Showing My Desk to Adam Savage

Hey, Vsauce. Michael here. The eye is a mirror. When you look into an eye, you can see a small, tiny version of yourself that kind of looks like a doll version of yourself. The Latin word for a little doll is "pupilla." That's where we get the word "pupil" for a young student and the word "pupil" for the dark hole in the middle of your eye. It's a pupil because when you look into it, you see the pupil of yourself—the tiny doll version of you.

And you are in for a treat today—something a little bit different than usual, but I think you'll like it. I've been working with Adam Savage on our tour, Brain Candy Live, and I decided to give him a tour of my brain candy—the little things I have on my desk, the desk I work at every day that are sweet to the noggin. But before that, here is a sneak peek at Brain Candy Live. But not really. This is brain candy right here.

We've been literally—yeah, this is the show. We've been the last couple of days here, and all the little colored pieces of paper, right? It's blurred because we don't want to give it away. Yeah, well, maybe give that one away. Psych! You've got to come to the show.

Oh, yeah, let's not mess this up. This is how I think through a narrative. It's either like this or on a whiteboard. I can't actually type it out linearly. Yeah, and you can see how dense parts are. You can see by colors where the audience is involved, where there's going to be something dangerous, and how they'll maybe spread those out properly.

Okay, but wait, this is not why we're here. We're here because we're in Michael's amazing Vsauce space in Los Angeles, and I happen to notice that your desk is awesomely messy and yet covered with stuff that I wanted to get my hands on. And we realized we should just shoot that. So, yeah, let me know.

I wanted to clean it up, but I don't... kind of convinced me. No, the way it is is the way we're gonna film it, so this is just pure unadulterated truth—that's really what I'm about. Alright, so why do you feel like a little bit reticent to show off? This is awesome, by the way. Your desk—you couldn't set design this with this much chaos. Let you like a photo to go off of.

But I'm nervous because, I mean, I don't know, there could be something here that I'm like, "Oh, that's embarrassing." Like, you know, okay, here's a half-drank energy drink from yesterday. I'm gonna finish this today. I like it flat. I like a room-temperature. I don't really want to show you this Stirling engine. This is so precisely made; it is powered just by the heat of your hand.

So put your palm out, and then we'll let that warm up for just a second. Meanwhile... yeah, yeah, keep all that blood in your hand. But the thing is, it doesn't need a lot of heat underneath it. It just needs a temperature difference between the surface on top here—the disk on top—and the disk that's touching your hand. So while you're holding that, because I'm able to get that bottom warmed up a little bit, it's a funny phrase I hear—let's admire some indium.

Indium, indium, indium. It is the only element in the universe you can chew like bubblegum. What? It's a soft metal. It gets softer when warm, but it's also non-toxic, and it's quite rare. I heard it's on the endangered elements list—in a hundred years there might not be really any found in the ground.

So is this a particularly large chunk of indium? In a hundred years, it might be, or it might not be. I mean, there's some guesswork involved in knowing what the earth has and what it's gonna run out of. I'm dancing it with my fingernail. Exactly! And you can take a bite out of it. I wouldn't recommend it because it's quite cold in here, and it could be a little firmer than your teeth.

But I took a piece off, and I melted it in this beaker because you can make awesome mirrors with it. This is like a wonderful wishlist for me of other things to play with because I think if we went through my desk and my space at my shop, there'd be a whole bunch of stuff you'd be like, "Oh, I didn't know those existed! We gotta get those!"

Yeah, I'm gonna give it just a little turn. Alright, but as you'll notice, even though I didn't put that much energy in, it won't slow down; it's just gonna keep going. How does this engine work? Well, it's all about temperature—a kinetic approach to defining temperature. The air is made of molecules moving and shaking around; their collisions produce what we call air pressure.

