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 a few pilla 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 everyday that are sweet to the noggin but before that here is a sneak peek at brain candy live but not really this is this is brain candy right here we've been literally yeah this is the show we we've been the last couple of days here and all the little colored pieces of paper right for you 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 yeah 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 gonna 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 all right so why why do you feel like a little bit reticent to show off this is awesome by the way your deaths 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 a 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 India India India 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 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 then in a hundred years it might be or it might not be I mean this is 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 once 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 wish list for me of other things to play with because I think if we went to 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 all right 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 movin and shakin around they're 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 it's 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 containers 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 inside giving it more kinetic energy enough to push the power piston up turning the wheel the wheels motion then pushes the displacer down moving the air away from the warmer bottom plate causing it to rapidly cool and collide with the containers walls and the power piston less often and with less force so the piston falls turning the wheel with it the wheels momentum now drags the disk 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 one 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 that 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 is 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 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 there's a turn that happens and 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 and they're going to lock itself these are like really modern Appalachians 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 there 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 Spears that dissect into a bunch of pieces I bought at the dollar store three for a dollar but yet the the mechanism or the 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 yeah how it comes apart and goes together this is um we 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 it like actually tape a camera to it and then have the camera on a pendulum so I'm noticing you've got a lot of 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 once copper ones that have a let's 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 school that's for all the coolest but between these two the cooler is 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 pins that are erasable because the ink inside of them becomes invisible when heated you can erase the ink in this pin 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 is also a density set but in this case every cylinder is 100 grams that's 100 grams of aluminum and this is LED and that's LED and then we got brass copper I think zinc and and steel it's that a standard tarnish on lead I don't know because it's tarnished the part that's it that'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 court that was exposed to the air I'm actually noticing a interesting pagina on the brass and the copper as well from the contact with the woods yeah could be oils in the wood the multi soften 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 does 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 - yeah thanks for parking my loose tooth what's the most recent thing you've 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 bear first 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 and I would believe it ya know it's a total it's one of those silly oh yeah totally I buy a newest object newest object it's the speaker oh I saw this yesterday yes that came in the in the curiosity box this third one and it's 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 septal Ian water molecules I should of course point out the spit error I misspelled saliva on the Beger 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 our 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 IIIi think this is a reasonable place to stop the the desk store 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 you saw Michael here so there you go brain candy live hits the road on February 21st traveling to 40 cities around the United States check brain candy live.com to see which cities were 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 and the rest of this beautiful glow 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 everyday 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 zero point zero zero zero zero zero four billion more zeros 1% 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]

Channel: Vsauce

Views: 7,381,877

Rating: 4.9101005 out of 5

Keywords: adam savage, michael stevens, vsauce, brain candy live, brain candy, desk, tour

Id: p-VDVI1GMZk

Length: 20min 51sec (1251 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 04 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/CanadianGenius]

"A really fun way to erase a lot of stuff at once is to just use a flame."

-Michael Stevens

[u/wintonhowzer]

Michael and Adam are having one of the best bromances of all time.

[u/croppedout]

I think you just hugged down their site http://www.bellerbyandco.com

[u/DrJohnWatsonJr]

I'd be really really interested in purchase links for the various objects (puzzles especially) shown in the video. These are all little gimmicky things I'd love to have in my office!

[u/Jurgen44]

Did Adam Savage just accidentally reveal Michaels real name? He goes by the surname 'Stevens', but when Adam is reading their names off of the globe he says "Michael Davidson".

[u/Duhrell]

The Beats Headphones product placement wouldn't be irritating if Beats Headphones weren't absolute trash, but they are, so it is

[u/Toa_Quarax]

I've got that other puzzle with ball in the middle on my desk.

[u/PropaneMilo]

Okay so this isn't the take away from this episode. When they're doing the 'brain candy teaser' I can't help but be mesmerised by the colours of the wall. It's really mesmerising

[u/Xellurat]

I want this box by 11:50. Can someone provide me a link?