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IRA FLATOW, HOST:
This is SCIENCE FRIDAY. I’m Ira Flatow. Did we get a box set of “CSI” videos for a holidays, we know, a uncover with a enchanting blue light that analyzes all a clues? Any extended print program print thingie that creates impossibly becloud cinema transparent again? That’s my favorite, how they can increase something, and it usually unexpected fills in all those small pixels.
If this only-on-television arrange of sleuthing is not for you, where they solve a terrible crime in an hour, how about a some-more intelligent kind of game, where we can solve a crime in a minute? Presented for your consideration, brief mysteries for kids we can solve with a small proof and some scholarship knowledge.
Want to give it a try? Our array 1-800-989-8255. Give us a call, and we can speak about it with my guest. Eric Yoder is a news with a Washington Post, his day job, though he’s also co-author with his daughter Natalie Yoder of a book “One Minute Mysteries: 65 More Short Mysteries You Solve With Science!” Just published, they’re both with us today. Welcome back. Happy holidays.
ERIC YODER: Thank you.
NATALIE YODER: Thank you, hello.
YODER: And appreciate we for carrying us.
FLATOW: You’re going gangbusters with this series. we theory it contingency be well-accepted, Emily(ph) – we meant Natalie. I’m sorry.
(LAUGHTER)
YODER: It’s OK. Yeah, they’re doing unequivocally well. This is a third book. The initial dual were combined when we was a center propagandize and high school, and now I’m a college student. So we’ve seen these books grow, and apparently everybody likes them.
FLATOW: Now do we start with a judgment we wish to get opposite and afterwards write arrange of retrograde to come adult with a story?
YODER: For some of them we find a common scholarship fact or misconception, and afterwards we build a story around them. But some of them are usually problems that we see in daily life, and we confirm to make them a story.
FLATOW: 1-800-989-8255 if a number, if you’d like to play along with us, and I’ll review one or dual if we can get a time for it of 65 some-more brief mysteries, and maybe we can answer a doubt or solve a poser of how somebody knew that. And we like a approach a book has always been set up. You have a poser on one page, and afterwards we spin over a leaf, and we see a answer to a poser on a subsequent page.
YODER: Yes, we attempted to do that so there’s kind of an evident reward, generally for children, rather than for instance putting all a answers in a behind of a book and creation them fish around for them. We find that kids like to review several in sequence, and usually carrying them page after page like that we consider unequivocally encourages them to keep reading.
FLATOW: Natalie, as we say, when we initial met we behind in 2009, we were in high school. And now you’re off during college. Are we going to be investigate novel and essay or pierce on to something…?
YODER: I’m indeed a sophomore during Penn State. I’m investigate communications and domestic science. But we am holding writing-intensive classes, and in a destiny we would like to do essay for PR or marketing. So this has unequivocally helped.
FLATOW: Political scholarship we consider will be helpful?
YODER: Yes.
(LAUGHTER)
FLATOW: OK. That was one of a favorite subjects when we was in college many years ago, though that’s good. And are a books indeed being good received? You contend you’re offered a lot of them. But do we know if they’re being perceived in high schools or center schools? Are kids being introduced to them by classes in schools during all?
YODER: Yes, we’ve listened from many, many teachers both directly and by comments sent to a publisher that teachers like to use them to strengthen what they’re training in a classroom. Sometimes they use them as task assignments, infrequently as warm-up assignments during a category duration or as maybe extra-credit assignments.
And we have usually listened so many teachers tell us that they really, unequivocally find them profitable as a real-life approach to strengthen what they’re perplexing to get opposite in a classroom.
FLATOW: All right, we have a integrate of contestants. we consider it’s Dante(ph) and Erica(ph) in Nashville. Hi, acquire to SCIENCE FRIDAY.
DANTE: Hello.
ERICA: Hi.
FLATOW: Hey there. OK, are we prepared to listen to a story, a mystery, and maybe solve it for us?
DANTE: We’re ready.
FLATOW: OK, here it goes: Ivan’s father had bought a new fume detector 6 months earlier, putting any one of them on any turn of their house, one in a washing room downstairs, one in a sunroom on a categorical level, one in a upstairs gymnasium between a bedrooms.
The fume detectors sent wireless signals to an alarm system. Ivan’s father had asked him to reinstate a batteries and looked warn when Ivan brought a fume detectors to him, where he was operative during his apparatus dais in a garage; that was where they kept a uninformed batteries.
You didn’t have to take them off their bases, his father said. You could have usually taken a new batteries, non-stop any fume detector where it was and switched a batteries there. Sorry, we theory we didn’t know what we meant, Ivan said. Can’t we usually change them here? Well, to do that sure, though we have to put any fume detector behind in a same place, or a alarm complement won’t work right, his father said.
They’re – and they’re all a same solely that a tone of one is some-more faded than a others, and one has dim spots. At slightest that tells us what we need to know, doesn’t it, Ivan asked? And so we theory a doubt is: How do they know where to put them back? Dante and Erica, where do they know how to put them, or that one goes to where? Any answers to that?
(LAUGHTER)
DANTE: The one that was in a – it was in a sunroom…
FLATOW: One in a sunroom, one in a upstairs hall.
DANTE: That one’s going to be duller, a tone will be duller, or faded we guess.
FLATOW: Yeah, we got that. Let me go – let me review – that’s unequivocally good. Let me go to a answer page. It says: a faded one contingency be a one from a sunroom, a brightest of a places, Ivan said, environment aside a one with a lighter color. And a dim spots on this one are mildew, definition it contingency have come from a damp, dim place, a washing room. That leaves a other one for a upstairs hall.
DANTE: Very good. Thank you.
