A Problem Squared - 059 = Concealing Stars and Conceiving Bars

Episode Date: May 8, 2023

In THIS episode...   🌝 Is the diameter of the sun and the moon the spookiest of coincidences?   🍫 Where on earth are the new candy bars?!   📈 What's in the Business Briefcase today?   Here's the incredible bath related research conducted and compiled by David, go take a look it's fantastic: https://www.dropbox.com/s/89sp8ekvx2d13m7/Bath_Gustavsson.pdf?dl=0 And Tin's code with Matt's favourite plot, you can find that here: https://htmlpreview.github.io/?https://github.com/tinnuadan/PipingHotBath/blob/main/becbath.html If you'd like to see Matt and Bec in New York for an Evening of Unnecessary Detail you can still buy STANDING tickets here for $20: https://www.caveat.nyc/events/aeoud-7-13-2023   Merch Competition: Send in your sizes for those T-Shirts! And phone it in if you want THE HAT! Put your down preferences HERE: bit.ly/APSgiveaway   If you'd like to find out which Muppet YOU are, just speed ahead of Matt and Bec and find that out here: https://www.buzzfeed.com/jenlewis/which-muppet-are-you.   Send your problems, solutions and t-shirt specifications to our website: aproblemsquared.com.   And, finally, if you want even more from A Problem Squared, find us on Twitter and Instagram.    

Hello and thank you for listening to A Problem Squared. This is your captain, Bec Hill speaking, and I am joined by my co-pilot, Matt Parker. A selection of the problems we will be solving today will be solving today will be available shortly and today's podcast should be remotely smooth. However, we do request that you keep your seatbelts fastened if you are listening to the show while driving as we're not responsible for your safety.

If you are listening on your lunch break, drinks and snacks will be provided throughout the show if you are able to get them yourself. That's it from me for now. In the meantime, just sit back unless you're not sitting, relax and enjoy the show. It feels like a more honest safety announcement. Yeah, we're not going to... It's just you're on your own.

You're on your own. Every man for himself. Safety. Do we have to eat different meals in case one of us gets food poisoning and the other one can land the show? Is that how this works? Well, if everyone's getting their own meals, then yes. Okay.

Naturally, that's going to occur. But if they get food poisoning, it's from themselves, so we're still not debunked. Pilots and co-pilots have to have different meals, so one of them's always fine to land the plane. Yeah, so as co-hosts. But we're in different hemispheres. Just as well, because, yeah, yeah, you're in Australia right now,

and I'm in a cupboard in London, so I don't think there's any chance of that in this episode. I'll calculate which is bigger, the sun or the moon. I find out whether we've invented all the candy bars. And if your favourite type of business is any other, well, wait until we get to the back of the plane. Or in the luggage, in the hold. It's in the hold. Yeah, but be careful because it may have moved around during the flight.

The business may have, yeah, moved around. Matt, how are you? I'm good, as discussed. Southern Hemisphere. Very exciting. Nice to be here. It's been relentless. I basically flew over here.

Obviously, I'm here to see family. Big fan of family. Great to see them all. I mean, they're less fans of you, but sure. They're okay with this I show up once or twice a year relationship. That seems to work nicely for everyone. And so I'm kidding. They're adorable.

I love my family immensely. Anyway, so we happened to line up this trip, as mentioned in a previous episode, because there was a solar eclipse at the time of recording a few days ago. So we flew out here. Lucy and I had a frantic couple of days preparing for the trip. We had some friends flying in from overseas. It was like five of us all going up on this trip. And actually three of us drove up.

That's a long way. We did our 1.7 megameters on the way up. Some other friends then flew into Carnarvon. They're American. They got to the airport and like, we're going to Carnarvon? That's like how I pronounce Monaco. Monaco? Yeah, where all the rich people play.

They go gambling. That's great. Monaco. It's like the Malaga Malaga. Because there's a Malaga suburb here. Great. Then again, Lucy will not let me forget, because we live in a small town called Godalming. But I was like, ah, Godalming.

My parents call it Godalming. It's the most Australian pronunciation. Oh, good. But anyway, yeah, yeah. So it's been a bit frantic, but we made it to the eclipse. We saw the moon eat the sun. And it was all very emotional. It's been very exciting. Like a Pac-Man.

Like a Pac-Man. It did look like a Pac-Man. So the whole trip was 2.85 megameters. So close to three. Two million. We could have done laps of Perth just to get to three megameters. So it was, yeah, 2,850,000 meters. We did stop every megameter, so every million meters, thousand kilometers.