Now we say that warm air expands, but really it just has more energy. When a gas warms up, its kinetic energy increases. Its molecules literally move faster—translationally, rotationally, and vibrationally. As a result, the average force they all exert when colliding increases. If the container they're in isn't perfectly rigid, these collisions, stronger on average than those coming from the other side, will push the container's walls out, expanding the space within.

Now that's what happens in our engine. Our engine has two pistons: a power piston responsible for moving the big wheel and a displacer piston that shuttles around the air. Inside, your hand warms the air, giving it more kinetic energy, enough to push the power piston up, turning the wheel. The wheel's motion then pushes the displacer down, moving the air away from the warmer bottom plate, causing it to rapidly cool and collide with the container's walls and the power piston less often and with less force. So the piston falls, turning the wheel with it.

The wheel's momentum now drags the disk—a laser piston up, pushing air down to the warm plate where it gains energy, collides with the power piston more powerfully again, sending it back up, beginning the cycle again. It's surprising just how quickly air can cool and warm enough to move the piston. It's fast!

A classic example of this is the old egg-sucking trick. Put something burning in a bottle and stick a peeled boiled egg on top. Then suddenly, poop! The egg plops into the bottle. This is often explained as being caused by a vacuum forming in the bottle because the oxygen inside got used up, leaving fewer molecules within to combat the pressure coming from without. But that's not true.

The oxygen used by the fire doesn't disappear from the universe; that would violate the laws of physics. Instead, the flame turns it into things like water vapor and carbon dioxide. There are, however, fewer molecules in the bottle when the egg is placed on top, but not because they were destroyed by a fire. Instead, it's because the heat of the flame gave them enough energy to push their way out. Air pushing against the egg can get out because the egg is shaped in such a way that lifting it opens this seal.

But once the flame burns out, the air inside starts to cool right away, and well, there's less of it inside now. External atmospheric pressure is stronger, but the shape of the egg is such that pushing this way only tightens the seal. The air inside continues cooling, pushing less and less until the pressure difference is enough that the entire egg gets pushed in. And that's a piece of brain candy, if you ask me! The egg isn't sucked into the bottle so much as it's just pushed in by the atmosphere because the pressure inside, which would normally be pushing back equally, has become weaker.

Likewise, you don't really suck liquid up through a straw; you just cause the air in your mouth to push against it through the straw less than usual so the air outside can win against you and push the liquid into your mouth. So make sure the haters know: scientifically, nothing sucks.

Anyway, back to how messy my desk is. I think this does give a good sense of what's in my mind and how facades look—it's like kind of an S. This is what an episode looks like in your head before it comes. Yeah, and my tolerance for mess is really high!

Okay, so if I need her to work, I wouldn't even move anything—I'd be like, "Look, the trackpad and a keyboard are accessible." Yeah, yeah, yeah! But it's also inspiring to have little things around to fidget with—for instance, these cast puzzles.

But that one is called spiral. Oh, wow! The craftsmanship on some of these puzzles is just... I didn't realize it was a puzzle. I just don't think in that. Not all those pieces come apart. They do? Yeah, that doesn't seem possible! Exactly! And what they do is they, I think, exercise the part of my brain that deals with three-dimensional realization because I don't think I'm very good at that. It takes me weeks to see something in my head.

So I'm trying to like... you know what these are really good for? Finger strength. Because they're heavy, and if you tore out of one for a whole day, yeah, you're like, "Oh my gosh! I'm getting some nice tone." When you sit up at the seeing something in your head—I mean, that's the same way I build stuff. I can't start building unless I can see the structure in my head.

Do you think you look really good at visualizing things in your mind? Yeah, no! Actually, there's a turn that happens as a maker where you start being able to just build stuff in your head. Wow! And turning it over to drive with the turtles. Did practice make it a better skill? Totally! Practice makes it a better skill, and every time I attack a new material, it's the same thing.

