Scientists Had Some Bad Ideas | Scishow Quiz Show

[Music] ladies and gentlemen and non-binary friends welcome to scishow quiz show the only quiz show were musicians pit off against each other and their knowledge of science today musician number one Hank green best known for such hits as shake a booty oh sure you didn't pick a science song nobody show the advantage that I have thank you I didn't think about that musician number two Tessa violet who sings songs about deep meaningful stuff in life yeah true true as a special thanks to our supporters on patreon we picked two of you at random to win some prizes that Hank and Tessa will earn Hank you're competing on behalf of uber our actor hello super are Tessa you're competing on behalf of Chell Maxfield let's do it she'll Stefan show our players what they could win today welcome Abrar and she'll only one of you can be the winner today and only one of you can be the loser but to find out who will be what we'll have to see how our contestants perform both of you are gonna walk away with sign cards from our final round today but the winner will receive the wondrous I won scishow quiz show pin and a bushel of scishow swag from dftba.com but the loser will be able to soothe their pains with the pin that brings all the boys to the yard the I lost scishow quiz show pin but enough flabber jabberin from me let's get this show started yes I was imagining you turned into fire your sling explosion behind me okay all right get ready here's question one we're gonna start our first category appropriately enough is about music specifically music in the animal kingdom humans are sometimes considered unique because of our ability to compose new music but as it turns out we aren't that special according to studies at least one other animal composes songs of their members of its species whales there is a multiple choice but did she get it right me and Shelby I think this is a first insight never had an answer before I started listing the answers that's a man the answer is C humpback whales most people know that humpback whales at least the male ones sing beautiful haunting songs under the ocean but what's more surprising is that these whales don't have a preset tune instead their songs change things like rhythm and pitch over time they compose new original songs that makes them different from most birds which mainly just repeat things they've heard before and even if a bird does make up a new song it's usually not through collaboration in humpbacks these changes are often led by one or a few males and then the rest of the group listens and joins in although people started recording whale songs in the 1960s it was a few years before one researcher noticed they were actually composing new songs and she only did because she was a musician herself scientists still aren't totally sure why these whales riff and improv new songs under the sea some think it could be a form of sexual selection where a male who comes up with a variation on a song as scene is more attractive but we're not positive still if that's true who could really blame them everyone loves a good musician I think we should just call it now thank you for watching this episode of scishow quiz show congratulations to Tessa and she'll question two humans respond to music in all kinds of ways a pop song might get us hyped up well we might get a little sniffily at Celine Dion but research has shown that most animals actually prefer silence to human music yeah that is definitely true of my dog whoo hey he did when we played music and it made the house a little less fun honestly as it turns out though this might just be because they have different tastes Oh some researchers have designed music for cats and even monkeys based on sounds they make and the animals seem to be fans cute or at least they respond to it yeah but it's not like the animals could just tell the scientists that they appreciated the music so for the monkey specifically how could the researchers tell that the monkeys were into one of their specially designed songs if they started moving almost like a dance that's you they started humping stuff oh no they made similar calls like they were singing or they got calmer I'll go ahead and guess because you're not and say I think they got calmer that is correct the answer is D they got calmer besides being fun to create and listen to music is also important for researchers studying communication after all the inflection of your voice often has a bigger effect than the words you're saying it's why a baby might cry if you snap at them but they'll calm down if you use softer tones for a while researchers wondered if these effects were unique to humans or if the behavior of other animals is influenced by pitch and tone too in 2009 one team ran an experiment to investigate this they created two kinds of music for cotton-headed tamarin monkeys one was based on their staccato aggressive calls that sounded a lot like bad dubstep the other was based on their smooth soothing calls and it sounded like a weird slide whistle solo no not the exact rhythms and the music were identical to monkey calls so it would have sounded like gibberish to them but they still responded to it like they would actual calls after listening to the aggressive song they moved more and became more agitated after the slow one they calmed down this doesn't necessarily mean that they liked one song more than the other but it does suggest that they took notice of the music and that their behavior can be influenced by tone and pitch just like with humans we just never noticed before because we weren't playing them the right songs also if you were curious the monkeys in this study and in others didn't show any response to human music well unless you played the Metallica which also calmed them down for some strange reason I would have gotten it wrong something else I think they were gonna shake their little booties yeah I think so yeah that's what the parrot does yeah the parrot uh-huh so my son does when he likes the song yes so our next category in the spirit of all things nerdy these next questions are about actual science inspired by geek Ethan in 2017 a citizen science project launched that encourages people to keep track of the status of their local streams and tributaries things like whether they're flowing dried up or frozen this makes sense seeing as these outlets play a major role in the water supply of the United States but what's more surprising is the mobile app this project was inspired by hmm was it zombies run geocaching Pokemon go or Google expeditions I'm gonna say Pokemon go that is correct the answer is C Pokemon go Pokemon go is released in 2016 it seemed like everyone in the world jumped on board and that included scientists before the game came out to hydrologists from Colorado State University we're trying to study water flow through some of the large rivers in their area the problem is to understand those big rivers you also have to understand the activity of the hundreds of little streams that flow into them and for a small team of scientists that's kind of an impossible undertaking then Pokemon go came out inspired by the game this team got funding from NASA to start the stream tracker project which you can download as part of another citizen science app instead of chasing after caterpie's and Pikachu's it encourages people to go out and catch their local streams in action and to tag their location with a digital GPS marker in the app you can log things like whether the stream is obscured whether it's flowing or whether it's all dried out then scientists across the country can use that data to learn