Wait, so a “stick” of butter is just a regular shaped block of butter?
Yes, do y’all not call it that?
German here. We call it a Stück. Could there be some etymological connection?
No, apparently there isn’t. Stick does have its origin in the Germanic language family, however from what is nowadays in German “Stecken” for it’s penetrative aspect. (Yeah no kidding here, that’s what the etymology dictionary said)
Edit: just read the entry to “Stück” apparently there’s the idea of “Stückelung” as in parts of a larger whole, which coincides to the idea of a “Stock” (stick from a tree) being a separate part of the larger entity “tree”. Going by that logic I can see a similarity
I don’t think we call it anything. It’s just butter.
Next try driving over a banana peel. I have some theories about what would happen.
Mamma mia
Woah. You’ve also read that Mamma Mia fanfic with the banana train?
The difference between screwing around and science is writing it down.
– Adam Savage
Anything can be observable, but “iterative processes” makes it sound fancy
Mythbusters embodied the scientific method, but I do wish they’d stopped to actually properly explain it at some point. “Writing it down” is definitely part of the process, but it’s not the whole process. The whole process is what they actually did in most of their episodes:
- Make a prediction
- Design an experiment to test that prediction
- Run the experiment and observe the results
- Come up with a conclusion
Sometimes they played fast and loose with some of these steps to make entertaining TV. But, fundamentally, they were doing science.
Screwing around still covers parts 1-3 though. You say something stupid (hypothesis), your friend dares you to do it (experimentation planning), and you do it (experiment).
You say something stupid (hypothesis), your friend dares you to do it
What’s the hypothesis there?
“I’m going to piss on that window.” doesn’t involve a testable hypothesis.
I could totally chuck an egg on that roof!
Nuh uh your arm is worse than mine!
Chucks the egg
I mean presumably they wrote it down when they wrote the script
[Stares shamefully at sparsely populated Obsidian vault, thinking about all bullshit I tinker with just long enough to set it up and forget how the next time I go back to it]
This is exactly the kind of shit you should do with your kids. It teaches them it is not only good to be curious about things but also how to then go seek an understanding to those curiosities. That and its just fun as hell to do silly, goofy experiments.
When adults run into ‘dumb’ questions like this, we tend to dismiss them and move on, forgetting that there is always an opportunity to learn or to teach. All this really does is stall curiosity and leave the world with a little less knowledge.
Exactly.
The flipside, however, is that it validates them asking even more questions, which is good for their development but incredibly annoying for the parent. That said, I could name a bunch of useless facts now because I’ve looked up way more than I should have. Dinner time is frequently like this (I have three kids, will just give them numbers):
Kid 1 - How far away is Paris?
Me - About…
Kid 2 - What happens if you microwave a fork?
Me - Hold on, let me…
Kid 3 - How do you say “ounce” in Spanish?
Me: Why would you even…
Kid 2 - I’ll go try
Me - No!! That could destroy the microwave! Sit down, let me answer Kid 1 first. About 5000 miles (made up number, but surprisingly close)
Kid 1 - How much is that in inches?
Me - Hold on, it’s Kid 2s turn. If you microwave a fork, you’ll get sparks and maybe break the microwave. We’re not going to try it, but maybe I can find a video for you.
Kid 3 - You didn’t answer my question!
Me - Sorry, I don’t know since I don’t speak Spanish, but I’ll look it up for you. (10 seconds later) Apparently “la onza,” though I don’t think anyone that speaks Spanish uses ounces.
Kid 2 - What if I microwave my dolly?
Kid 3 - Why?
Me - <to Kid 3> They usually use metric, so either grams (gramo) or milliliters (mililitro). <to Kid 2> I don’t know, but it might ruin your dolly.
And so on. I have to juggle three conversations at the same time, and sometime a fourth if my SO wants to discuss something. It’s absolute madness, but I do what I can to encourage curiousity, but I don’t fault anyone for giving lame answers.
Awesome.
317 million inches to Paris
I’ll let them know when they get back from school. :)
Seriously though, I have sometimes gotten back to them a day or two later, when I finally remember that thing they asked in a random rapid-fire question session (aka, dinner time).
I don’t know if it would work, but what I’d try to do in that situation is to make it clear the kids will get more of your time and attention if they put in more effort themselves.
Like, the kid asking how far away Paris is: get the kid to come up with an estimate and how he/she’d check that estimate. Once they put in the work like that, you give them more time to get to the answer.