FLATOW: Did we – do we investigate scholarship in school, Dante, was…?
DANTE: I’m a third-year medical student, and my mother is a biology teacher.
FLATOW: Is that you, Erica?
ERICA: Yes.
FLATOW: Did your training help, we think, solve these problems?
ERICA: No.
(LAUGHTER)
ERICA: Common sense.
FLATOW: Just common sense. Well, appreciate we for personification along with us. we wish we had a esteem to give you, though we don’t.
ERICA: Thank you.
DANTE: Thank you.
FLATOW: Just a believe that we helped a rest of America solve a problem. Have a happy new year to we both.
DANTE: You guys, too, bye.
FLATOW: Bye. Is that standard of how it works?
YODER: Yes, some of them are set adult kind of as a classical poser story, where it contingency be one of these 3 things that happened or, we know, in whodunit terms, it contingency have been one of those 3 people who did it. And so we use your systematic bargain to, we know, discharge possibilities and to, we know, compare adult causes and effects.
FLATOW: So we contingency be already meditative about a subsequent book you’d like to take on. Do we consider about creation any one topical, opposite topics, or do we brew them all adult in a book?
YODER: We brew them adult depending on where we get a ideas. We have kept a folder of ideas usually operative on it over a final several years. And so a initial book was of scholarship stories. The second book, of course, was stories formed on some-more mathematical principles, and of march this one is scholarship again. So it is a small easier to get science-based stories and ideas since there’s usually so most of scholarship around us in bland life.
FLATOW: So we – Natalie, do we come adult with ideas from things we see on TV or where?
YODER: Some of them are from things we see on TV, though a lot of a concepts, again, come from daily life. And some of them are usually contribution that we schooled in propagandize or we’ve encountered during home or on family vacations. And scholarship is all around us. So is concepts in math. And infrequently we usually have to demeanour into things and find a poser within them.
FLATOW: There we go. Let me see if we have time for one some-more to read. Let’s go to John(ph) in Atlanta. Hi John.
JOHN: Hi, how are we doing?
FLATOW: All right, prepared to play? Here we go.
JOHN: Yeah, I’ll give it a shot.
FLATOW: Hey, we had an aged design adult of my grandma looking usually like that, usually it wasn’t a dress to her, Cassandra said, as Ingrid walked into a homeroom. She pronounced they indeed suspicion we demeanour cool. Their propagandize routinely had a dress code, though it was Halloween, and everybody had come in that day wearing costumes. Ingrid was dressed like a hippie. She had a tie-dyed shirt, beads, sandals and sunglasses with orange lenses made like hearts.
Ingrid took off a sunglasses for class, though she put them behind on when it was time to get prepared for a Halloween celebration in a afternoon. The category was decorating a classroom and portrayal signs for a propagandize parade. Kahn, who suspicion he was funny, was unresolved decorations upside-down. Preston was sanctimonious to sword-fight in his bandit dress with a paintbrush. And Ricky was personification with feign blood after putting some on his zombie costume.
When it was roughly time for a parade, Cassandra beheld that one of a signs had been flashy with a red, rather than an orange pumpkin. OK, who’s a buffoon here, Cassandra asked? John, do we have any guesses, and reason it out with us.
JOHN: Right, well, we would theory that a chairman who embellished a pumpkin red was a chairman who was wearing orange sunglasses since that altered a approach she saw a light. Was that Ingrid as a hippie?
FLATOW: Well, let’s go to a answer page. Flip over – or there is a design of someone wearing sunglasses. She looked around a room for a guilty face. we see now, Cassandra said, it’s your orange-colored sunglasses, Ingrid. They make all demeanour a same tone to you. They’re behaving as filters, so a light of usually one or some colors come by to your eyes, though other colors are blocked. What we suspicion was orange paint is indeed red. Take off those sunglasses, and you’ll see.
Oops, Ingrid pronounced laughing, we theory we’ll usually paint some abandon on it and call it a pumpkin on fire.
(LAUGHTER)
FLATOW: Very lovable ending. Thank you, John, we got it right.
JOHN: Great.
FLATOW: Thanks for personification along with us.
JOHN: Thank we unequivocally much.
FLATOW: You’re welcome. Have a happy new year.
JOHN: You too, bye.
FLATOW: It seems like we don’t have to be a kid, Natalie, to suffer personification these small games with a puzzles here.
YODER: Well, we wish not. we wish that people during all ages can suffer them.
FLATOW: Yeah, and do we giggle during a things we see on TV sometimes, like we started out by articulate about CSI and uncanny kinds of instruments they have that nobody has?
YODER: I’m indeed a large fan of “CSI,” though it’s also cold to be means to write them and to know that children will be means to solve them.
FLATOW: Yeah, so when can we see a subsequent book?
YODER: Well, we’re operative on it right now. We’re meditative about doing something math-oriented again. But we have some other ideas, and we competence try a opposite format a subsequent time around. So it will be some time, though in a meantime, we’re unequivocally happy that this book usually came out, and it’s, we know, now accessible along with a other two.
FLATOW: All right, appreciate we unequivocally most for holding time to be with us, and have a happy holiday.
YODER: Thank you.
YODER: You, too, appreciate you.
FLATOW: Eric and Natalie Yoder, author of “One Minute Mysteries: 65 More Short Mysteries You Solve With Science!” We’re going to take a break, and when we come back, we’re going to speak about substantially a rebirth scientist you’ve substantially never listened of since so many of his ideas were wrong. No consternation we didn’t hear about him, though still an engaging guy. Stay with us. We’ll speak some-more about him when we get behind after this break.
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FLATOW: I’m Ira Flatow, this is SCIENCE FRIDAY from NPR.
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