you thought you had the facts about and let off fact bombs around them.

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If you want to hear uncomfortable comedians squirming in their seats when they're forced to make a vote one way or the other, evil or genius, because that's what this show is about, cancel or keep, then hit subscribe straight away however if you find it might be triggering and you can't handle it just forget you've ever heard this anyway i do hope you come along with me russell k right i'm off to ruin everyone's life who likes prints

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