Everyone, I told everyone to get out of the car. It was not optional. And we took a selfie with the car at one megameter and at two megameters, which was an immense amount of fun for me. And then you'll like this. We then ate snacks that were shaped like zeros whenever we passed a lead digit with all the zeros. So we had Cheezels at one megameter. Yes.

And we had Burger Rings at two megameters. I was very pleased with this as a system. And then the eclipse was incredible it's a long way to go millions and millions of meters for 62 seconds of darkness but it's pretty amazing when it happens because you know the sun gets covered you can see its atmosphere which you normally can't see it's just phenomenal so we had a a great time. And Lucy had her experiment. So she took the special telescope made by scientists, colleagues of hers at the University of Aberystwyth in Wales. And it was a lot of kit to set up because it's like-

Can I say that it's really funny that there's people in Wales studying the sun? Yeah, it's a good point. The ridiculous thing is, Lucy, there's more solar physics in the UK than where we are in Western Australia, despite substantially more sun access. Yeah. That said. I think Cardiff is actually, from memory, I think Cardiff is the city that gets the most amount of rainfall in the UK. Oh, really? Not counting Belfast.

But on the mainland. Yeah, Abba's like, I want to say two thirds of the way up the west coast of Wales, give or take. Oh, yeah. Way sunnier there. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. take oh yeah way sunnier though oh yeah yeah yeah so anyway but we managed to get the telescope set up and it's a non-trivial task because it's partly a telescope partly scientific kit it's going to plug into a laptop you got to do a bunch of alignment you gotta you gotta point at this where you point at the sun and i need to make this very clear do not look at the sun do not

point a telescope at the sun, particularly that second one. Oh, right. Because it's like a magnifying glass, but stronger. But way worse. Exactly. Yeah. So it has a special, it's not foil or my lab. It looks like, it looks like foil cap, which lets through very few photons. And so we line it all up using that. You can look on the computer and the computer has a bunch of code that runs. There's like, also there's like polarizing filters inside it. And what it did was during the 60 odd seconds of actual darkness, when you can look at the sun, you can take the cap off the telescope because it's covered by the moon.

There's no bright bits that are going to burn your eyes. During those 60 seconds, what the computer is doing is telling this polarizing filter that's inside the telescope to rotate. And it's taking exposures with different orientations of the polarizer, which means you're only getting photons that are polarized in different directions, which gives you information about the plasma conditions and if these photons were produced or scattered by the corona. You know, science things.

Does this work the same as polarized sunglasses? Yeah, exactly. And you know if you've got polarized sunglasses and you're looking at light reflecting off a road or water or something and you rotate the glasses, it changes what it looks like. No. Oh, you've got to try that. Yeah, if you rotate the glasses, it'll change the view.

And that's what the telescope was doing. Very cool. But I didn't want to feel left out. So I did my own experiment. Yeah. I made my own telescope as well. So scientists made the one that Lucy had, and I made... I'm imagining toilet rolls with some cellophane over the top and a rubber band. You are so close

it's a bit depressing. So it's a cardboard tube. It's a postal tube. And I sat down, because I wanted my own telescope, the Parkascope. I sat down with Alex, my filming person, and Nicole, my video producer, in my office before I left the UK. And they helped me build. So I have to admit, I've got it here. I'm going to show it to you.

For everyone else, we will share. I took a photo of it in the desert when we're at the eclipse so everyone else can see it. But for Beck's purposes purposes so there it is there so at the moment it looks like just a painted tube yep but on this side and the coal's stuck on a bunch of like dials and scales and not yeah knobs and they're all just glued on bits of cardboard and it makes it look that that looks like, look at it. It looks better than most of the things I made on Make Way Take Away.

Wow. I've got room in my professional career for more than one crafty person. Yeah, well, you know. And you know, here, so let me explain how this telescope works. Because it's currently just a cardboard tube with some knobs stuck to it. Yeah. Are you going to say imagination? No, no.

Yeah. You look through it and pretend. No. So I bought a light sensor. So there's a, there's a, you can see like a notch in the side here. So you can, you can open up the thing, you put a light sensor in here and then you mount it on. There's like a tripod mount. You mount it on a tripod.