This is another—that's another one. And that one is really fascinating because as you pull it apart, you don't see what's catching. Right? How come it's not... oh, right! No matter which way you hold it, it's going to lock itself. These are like really modern applications—like wire puzzles. Now watch, watch this. I don't know if we can get a close-up of this, but if you've got pins that are falling because of gravity this way and this way, there's no way to unlock it unless you get some little centrifugal force happening—or more precisely, their inertia will cause them to move out.

And if I give that a little spin, it just falls apart. Wow! Force it—it just wants to fall apart. Once you've spun that, beautiful! So yeah, I've got a lot of stuff here. What I'm picking up—all the puzzles. Okay, this is a play with those. Well, yeah, these later boil the solutions for those out there watching who should really get into my love topology stuff at the moment.

These are spheres that dissect into a bunch of pieces I bought at the dollar store—three for a dollar. But yet, the mechanism or the design behind it is so clever and so easy to put back together, right? I actually instagrammed it. I was so, like, excited about the simplicity—how it comes apart and goes together. This is... um, when we finished Mythbusters, we packed up my desk, and it was exactly like this—like a couple of hundred pounds of this stuff.

Yes, this desk is super heavy for a few reasons. One is the tungsten cube. Oh, there it is! Isn't that surprising? Ah! This is larger but not as heavy, and that's solid steel. That's a—it’s a plumb bob, and I used that in the "What If the Earth Stopped Spinning" video. It was so heavy I could actually tape a camera to it and then have the camera on a pendulum.

So, I'm noticing you've got a lot of materials—different materials. And I saw you open this one earlier. Oh, I think they opened down. Yeah, so this is a density cube set. Each cube is one inch by one inch by one inch, and it gives you a really good idea of density and how different things feel.

One of my favorite things to do is because different metals have different thermal conductivity. I will like pull some at—what ones? Copper? Let's do... I—are anything copper? And I'll mix them up so I don't know which one is which, and I'll just put them on my forehead, and I'll try to guess which is which by which one feels cooler.

And the one that feels cooler should be copper. It has a hopper on that can feel cooler. The question is, which one is covered? I feel like the cooler one is... it's Michael! Michael's cool! That's for all the coolest. But between these two, the cooler... I can't get this wrong. I think you actually can't get it wrong.

Yeah, I actually can, but I'm thinking that this one's copper. You got it! Hey! Hey! I can tell you've got a little anxiety about that work. I knew I could do it! If I didn't get it right on camera, I'd look like a fool! My desk, by the way, happens to be littered with pens that you can't really see in the video. They are pens that are erasable because the ink inside of them becomes invisible when heated.

You can erase the ink in this pen by just rubbing the other end of the pen over the ink, heating it up to the invisible point. A really fun way to erase a lot of stuff at once is to just use a flame. These are also a density set, but in this case, every cylinder is 100 grams. That's 100 grams of aluminum, and this is lead, and that's lead, and then we got brass, copper, I think zinc, and steel.

Is that a standard tarnish on lead? I don't know because it's tarnished the part that's it—it's the edge in the wood. The reason I'm asking is moisture or something. One of the original Maltese Falcons—two of the original multi sockets were made out of lead, and they now have this very dark brown patina on them, and I have wondered—never wondered aloud, but I have wondered if brown patina is something that happens.

It must, but why did it not happen on the cork that was exposed to the air? I'm actually noticing an interesting pagina on the brass and the copper as well from the contact with the woods—yeah, could be oils in the wood. The Maltese Falcon could be brown from many people handling. Yeah, it could be.

Alright, so what do you think is the worst thing someone could conclude looking at your desk? I wouldn't be sad if it concluded that I was disorganized because that's true. Right? Well, there's disorganization, and there's disorganization. You're not inhibited from getting your work done. Well, yeah, exactly! That is a piece of calcite that has that birefringence property, right? Where if you... what's it good out here? That's double vision.

