Dog Days of Summer, Magic Tricks for Birds, Planck Time
Curiosity Weekly
Warner Bros. Discovery
4.6 • 963 Ratings
🗓️ 26 July 2021
⏱️ 11 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Learn the “Dog Days of Summer”; why scientists did magic tricks for birds; and the smallest conceivable length of time.
What are the "Dog Days of Summer"? by Steffie Drucker
- Farmers' Almanac Staff. (2015, June 29). What Are the Dog Days of Summer? Farmers’ Almanac. https://www.farmersalmanac.com/why-are-they-called-dog-days-of-summer-21705
- Little, B. (2015, July 10). Why Do We Call Them the “Dog Days” of Summer? Animals; National Geographic. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/150710-dog-days-summer-sirius-star-astronomy-weather-language?loggedin=true
- AstroPages | Precession. (2021). wwu.edu. https://www.wwu.edu/astro101/a101_precession.shtml
Scientists did magic tricks for birds to see how they perceive the world by Steffie Drucker
- Garcia-Pelegrin, E. (2021, June 2). We performed magic tricks on birds to see how they perceive the world. The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/we-performed-magic-tricks-on-birds-to-see-how-they-perceive-the-world-161772
- Garcia-Pelegrin, E., Schnell, A. K., Wilkins, C., & Clayton, N. S. (2021). Exploring the perceptual inabilities of Eurasian jays (Garrulus glandarius) using magic effects. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 118(24), e2026106118. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2026106118
- Magic Tricks May Fool You, but These Birds Can See Through Them. (2021). The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/01/science/birds-magic-tricks.html
- Timmer, J. (2021, June 4). Researchers perform magic tricks for birds, who are not amused. Ars Technica; Ars Technica. https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/06/researchers-perform-magic-tricks-for-birds-who-are-not-amused/
- Olkowicz, S., Kocourek, M., Lučan, R. K., Porteš, M., Fitch, W. T., Herculano-Houzel, S., & Němec, P. (2016). Birds have primate-like numbers of neurons in the forebrain. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 113(26), 7255–7260. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1517131113
- Starr, M. (2018). Crows Can Build Compound Tools Out of Multiple Parts, And Are You Even Surprised. ScienceAlert. https://www.sciencealert.com/crows-are-so-smart-they-can-make-compound-tools-out-of-multiple-parts
Planck Time Is How Long It Takes Light To Travel One Planck Length by Joanie Faletto
- The Planck scale: relativity meets quantum mechanics meets gravity. (from Einstein Light). (2021). Unsw.edu.au. https://newt.phys.unsw.edu.au/einsteinlight/jw/module6_Planck.htm
- Williams, M. (2010, November 19). What is Planck Time? - Universe Today. Universe Today. https://www.universetoday.com/79418/planck-time/#ixzz2OhJ0gDig
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, you're about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity Daily from Curiosity.com. |
| 0:06.0 | I'm Cody Goff. And I'm Ashley Hamer. |
| 0:08.0 | Today you'll learn about where the term dog days of summer comes from, why scientists performed magic tricks for birds, |
| 0:15.3 | and the smallest conceivable length of time. |
| 0:18.4 | Let's satisfy some curiosity. |
| 0:21.5 | Here in the northern hemisphere, it's the dog days of summer. |
| 0:25.0 | And that lasts from roughly July 3rd to August 11th each year. |
| 0:29.0 | I think we'd all agree that it's summer, but what does that have to do with dogs? |
| 0:34.0 | Despite what you may have heard, it's not about what the weather does to our |
| 0:38.6 | canine companions, or that it makes us all lays around like dogs. |
| 0:43.6 | Instead, it all centers on a certain divine dog |
| 0:47.6 | from long, long ago. |
| 0:49.8 | In the night sky, the constellation Orion the Hunter is trailed by two trusty dogs, Canis Major and Canis Minor. |
| 1:00.0 | Sirius, the brightest star in the sky, is sometimes called the dog star because of its prominent |
| 1:05.7 | position in Canis Major. It's the dog's nose or collar tag, depending on how you think its head tilts. |
| 1:14.4 | The ancient Greeks and Romans coined the term dog days of summer for the period when they'd |
| 1:19.2 | see serious rising with the sun. Those days do often happen to be the hottest days of the year, |
| 1:25.8 | but it's not for the reason the Greeks thought. They believed it was because the |
| 1:30.8 | sun got extra power from serious. |
| 1:33.7 | But that heat actually comes from the earth's tilt. |
| 1:36.9 | When the north pole tilts toward the sun, |
| 1:39.4 | from June through August, the northern hemisphere gets the sun's most direct rays. |
... |
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