Is a light sensor like those things that photographers use or like film people use it looks a bit like it looks a bit like the camera did on the game boy when you could attach a camera and a tiny printer to your game boy which is such a specific reference that i've only just remembered today real so yeah if you're Game Boy. It's like a white round thing. There it is. I'm holding it. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. This is similar to what you'd use in photography and, you know, film, but this is a scientific one that's designed. So it just gives you an absolute brightness reading. It doesn't do anything with it it just tells you from zero to four hundred thousand how in units of lux how bright it is i assume relative to luxembourg and that's that's where the so i then had some software that my brother helped me write which would take the current brightness reading from this sensor. And it was inside the tube. The tube is partly functional. It was like to shield

it from like other people walking around, shadows, light reflecting off things. So I pointed it away from the eclipse at like a neutral bit of sky and then did four hours of sky brightness measurements. and then did four hours of sky brightness measurements. Anyone who thought that you had an actual telescope would have just been like, that guy is... You're pointing it in the total wrong direction. The wrong direction. It looked, for the record, it looked pretty legit because I had it set up, plugged into a laptop.

I think I blended in pretty well. Was it on an actual tripod? Yeah. I went all out. It is so good so convincing so anyways my theory was if you track the brightness of the sky because it gets darker as the moon covers the sun and you can see the sky get gradually darker and darker and darker as the moon is covering the sun and my theory is if I do the maths behind like one circle, like a disc coming in front of another one, I should be able to calculate what I expect the shape of the curve to look like as the brightness dims. Like it's going to start bright and then it's going to drop

down to darkness. But the way it happens, like the rate at which it drops, like does it start fast? Does it start slow? All these things. And there's going to be other factors because the sun's moving in the sky and all that stuff. So I'm going to try and control for that and see if I can extract from the curve some information about the fact that it was like two circles covering each other, which I think would be a lot of fun. That was my parkascope. So that was me. Beck, what have you been up to?

Well, you've been star spotting and so have I. Oh, I imagine a different meaning of the word star. I'm just looking at stars. I've started doing stand-up again. And I did a gig in Kennington recently. It was a good lineup. It was myself, Rose Matafayo, Nish Kumar. Like, that was a solid night out.

It was a good night of comedy. There was a mystery guest on. And when I rocked up, I'm really glad that I was on first. Because if I'd had to follow them, I'm not sure I would have wanted to. Did you know who the mystery guest was before your set? Not before I got there. Okay. But you got there, found out who the mystery guest was before your set? Not before I got there. Okay. But you got there, found out who the mystery comedian was, and then did your performance.

Got it. Yeah. And it was Kamau Nanjiani. Oh, in the UK. Yeah. So he was over from the States. I first saw him, I think, in The Big Sick. I know he was one of the few non-problematic people from Silicon Valley, the TV show.

Yeah, that's right. Yeah. He's one of the good ones. Yeah. people from Silicon Valley, the TV show. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, he's one of the good ones. Phew! He's in the Eternals. Yeah, and it was a big thing because he got real buff for it and then everyone was like, whoa, he got fit. Does that mean because you're in a show together,

you're now in the extended MCU? I'm not sure. I don't know the details. I think that's how it works. Yeah, I of the eternals now that's how it works yeah brilliant but he was great he was lovely and i know people say this all the time but they were super down to worst like it's just a room above a pub it's not like a fancy comedy club or something you know it's not huge you have to squish in there no green room. You have to stand outside the room in the stairwell. Keeping it real.

Good with names, actually, I picked up on. Yeah, I think that that's a very good key. I'd like to get better at that myself. Yeah, I'm not good at that. For when I have abs and I'm famous. That's the order. Fame, abs, ability to remember names. Yes, yeah, that's right.

And in no way do those top two help equal the first thing. I assume they're direct consequences of the previous. Yes, yeah's right. And in no way do those top two help equal the first thing. No, no, no, no. But I assume they're direct consequences of the previous. Yes. Yeah, definitely. And then last night I saw Joe Parra and Conor O'Malley at Soho Theatre. Oh, dang. Because you were trying to see them in New York. Yes.

And that didn't line up. No. And then they came to London. Yay. And I was away. And you were away. That didn't line up. Maybe when we're in New York for July, we'll see if they're doing any gigs.

Oh, they may do it. They weren't performing together, by the way. They were separate shows. It was sequential. And you could tell who in the audience had gone to see Conor O'Malley because they're Joe Pera fans, but haven't necessarily watched Conor's YouTube channel. Got it. Yeah.

Because it is not safe for work or children. No. It is a quiet. It's a quiet, surreal taste. Very surreal. But. And a bit full on. So that's it.

Wow. You weren't kidding when you said star spotting. Yeah. I hope you remember to not stare directly at them. I had my own telescope. Or use a telescope. Yeah. Yeah, I made it out of toilet rolls.