The kid asking about microwaving a fork, tell them it’s a dangerous thing to do, tell them you might be able to find a video showing what happens. But, first, ask them to come up with 5 other things they shouldn’t touch in the kitchen without a parent’s permission and a reason why and write them down.
I don’t have kids, but my dad did something a bit like that with me, and my uncle did something like that with his kids. It seemed to work. I was too young to really remember exactly how it worked with me, but I do remember happily doing research on things and then getting attention from my dad about what I’d figured out. With my uncle, I got to watch his kids (5-6 years younger than me) and how this sort of thing worked. He’d spend about 5 seconds deflecting them, they’d go off and do some things on their own, and he’d have more time to relax. Sometimes they got bored or distracted and didn’t come back. When they did come back, they’d come back with something more than just a random question, and he’d spend time with them about what they’d discovered.
The older they get, the better their questions get.
But yeah, good point. I’ll consider pushing them a bit.
Love your comment! My first is 1½ and my second is hatching this summer.
Good luck! You can get into the groove by pretending to be schizophrenic.
Kid 1 still out there wondering how many inches away Paris is, lol
Of course, in the moment, answering an artillery barrage of questions is gonna be overwhelming and challenging. No shame in that, especially if you’re wrangling three little minions the whole time. I’m getting more at the general idea of fostering a curious environment where saying, "huh, I don’t really know what’s gonna happen, but lets find out together . . . " regardless of the question or experiment needed to find out, is the default attitude. Which is something it sounds like you do a great job of, btw, but it’s also something that seems to be increasingly absent in this modern world (or maybe I’m just getting old)
Yeah, it’s kind of frustrating, but I guess I’m the cool dad for letting my kids do strange experiments. For example, my kid had some oil and water in a bottle for a couple months on their desk and really liked shaking it up and seeing it separate, and they did another where they took two 2-liter bottles and connected them to make “water tornadoes” or whatever. We also built a crappy game w/ Scratch once.
The tricky part is spending roughly equal time with each. My oldest really likes doing experiments and building stuff (which I’m totally down for), the second is more into creativity and making up games (I struggle here), and the last is into playing pretend and dress-up (I’m really not equipped for that). So what ends up happening is we don’t do much of those things and instead do things all together, like going to a local museum, the playground, or playing video games together. But I try to set aside some time for each of those interests.
I am excited for maybe doing a large project with all of them. I want to build a treehouse, which should appeal to each of them. The oldest can help design it and cut the pieces (I have a table saw), the oldest two can help nail things, the second can help decorate, and the third can RP as a construction worker, helping me with tools and whatnot. It should be a lot of fun, just waiting approval from the SO, budget (we need to buy a new car soon), and time (would probably need to take a few days off to get it done).
You are a really fucking cool dad for even wanting to build a tree house with your kids, good on you. Literally my best memories are with my dad building cool shit like tree houses, which eventually snowballed into me having a million random skills and the two of us building actual houses together. Even if you can’t build something as complex as a treehouse right now, it’s the participating and engaging with your kids’ lives that really matters. They will remember you as the dad that showed up
I hope so. My main roadblock right now is getting my SO on board. I have a habit of half-finishing things, so I’ll need to clean up that list before they’ll sign off.
Try this. Wife in the microwave, kid 3 goes to study in mexico, kid 1 send him to Paris and to measure it himself , kid 2 can stay
That’s good parenting
I sure hope so. We’ll see how they turn out.
!remindme 10-20 years
Me from the future: turns out they’re all sociopaths like the Riddler. But at least we have machines.
I guess it’s time to introduce them to a family computer, which, while heavily restricted in what websites are allowed, allows accessing wikipedia?
Edit: I should clarify I’m not a parent
This reminds me so much of my dad (a house painter) when I was a kid! He was always down to indulge my curiosity by experimenting or building something. It was fun at the time, but I’m now in engineering and I’d say a lot of it is just because my dad thought it would be fun to attach a potato cannon to a go kart.
I’m sure he’s very proud that you became an engineer though!
Potato canons and go karts were the slightly dangerous things we needed as kids.
I recently read a book called “The anxious generation” that goes into depth talking about the developmental changes in young people over the last 30 years, and it attribute a lot of it to the douboe-whammy combination of 90s and 2000s helicopter parenting paired with the rise of the smartphone.
We need to unsupervised, slightly dangerous playtime and mischief to learn how to deal with problems on our own or with peers, and we need human interaction to learn to socialize. Removing both of those leads to an increased number of people unprepared to handle social situations and stress.
