From the Brains Behind Brains on, this is Moment of Um.

Moment of Um,

moment of um comes to you from APM studios.

I'm Kip Wellington, code breaker extraordinary I love hidden messages sneaky

I love hidden messages sneaky symbols covert codes you know, secrets.

If you have a message that you need to unscramble, I'm your guy.

I know tons of different kinds of codes, like Morse code with all the dots and dashes,

or Semaphore, where you spell out the words with flags.

But you know which code I can't crack?

QR codes.

You know those little black and white squares that look like they're made out of random scattered dots?

You can find them in all kinds of places, restaurant menus, concert tickets, even food labels.

You just point your phone camera at the code and ta-da!

Your phone goes to a specific website.

But how does the phone know where to go?

Where's all the information?

M&I both needed to know.

QR codes.

What is your secret?

In order to understand how QR codes work,

we have to first understand what they're designed to replace and that's

bar codes. My name is Sam Dickerson I'm an associate professor of electrical and

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