Good one. Yeah, I made it out of toilet rolls. The first problem is from Ian on the problem posing page at a problem squared dot com. And Ian says, is the apparent relative diameter of the sun and the moon, as observed from the Earth, the spookiest of coincidences? Or did things just have to be that way? And I'll be honest, when I first saw this problem, Matt, I didn't quite understand it. I think it's just my brain wasn't quite comprehending what the question was. But now that you've talked about the eclipse, I realize that I've actually had this question for years.

Oh, there you go. And just not known how to properly word it. Because if I was asking eclipse, I realize that I've actually had this question for years. Oh, there you go. And just not known how to properly word it. Because if I was asking it, I'd just be like, is it a coincidence that the moon perfectly blocks out the sun during an eclipse? Yeah. But that's basically what they're saying, right? Yes, that's what they're saying. And yep, spooky coincidence. Yeah.

That's it. Oh, cool. The end. All right. Well, I mean. God, you took that. Oh, cool. The end. All right. Well, I mean. God, you took that as your big problem. I did. I ran the numbers just to check, by the way. So roughly, the headline stat is the sun is 400 times bigger than the moon, roughly.

And the sun is 400 times further away than the earth than the moon is. Right. And what's quite nice is if something gets twice as far away, it looks half the size. If something gets three times further away, it looks a third of the size. It's a similar triangles, scales nice. So if you've got something that's 400 times bigger but 400 times further away it'll look to us to be the same size like the the apparent size that we can see in the sky will be identical yeah and because the moon and

the sun happen to have this is not something that happens like moons can be all different sizes it's not like the moon had to be that size or had to be that distance. There are planets different distances from the sun, like that could be different as well. Stars are very different sizes. The sun is, you know, by no means, you know, anywhere near the biggest possible stars or smaller stars, any of these things could have been different sizes, but by pure coinkydink, from our point of view, at this point in time, because the moon is moving away from the earth, as we speak, the moon, from our point of view, looks like the sun. It's the same size. Whoa.

Sort of. Right. Because I was like, the more I thought about it, the more I was like, Sort of. Right. Because I was like, the more I thought about it, the more I was like, obviously the size and density of the planet will affect the size and density of a moon. Because normally they. Sort of. Do moons, are they broken off bits of the planet or are they just things that got caught in the orbit?

They can be things that got caught in the orbit. Yes. Like a captured moon. Oh, that's a great term. Captured moon. Captured moon. That's the name of my album. Beck Hill and the Captured Moons. It's really moody.

We did goth stuff. Yeah. There's like things that formed at the same time as the main planet. So it could just be the same stuff that solidified into the earth, also solidified into the moon. That can happen. Or it could be, as I'm pretty sure this is the current theory, I would have to ask someone more qualified like my wife,

that it was a collision. Something slammed into the earth, knocked a heap of stuff off it, and then that formed the moon. Aww. I'm like 90-something percent sure that's the current theory for how the moon... I hope it's that because that's adorable. Ah, it's...

But then again, whenever astronomers don't know how something formed an astrophysicist, they always go, eh, maybe it was a collision. That's like the... Yeah. Why does Venus rotate like that? I don't know, probably a collision. Why is that planet on its that? I don't know, probably a collision Why is that planet on its side?

I don't know, probably a collision Alright, so that's the answer to a lot of things Also, I'm aware that collisions happen a lot in space But I'm also aware that there is more space than there is stuff Yes There's a lot of space So, I mean, the solar system Started as one big

Big cloud I guess That became became a protoplanetary disk. And like 99 points something percent of the matter formed the sun. And all the other bits just formed this kind of flat rotating disk around it. And then that eventually, you know, clumped together to give us the planets and their moons and other bits and pieces. you know, clumped together to give us the planets and their moons and other bits and pieces. And so the moon, depending on like, if we were hit by a bigger or smaller proto planet, could have generated different sized moons, different numbers of moons, all these things are available. The fact that we have a single moon of the size and distance it is,

I mean, it's been handy, gives us tides, all sorts of things. But there's no reason why it would have to be that size. Other than the only possible argument I could think of is that unless you've got one moon giving you big enough but predictable tides, the evolution of life could be more or less likely. So the fact that we're even discussing this might be dependent on having had the right type of moon. Right.

Got it. So it might be more that we are the coincidence. We are the coincidence. Rather than the moon. And our distance from the sun and the type of star the sun is, maybe if that had been different, we wouldn't be here. So it could be the fact that we're able to see eclipses. If the situation was such that you couldn't have an eclipse, complex life wouldn't have evolved. But that's the only argument I can come up with.