The book definitely had a feeling of bias for argument to match preconceived conclusion that social media is bad, but I think there may have been something to it.
Must be nice to afford science butter in this economy!
If it’s anything like scientific grade peanut butter then yeah, it’s expensive! https://shop.nist.gov/ccrz__ProductDetails?sku=2387&cclcl=en_US
I just sent this to my wife and told her I ordered some peanut butter on line.
I’ll do the same!
Thank you for this nugget of info. I will always cherish it.
wtf, what’s so special about it?
It’s a NIST reference standard. The ur-peanut butter, against which all peanut butter shall be compared (in the United States).
There’s a Nilered video on youtube where he makes an extremely expensive cookie out of reference ingredients
Be forewarned that it’s extremely frustrating to watch. His general chemistry content is very interesting and well explained. But whenever he has to cook anything he becomes a complete doofus that cannot handle even the most basic of research. Like the man will research dozens of papers for hours and successfully make aerogel but then waste thousands of dollars in reference materials because he googled “cookie recipe” and just wrote down the first thing he found without reading anything about the process or technique
His coffee roasting video is similar and it makes me wonder if the food videos he makes are simply rage bait. He doesn’t post them often (frankly he doesn’t post often in general) so I genuinely wonder if he just really despises cooking and baking
the main thing about buying things from nist though (as pointed out to him in the comments) is that the materials are guaranteed to be pure. not edible. that flour could have been literal years out of date.
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It’s also frustrating because he believed the NIST reference materials to be “pure” when in reality they’re just standardized. Also they’re not meant for human consumption so they probably taste terrible.
(They’re for things like calibrating machines.)
I don’t even understand it. Cooking is the same as chemistry! Just follow a damn recipe! And use a kitchen, not the lab equipment! 😬
The ones I’ve seen, at least, there wasn’t really anything he used that couldn’t have just been 1:1 with a normal recipe. But he fucked it all up trying to change things on the fly and overthinking it.
In his defense lab equipment can be utilized in cooking to great effect. The most common use in modern cooking being sous vide, which is just a repurposing of immersion circulators that have been in use in the laboratory context for decades. But centrifuges, rotary evaporation, homogenizers, etc all have great culinary applications.
thus the entire field of food science and why your homemade food is never as texturally amazing as commercially processed food. It’s one of the really frustrating aspects of capitalism; those processes can really make truly amazing textures but the companies that control the (very expensive) machinery are often overly concerned with cutting costs. So something ends up with an amazingly smooth texture but tastes like butt because they cheap out on ingredients.
That said you absolutely should not use lab equipment that is used for the shit he does for culinary purposes. Equipment that has processed mercury should not be used for culinary applications, ever, no matter how much you clean it
Just lay off the tuna for a while and it should be fine /s
That’s why I never picked up on nilered. Any of the videos I’m actually curious about are just frustrating
To me it’s only been the cooking videos, which make me wonder if he ever even stepped into a kitchen.
There’s also a follow-up by Ann Reardon who explains it:
Product Expiration Date: 31 December 2029
now I know what I’m stocking my bunker with.
wtf, lol that must be some damn good butta!
She originally asked about science eggs, but that was a big no.
I’m very curious about the alternative hypothesis.
Butter flattens car.
Is there a third options like scissors which can defeat one of these but not the other?
Mario Kart banana peel spinout
The car slips over the butter and in a comical fashion slides down the stairs
it triggers a collision error and the car gets yoten into space
The butter shoots forward and violently splatters across the driveway, like the blood of a murder victim in a horror movie where there’s a lot of blood when someone gets murdered
Boom.
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I would often turn it around and ask them first, what do you think might happen, and walk them through why they think that. Let them build their own hypothesis to be tested.
Teaching your children to think for themselves? We’ll have none of that here!
Good for you. Socratic method.
I think they’re both smarter than me because of it. But it was easier to use the built-in curiosity of a kid (the imfamous repeated WHY) to drive them to learn things than to just feed them whatever answer was available, or not at all. That’s the worse thing a parent can do is shut down a kid’s craving for answers.
If Mom had been home, she’d have told you both to put the butter in a clean plastic bag first, unsealed so it won’t pop. That way it could have been salvageable, and your tire wouldn’t be greasy.
I dunno, plastic bags sound like confounding variables. The 4 year old peer reviewers won’t stand for this!