Except it has double vision. Yeah, see? I'm not disorganized! I can find a legal pad in a second! Absolutely! So let’s just draw like a circle. Yeah, that's not a great circle. That's right, and then rotate it. Oh no way! Yeah, okay, so what is the most recent object? Uh, yeah, thanks for parking my loose tooth.

What's the most recent thing you've brought into the space? The most recent... I guess with... oh, that's really cool. Isn't it cool? That's a call—the TV rock! It's a piece of black site with fiber optic properties. Cool! I found out that the famous fact about polar bears—supposed to be fiber optic—it's not true.

Oh, is it not true? Apparently, it's not! So I didn't even know that fact, but if you were to tell me, I would believe it. Yeah, no, it's a total—it's one of those silly—oh yeah, totally, I buy it! The newest object? Newest object? It's the speaker! Oh, I saw this yesterday!

Yes, that came in the curiosity box—this third one. It looks like a laboratory beaker, but it's a, you know, double-wall thing with the handle you can drink coffee out of, and it has milliliter measurements on it. But I was like, "Milliliters? We've heard about those! Let's use some crazy uses!"

Right, so what do you value? My blood in your brain is the amount of saliva produced every three hours during the day. If you fill it all the way up to 300 milliliters, it also tells you that filled too here, the beaker contains approximately 10 septillion water molecules! I should, of course, point out the spit error—I misspelled saliva on the beaker.

On every beaker! In fact, it's completely my fault! I take full blame! And spit, if you are out there watching, please know that I respect you, even though I'm not perfect! I'm gonna move past this because I just did a rack focus on the globe, and am I right that that is one of those bespoke globes made by that company in England?

Yeah, Ballard B. Globes. Yeah! Oh, okay, yeah! Well, you can go get it! It's not really a surprise that I love globes. I've done a lot of videos about what does the earth look like, how are map projections made, and this was a gift from my wife on our wedding day. What?! I am flattered!

If you look up at the top of the globe, it has written the company that made it a minute—he says our names, right? And then it's got the place of our wedding in the date, and in the base—which is over there—and it has a plaque that says "to my husband on our wedding day." So these globes are the most accurate.

I know I'm very familiar with these globes as I go to their website every few weeks and think that they make them really large. They make what's called the Churchill—yeah! And you couldn't even hug it! I think this is a reasonable place to stop the desk tour. I'm just gonna go off into a corner and look at this for a couple...

Yeah, sure, of course! I'll get some work done! Hey, Vsauce! Michael here! So there you go—Brain Candy Live hits the road on February 21st, traveling to 40 cities around the United States! Check braincandylive.com to see which cities we're coming to! For probably coming to one near you, the rest of our global viewers, please don't worry—we are considering and looking at tours in the rest of this beautiful globe!

But for right now, it's just the United States. See you out there on the road, and as always, thanks for watching! But wait! There's more! Let's talk about the eye. Specifically, blinking. We all do it; it's good for our eyes to blink. But is there a chance that, at some point in the future, there will come a moment during which every single pair of eyes on earth—every single human—is blinking at the exact same time? A moment we will all miss.

Do tube linkage? You blink your eyes anywhere from 30 times a minute all the way down to, well, just three or four times a minute if you're fixated on something—like when reading! That can actually explain partially why your eyes might become dry or fatigued while reading. Also, a typical blink lasts about 100 to 300 milliseconds, which means if you are awake for 16 hours a day, and you blink, say, 10 times a minute on average—and your blinks are just, to be conservative here, only a hundred milliseconds long— in a waking day, you spend about 16 minutes of your life in blink mode with your eyes closed! That's a lot of minutes to miss every day!

But what about all of us blinking together? Well, the math has been done on Reddit, and the chances aren't good. There is a 0.00000004% chance that today, every single human will blink their eyes at the same time or have them closed because they're asleep. That is a very small chance! Even given the number of days in the universe's life so far, you just wouldn't expect to have ever seen it happen or to ever see it happen.

So remember, Earth, we are always watching! And as always, thanks for watching! [Music]