I don't think that's the case. I think that the error bars are too big on all those things. But that's the best I can come up with, with a reason why we should expect to see eclipses. And the other thing to bear in mind is the distance to the sun changes and the distance to the moon changes. So the sizes of these things don't change.

The sun's always, as far as we're concerned, the same size. The moon is always the moon changes. So the sizes of these things don't change. The sun's always, as far as we're concerned, the same size. The moon is always the same size. But the Earth's orbit around the sun, we get closer and we get further away. So the Earth can get as close as 147.1 million kilometres to the sun, and it can get as far out as 152.1 million kilometres. So that's varying by like 5 million kilometres, just because our orbit isn't a perfect circle. 5 mega kilometres. Yes, yes. Well done. Thank you.

Five. You also could have gone with gigametres. Oh, that does sound more fun. That sounds like something you would use to measure the amounts of laughs in a comedy set. Yeah, let me just get out the gigameter. Oh, it's off the charts. One day I'd love to have, you know, like those applause-o-meters where you get like, you've literally got a chart to show how much applause. You just label one of the sections as off the chart, but it's on the chart.

It pleases me immensely. Anyway. When we do the eventual tour of the show. We'll do that. But that's why we stopped every megameter is because when Lucy's doing her solar physics research, she uses megameters. These are the kind of units. And so the fact that we can actually drive and experience these units is very exciting. Yeah.

But the distance to the sun is just a crazy big. Whereas the moon, the closest we get, 360,000 kilometers. And the greatest distance away, 405,000 kilometers. So that's also a big bit of variation. That's like 40,000 kilometers variation, depending on where the moon is in its orbit. And so all these things mean, so all these things mean sometimes the moon is bigger than the sun from our point of view, if the sun's particularly far away and the moon's particularly close. And sometimes the moon is smaller than the sun, if the moon's particularly far away,

the moon is smaller than the sun. If the moon's particularly far away, relatively speaking, and the sun's particularly close in our orbit. So I saw an eclipse because the moon went in front of the sun, but it also had to be at a time where its apparent size is bigger than the sun. And that doesn't always happen. And so you get what are called annular eclipses. And an annular eclipse is where you're so lucky that the sun and the moon have lined up from your point of view on the earth,

but the moon is not big enough in terms of the apparent sizes so it doesn't cover the sun, and so the sun's still poking out all the way around the edge. But you still, I want to look up a photo of this. Yeah. I'm imagining some sort of donut. It's a donut. It's a giant space fire donut.

What's it called? The fiery ring. I made that up. It's called an annular eclipse. Now the rule of thumb, just while you're looking that up, is don't look at the sun. Don't look at the sun. It's dangerous. Even if the sun is predominantly or almost completely covered by the moon, it's still too bright to look at the sun. Don't look at the sun. It's dangerous. Even if the sun is predominantly

or almost completely covered by the moon, it's still too bright to look at. So the downside to an annular eclipse is you can never look at the sun during the entire eclipse. The wonderful thing about a total eclipse is during totality, you can look directly at the sun

because all the bright bits are covered by the moon. Got it. If even a little bit of bright bits poking out, you can't look at the sun because all the bright bits are covered by the moon. Got it. If even a little bit of bright bits poking out, you can't look at the sun. Yeah. I'm looking at some pictures here and there's some pretty cool ones, but yeah, it's not, it looks like it's total straight on, but the, the color of the sky is closer to that of sunset.

Yeah. And that's all down to how far away the moon is from the earth and how far away the sun is from the earth. And so sometimes the moon's close enough that it can shade us and sometimes it's too far away. So I did run some numbers. I feel like that's just what I do. And so the difference in diameter between the size of the moon, the size of the sun, the sun is 400.8 times bigger. So 401, give or take, 408. The best case scenario, if the sun is as far away as it can be, and the moon is as close as it can be, the sun is 422 times further away. So the moon is much bigger than the sun is in the sky.

And so Lucy and I saw an eclipse in 2009, and it was over six minutes of complete darkness. Because it was right at the sweet spot. The sun was so far away. The moon was real close. Massive shadow. And what it means is because the moon is so much bigger, it comes in and it covers all the sun,

and it can keep moving for a while and continue to cover the sun. And then six and a bit minutes later, then the other side, the sun starts to poke out the far side. Yeah. Like putting a manhole cover that is bigger than the manhole. Exactly. Exactly that. That's the analogy everyone was thinking of. Yeah.

