Scientists Finally Know How Sandcastles Work
Curiosity Weekly
Warner Bros. Discovery
4.6 • 964 Ratings
🗓️ 3 March 2021
⏱️ 11 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Learn about why we still don’t know how eels reproduce and how scientists solved a 150-year-old question about how sandcastles hold together.
We still don't know how eels reproduce by Grant Currin
- TED-Ed. (2020). No one can figure out how eels have sex - Lucy Cooke [YouTube Video]. In YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFi6ISTjkR4
- Epic Eel Migration Mapped for the First Time. (2015, October 27). National Geographic News. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2015/10/151027-american-eel-migration-animal-behavior-oceans-science/
- 100-year-old mystery solved: Adult eel observed for the first time in the Sargasso Sea. (2015). ScienceDaily. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/10/151027132839.htm
Scientists have solved a 150-year-old equation that governs how sandcastles hold together by Grant Currin
- Ouellette, J. (2020, December 9). Physicists solve 150-year-old mystery of equation governing sandcastle physics. Ars Technica; Ars Technica. https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/12/physicists-solve-150-year-old-mystery-of-equation-governing-sandcastle-physics/
- Pakpour, M., Habibi, M., Møller, P., & Bonn, D. (2012). How to construct the perfect sandcastle. Scientific Reports, 2(1). https://doi.org/10.1038/srep00549
- Yang, Q., Sun, P. Z., Fumagalli, L., Stebunov, Y. V., Haigh, S. J., Zhou, Z. W., Grigorieva, I. V., Wang, F. C., & Geim, A. K. (2020). Capillary condensation under atomic-scale confinement. Nature, 588(7837), 250–253. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-2978-1
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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 |
| 0:04.8 | Curiosity.com. I'm Cody Goff. And I'm Ashley Hamer. |
| 0:08.0 | Today you learn about why we still don't know how eels reproduce and how scientists solved a 150-year-old question about how |
| 0:15.1 | sand castles hold together. Let's satisfy some curiosity. Here's something I |
| 0:20.0 | bet you didn't know. Scientists still don't know how eels reproduce. |
| 0:25.0 | No kidding. |
| 0:26.4 | See, eels have proven to be one of the most mysterious animals out there. |
| 0:30.8 | Over the centuries, scientists have tried to catch them in the act of reproducing, to no avail. |
| 0:36.2 | No one has ever found a single eel egg. |
| 0:39.9 | And that might come down to their weirdly complicated life cycle. Pretty much every eel of the genus |
| 0:45.7 | Anguilla begins its life in the Sargasso Sea in the Atlantic Ocean. That's when tons of |
| 0:51.1 | tiny eel larvae start a perilous journey home along the same migration routes their ancestors have traveled for tens of millions of years. |
| 0:59.0 | Some head to Europe, others to North America, with many taking nearly a year to make the trip. |
| 1:05.0 | Along the way, the eel larvae balloon from about the length of a sesame seed to the length of your thumb. |
| 1:11.0 | At this stage, they're called glass eels. People actually thought |
| 1:14.9 | glass eels were a completely different species for thousands of years. At this |
| 1:20.0 | point something wild happens. |
| 1:22.8 | These marine creatures swim from the salty seas straight into freshwater rivers. |
| 1:28.5 | It's a change that would make most marine animals swell up and die, but not these eels. Their kidneys morph to keep blood |
| 1:35.7 | salinity at safe levels. Once they get into the river systems, they're called |
| 1:40.2 | freshwater eels. As the freshwater eels swim up river and mature, |
| 1:45.0 | they transform again into Elvers. |
... |
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