Depends on the goal of the experiment. If the only aim is to determine the sqishability of the butter, then a plastic bag would be acceptable as it would provide no meaningful resistance to the tire. However, if one wishes to determine the precise nature of the butter’s squish, then many more experiments need to be made, both to establish a control and to analyze additional squish conditions (butter temperature, wrapper on/ off, use of plastic bag, etc.)
The question was what happens when you run over a stick of butter, not how squishable is a stick of butter
Now do it with margarine and write a paper on the differences
Stick of butter like $12 salted these days
Where the fuck you getting your butter? I pay like $4 for 4 sticks of Kerrygold.
I get all my butter down at the local sex shop, “Slippery Al’s”. I slather it on my body when I need to go swimming in the cold Canadian ocean once a week
So why does it need to be salted??
I think you’ll find this 5 gallon pail of duck fat a far better alternative to butter and it’ll be cheaper to get in bulk!
Using this butter calculator, it’s about 160 sticks of butter to about equal the 5 gallons of duck fat. At 12 dollars a stick your equivalent butter will cost you $1,920!
That bucket was only 281 dollars!!
Fuck Slippy Als! Not literally, but you know, do better for yourself!
Pluss if he ever gets seared by a particularly nasty insult while lathered up, I hear duck fat makes a wonderfully flavored variant of the mallard reaction. It’ll leave you with Michelin level scabs.
I for one salt my own body butter
So you’re buying by the drum then?
…our kerrygold comes in slabs, not sticks…
Slabs are good, but I rarely use more than half a stick at a time. The sticks are just easier to deal with.
…i mean that i’ve never seen kerrygold sold in sticks; maybe it’s a regional thing?..
It’s a good habit to question how we know what we know. Kudos to this guy for encouraging his child’s curiosity!
Next question. If your tire was bald, would it stick to the ground or the tire?
Probably still the tire, the material is chosen for grip / stickiness
And bald doesn’t mean smooth.
I’ve been giving this way too much thought 😆
I think it would come down to if the fold in the wrapper was facing up or down. If the tire had tread, I don’t think it would matter, but if the slit were facing down, I think the wax paper would keep it from sticking. Unless the pressure squeezed the butter out, in which case I think you’d end up with most of the button on the tire and the wrapper on the ground.
It probably also depends on the surface. Are you driving over gravel or a smooth concrete garage floor? Is the surface wet? How about the tire? Is the tire warm (recently driven) or cold? What about the ground?
There are a lot of variables here that could absolutely determine where it sticks.
Maybe we’ll find out next time on “nobody asked” the show on drop out entirely about answering questions that likely have never, and probably should never have been asked.
Dropout is what college humor is called now that they bought themselves and work for themselves now. A play on them dropping out of college to basically work from home and be their own boss. Sure, it’s another streaming subscription, but its like 3 dollars or something, and if you don’t want to pay that, they also eventually release almost everything to youtube too.
These are the stupid memories that stick with you when you grow up though.
Nobody remembers all the times their parents just said no and dismissed your curiosity. But we absolutely remember the times where our parents engaged in our curiosity.
Good dad. Good kid. A bit of a waste of butter, but it was worth it for the internet points and bonding between parent and child.
Agreed! I fully remember the time my dad explained the water cycle to me at like 6 years old cause I asked the question “how do rivers not run out of water?”
It’s always weird trying to put in perspective how valuable the things we waste are. Like to us, butter is a couple dollars, cuz it’s never not there, we don’t have to think about how much butter there is. There is no other tangible cost than the simple dollar value. So like if you compare it to going to see a movie in the theater, the dollar value kind of makes sense of using this butter for entertainment and teaching. But if butter didn’t feel potentially unlimited to us, the cost might then not feel worth it, even if the dollar value didn’t change.
Yeah, people will go spend $1500 on holidays, but won’t spend $3 on this experiment because “it’s a waste of butter”.
Reminds me of the time I put a partially filled Gatorade bottle under my parents’ Jeep as a kid. I remember trying to run it over with my bike, but would just go right over it. Then I got curious what the Jeep would do and wedged it under the back tire. But we didn’t go anywhere till the next day, so I forgot I put it there.
The following day, we’re backing out of the garage when there’s a sudden loud POP. I quickly turn to look and see Gatorade covering that area of the garage. Scared the hell out of my mom.
Was an informative time for everyone involved.Maybe this is a good lesson to do a pre-trip walkaround inspection every morning before commuting to work. Takes less than a minute.