Exactly that. That's the analogy everyone was thinking of. And the worst case scenario, if the sun's real close, moon's far away, the sun is only 363.2 times further away. And so in that case, the moon is way too small. You're going to have a massive ring. You can't look at it useless. Now there's one very, very rare exception to these two things. And that's what's called a hybrid eclipse. And a hybrid, because when you have an eclipse, the moon, like the earth is rotating, the moon's moving, all these things. And what it means is from the moon's point of view, the moon's always casting a shadow into space somewhere because it's always in the sunlight. And this is hidden behind the earth or something else. But when it's casting this shadow, as it moves, its shadow basically sweeps across the earth. So as the sun moves between the earth and the sun,

the shadow, like you can imagine a big spot, like an anti-spotlight, a big dark shadow, sweeps across the earth. But the earth is a sphere. The shadow starts further away on the side of the earth. And then as it goes across, it gets closer and closer to the moon, because the Earth's getting closer, because it's like a ball, and then it gets further away again.

And if the Earth is just at the right distance away, it can start as an annular eclipse, because that part of the Earth is too far away, but then as it goes across the Earth and the Earth's curving forward, by the time it gets to the front of the Earth, it's now close enough that you do get a real eclipse. So you can get an eclipse that changes from annular to total partway through the eclipse because the sweet spot

where the moon is exactly the right size is somewhere between the middle of the Earth and the front of the earth from the point of view of. So it starts off as like a crescent and then disappears as opposed to. Yeah, it starts off as the ring. And then if you were to somehow race around with the shadow, because as you're racing around the earth, you're getting closer to the moon, then further away again. As you're getting closer to the moon, it would away again, as you're getting closer to the moon,

it would just look bigger and bigger and bigger. And then it will cover the sun. And then as you get further away again, it would then get smaller again and not cover the sun anymore. Has anyone in the international space station ever seen an eclipse from both within the angle or from outside the angle? There's an amazing image of the, from, I'm pretty sure it's from the ISS looking down at the earth, at the shadow of the moon during an eclipse.

Incredible. The last thing to say is these hybrid eclipses, where it goes from one type to another, even more rare. You'll get a total eclipse every, you know, 18 months or so. You get a hybrid eclipse maybe once a decade. And the eclipse that I saw this week just gone was a hybrid eclipse. So it started annular. By the time it got to Australia, it was a total eclipse. And then it carried on its merry way and became an annular one again. So the next time we'll get one of these.

So we just had one this year is currently 2023. The next one is in 2031 on November the 14th. And if you miss that one, the following one is 2049. Oh, so twice in a decade. And then there's another one in 2050. It's roughly, roughly once a decade. Give or take. That's the answer to that question.

Yeah. It is spooky, but it's not perfect. It's amazing we get eclipses at all. That's quite rare. But it's not like it's this magic alignment and it always works. It's in the right ballpark. It works some of the time. And eclipses are amazing.

You should all go see one. Yeah, I understand, Matt. What you're saying is that this is proof that God exists. It turns out the sun god Ra and there must be a lot of lunar-based gods. That

was the right religion the whole time. Who knew? Well, I'm going to give that a ding. Well, it's an eclipse, so it should be a shading. Oh, there we go. Oh, it's adequate. There he is. Basically, I am the version of an annular eclipse and you are the total one.

I'll work some of the time. Hybrid podcast. You'll work most of the time. I'm half as funny, but I'm twice as close. Our next problem was sent in by someone named Connor, which is an almost palindromic name, and they have a very concise problem for Beck. They just say, have we invented all the possible candy bars?

Question mark. So, Beck, have we invented all the possible candy bars? Yeah, I think this is a great question. I suspect Connor probably wanted us to run some sort of maths formula to work out, have all the combinations of ingredients and things being used. I'm not going to lie. I saw this problem and I thought to myself, I'm not going to lie. I saw this problem and I thought to myself, ooh, I could really run some numbers on this. I was like, I could do permutations or combinations.

I mean, it depends on order within the candy bar. And then I was like, wait, what if I could work out like the smallest group of candy bars from which all of the candy bars can be derived? And then I didn't have time for any of that. And then I said, I'll do it. And you were on the case. Yeah. Also, I like the idea that maybe there's a missing link between certain candy bars.