how water channels change throughout the year and how water is moving all across the u.s. if you're interested this project is actually still happening and participants are welcome and I'm sure you could expand your pokedex along the way too it seems like everybody's inspired by pokemons oh I know I am I'm inspired to go out get me some piggies hmm and after those dittos so keeping up with the theme of recent games and apps a new addition to the Legend of Zelda franchise breath of the wild came out in 2017 and I remember but many of the game's structures and artifacts were inspired by something much older art from the right yep art from the Jomon civilization in Japan fortnight the Jomon were around from about 10,500 to 300 BC that is the old civilization and a long one mm-hmm among other things this group was different from others because it lacked certain kinds of otherwise common technology one missing piece of tech in particular might have influenced their iconic artwork it didn't have fortnight was it tragedy stone tools Potter's wheels ways to bake clay or colorful stains and dyes I don't think they had a potter's wheel I don't think they have you are correct the answer is B Potter's wheels the potter's wheel those spinning tables you make pottery on we're widely used throughout Europe in the Middle East by 2400 BCE but it took much longer for them to get to Japan probably because it was a comparatively isolated island unlike the modern versions these so called fast wheels were pretty simple they were circular platforms balanced on an axle which you could kick or push to get spinning you might think it would have been easy for the Jomon to come up with a design independently but it turns out they hadn't yet been introduced to a key piece of technology the wheel itself see if the wheel wasn't actually invented until around 3500 BCE and it wasn't a simple invention either some researchers think this is because the wheel and axle system took a while to figure out or maybe because it required metal tools to perfect either way once the wheel was created it was mainly used for making pottery not transportation and as the designs spread people began developing similar styles of art in the meantime the Jomon continued making the same type of artwork they had for thousands of years coil pots these pots are made by stacking layers of coiled clay then smoothing down the sides and throwing everything into a bonfire to bake and harden even once the wheel arrived many people continued making these traditional pots and today the remaining shards of Jomon pottery we have are some of the oldest in the world and its distinctive enough to design a video game with 1200 points 1,600 points okay I don't think we've gotten a single question or wrong it's true we're great I've never infants whoo now for our last category it is inspired by Tess's new album called bad idea no specifically it has to do with some totally wrong but seemingly reasonable ideas people and scientists used to have about the world until the mid 8th a surprising number of Europeans and Americans went out of their way to avoid eating of all things tomatoes but it wasn't because they didn't like the taste many people thought they were poisonous the fruits even picked up the nickname poison apples because among other reasons there were many cases of wealthy people getting sick and dying after eating them but it wasn't the tomato's fault so what was really making those people sick was it improper canning practices the plates they were eating off of early dangerous pesticides or mold in the herbs they put on the tomatoes wow I wasn't the only one who spilled something because the answer is B it was the plates they were eating on for many years wealthier classes ate their meals on pewter plates today pewter is a mixture of tin and copper but back in the 17 and 1800's it was mainly a mix of tin and lead and that's just never a good sign during a meal the citric acid in tomatoes the same stuff as in lemons and limes would react with the lead in the plates to create a molecule called lead citrate which seeped into the food so the more Tomatoes people ate the more lead built up in their systems when lead gets into the body it starts displacing other atoms your cells need to function stuff like calcium and zinc this ultimately leads to headaches abdominal pain and memory problems and eventually if enough lead builds up it can cause irreversible damage and thankfully by the late 1700s the ingredients in pewter had mostly been changed so this problem began to disappear as wealthy people bought new plates and let me just say thank goodness because no matter how great pesto is Pizza would just not be the same without tomato sauce so we've reached our last round this means that you guys get to bet any or all of your points on your answer to the next question oK you've got 1,100 you've got 1,800 within striking distance I have to I have to bet well you guys place your bets we're gonna go to commercial break welcome back you guys ready points take that as a yes in the 1600s scientists finally discovered gametes sperm cells and egg cells like it wasn't totally clear what these cells did though which led to some weird ideas about how human embryos form one from the 16 and 1700s was called pre formation ISM and it's name is a good hint to what it was about there are a few competing versions of pre formation ISM but what was the general idea a uterus always contains a tiny preformed fetus and gametes stimulate it to grow each gamete contains half a human body and they connect during fertilization and it makes this noise yes one gamete contains a fully formed miniature human both gametes contain fully formed humans but only the strongest develops okay I don't know the answer all right I said c2 cuz I'm pretty sure they thought that the sperm was the entire baby and the uterus is just where it's kept yeah I do remember that I do remember yeah both correct graduations the answer somehow is C one gamete contains a fully formed miniature human if you think about it it's not totally weird that we didn't understand where babies come from the link between sex and pregnancy isn't always obvious and even once we found gametes we weren't sure what they did or which one if any was more important enter pre formation ISM there were two versions of it but both suggested that one gamete either the egg or the sperm contained a fully formed miniature human then during pregnancy it just got bigger until eventually out popped a full-sized baby depending on the version of preformation ism scientists thought that the other gametes stimulated the fetus to grow or just wasn't that important at all this hypothesis was eventually debunked by the 1800s when better technology allowed researchers to see that the very early embryos actually looked like a clump of cells thanks science thanks for watching this episode of scishow quiz show if you want to learn more weird science with us you can find more videos on our Channel if you want to hear more of tessa violet you can find her at youtube.com slash testify and on Spotify [Music]

Channel: SciShow

Views: 204,369

Rating: 4.7730126 out of 5

Keywords: SciShow, science, Hank, Green, education, learn, tessa violet, michael aranda, quiz show, bad ideas, music, animals, whales, songs, composition, monkeys, calm, pokemon go, colorado state university, stream tracker project, citizen science, art, jomon, pottery, potter's wheel, fast wheel, poison apples, tomatoes, pewter, lead, citric acid, preformationism, gametes, fetus

Id: K7q0ac9oyjk

Length: 15min 15sec (915 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 15 2018