And by candy bar, we're talking about chocolate bars, right? In terms of British and Aussie slang. I had assumed chocolate. Are there non-chocolate candy bars? Yeah, like peanut bars and stuff But I think, yeah Peanut bars? That's just a loose collection of peanuts

No, I forget what the brand is called There's an American one where it's just like a bunch of peanut It's basically peanut brittle in a bar shape Oh, right, it's probably called a bunch of peanuts And sugar Yeah, got it, got it, got it Bunch of peanuts Get you a bunch of peanut bars

Get you a bunch of peanuts Right, so I was thinking That's probably what they were considering. And it's exactly what you were like, oh, this would be a fun thing of looking at all the different combinations, permutations, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then I thought. You know it. No, because not, that's assuming that there is a limited number of ingredients that you can put in a candy bar. I think that is true.

When really you could put anything in a candy bar. No. Yeah, but that's still a finite number of things. But like a very large finite number. Now I'm, yes, yes. Too big to run the numbers on, I think. And I'm also, I'm just saying that some people might argue there's infinitely many things you can put in a candy bar or different combinations or different amounts maybe. But I'm assuming that you can distinguish the taste between. And I think there's a finite number of categories of things that taste different.

And so that's my uneducated theory. Yeah, I suppose. But then you're asking a question about taste and everything. Not everyone will be able to tell the difference between the ingredients and stuff. Some people might find that a flake tastes exactly the same as a twirl. I've decided to go a much more creative way around this. And also a very pop science way about this, because I was like, look, I'm assuming that not all the candy bars have been invented because I'm yet to see candy bars with certain

ingredients in them. Oh, okay. But I decided the best thing to do would be to try and make my own candy bar. Oh. Yeah. Oh, okay. And then, you know, see if anyone could disprove and say that someone else had already made that one.

So you're going to do a proof, an existence proof. You're like, we have not got all the candy bars because I just made a new one. First of all, I've decided it needs to be called a problem squares. A problem squares. Yeah, yeah. So you know how you get like rice squares or crispy. Rice crispy squares. Yeah, so it's a problem square.

So obviously it's square shape, square shape bar. Yep, love it. And then I was like, what ingredients? Because you don't really have a sweet tooth, Matt. So I thought the easiest thing I'll do is I'll just use the word problem as an acronym and then use that to help decide what should go in it. Peanuts. Rhubarb.

In fact, I'll go backwards from M. So M in problem, marshmallow. Nice to have a bit of marshmallow. Oh, love it. E is controversial because I realised there's no C in problem. But I was like, kind of needs chocolate for it to fit our version of it. So E is Easter eggs because we've just passed Easter and our local co-op has all the Easter eggs on special. Repurposed Easter egg chocolate.

Famously, the highest quality of all the chocolate. Think about all the food that gets chucked out because it goes up or whatever. And Easter eggs, they don't go off. They just go out of style. And so it's perfectly good chocolate. You know, a lot of foods, a lot of food come about because it's a good way to use up leftovers. So I can see a tradition where it's like, oh, Easter was last week. Time to make the traditional problem squares.

L stands for latte because I know you like coffee. So I'll be honest. It was just instant coffee. It's just. You could do it with proper coffee, but I don't have access to you at the moment. And you do that far better than I do. He stirred instant coffee. It sounds like a tiramisu.

Well, it's funny you should say that because B stands for biscuit. Tiramisu. Yeah. What was that? Biscuit? It is a tiramisu With marshmallow Great M could be mascarpone and it is tiramisu Well it's not though is it? Because tiramisu has been invented hasn't it?

And it's not even a bar so shut up Good point The cuboid That's. This is a square. But you can't get tiramisu in like a packet, can you? Good point, I hope not. So we're definitely gonna get inundated with photos of tiramisu in a packet now. Next you're gonna tell me the O is for other stuff. No, it's for oats.

Oats. Now. Bold. I know that you don't like porridge. Correct. So I specifically went for like granola oats, which are crunchy because I didn't want to give you any consistencies you're not happy with. I like oats.

I like muesli. I like oat milk. But I worry it's very hard. I don't like soggy oats. That's my problem. It's very hard to encase oats in any kind of moist environment and then not become porridge. Oh, well, you'll be pleasantly surprised, Matt.

Oh. Because R, I couldn't decide which one I wanted from R, so I cheated and went for both. Because I also know that your favorite flavor of ice cream is rum and raisin. It's up there. I couldn't decide which one I wanted from R, so I cheated and went for both. Because I also know that your favorite flavor of ice cream is rum and raisin. It's up there. So I was like, well, let's make R stand for rum and raisin. You rolled the R's.

Love it. So what I did, and I'll get to pee in a moment, but to make it. I hope it's for packaging. I tempered the chocolate. I looked it up on the internet. I tempered the chocolate. You tempered the chocolate. I looked it up on the internet. I tempered the chocolate. You tempered the chocolate? So you put the bowl in a saucepan of hot water and melt it down.

And you've got to do it real slowly. Did I take the specific quantities of stuff? No. Absolutely not. No. It's a real feel No, absolutely not. No. It's a real feel it as you go. Yeah. And I feel like that's what you get when you get a problem squares is you get a slightly different bar every time just to prove

that they haven't all been invented yet. And so. If there's one thing we can say about a problem squares, they're not fully scripted out in advance. It's a journey of discovery every time. Yeah. So I started by crumbling up the biscuits. They were dark chocolate digesters because they were on special if anyone's wanting to know.

But I think you could use any biscuit really. I mean, you're in charge. You make the rules at this point. Put in the granola oats, put in some raisins, some coffee, did the marshmallows. Some rum. Well, I was mixing it all up. It looked lovely. And it was when I got to the rum part, that was when I discovered that the alcohol, the water in the alcohol

and the fat in the chocolate do not like each other. It's just, it goes from looking like an actual, like you're cooking a thing. It's everything's being blended and folded together. And it very, very quickly became cement. Like really quickly became cement. That's amazing. Because, I mean, alcohol is a solvent. What happened? It's became cement. That's amazing. Because, I mean, alcohol is a solvent. What happened?

It's the water. It's the water and the alcohol. So that and the fat and the chocolate. And just solidified the chocolate. Yeah, but not in a nice way. Right. Sort of, look, not in a non-edible way. Absolutely not in a non-edible way. It in a non-edible way it just doesn't have the

same texture that it had before it's more of a crumbly sort of thing and so i was like well i can't cut this up into squares now because it's super crumbly and that's where the pea came in handy oh because i thought we've got to do one we've got to go one more step because I'm sure that there are chocolates out there that have varieties of this sort of thing. You know, I don't want anyone to start arguments. And I've got to do something to really make these candy bars stand out, to really, you know, really make them special. So that's why I decided to introduce pastry because...

Pastry? Look, I felt that given our show the candy bar acquired a pie element i mean yes so i three squares now what i had to do was cook the pastry mostly first and then yeah and then put in a crumbly square and then cook it again to seal it just a little bit without it all melting everywhere. Okay. Yep. Yep.

And that was it. That was the problem square. The great thing about encasing it in pastry is that I think it means it classifies it as a pastry instead of a candy bar, and that means we don't have to pay tax. Oh, okay. It's also a VAT dog. Yeah.

There's no sales tax on pastries. From what I could find. Now, I do realize that that might mean that technically people could argue that this is not a candy bar. But even- It's the E for evasion. That's what we do. Yeah. Even without the pastry, though, I think this is not a candy bar. It's the E for evasion. That's what we do.

Even without the pastry, though, I think this is pretty original. I was considering saving this for when you're back in the country, but I figured that you probably wouldn't want it. I want to try one. Well, I tell you what, Matt assume you're going to whip up a fresh batch. There's still a tray full of the stuff in my fridge. It's only getting colder. Wow. There you go. So, yeah.

I can't wait. Well, I'm glad you splashed out on co-op brand Easter eggs. Nothing but the finest Easter egg chocolate. So, yeah. there you go. I'll save some to share with you guys for our next live record. We'll bring them down. So we're not the next record. I did have one here to eat.

I'll show you the one after that. I've got the inside of one. Look at that. That's a square. It's totally a square. That's a candy bar. Well, Beck, I can't wait until episode 061 when I get to try one of these. But I will say, as an existence proof, you've proven that there are previously uninvented candy bars out there.

And I would say the ease with which you did that, not saying it was straightforward and easy, but I'm just saying it was easier than if this was the last candy bar to be discovered. I think you've proven there's a population of as yet uninvented candy bars that exist in the hypothetical candy bar space. And you have managed to pluck one and drag it kicking and screaming into reality to prove the existence of many many more so i'm going to give you i'm going to give you a ding uh incredible uh can ding bar well done thank you ding and obviously if anyone sees the photos and thinks that they can make a problem square better than I did, then I accept your challenge.

Send us photos. Send them in for episode 061. We'll have a look at other ones and we'll eat some of these. As we begin our descent to the end of this episode, we ask that you please remain in your seats for any other business. First up, we have closed orders for the one million download commemorative plate and simultaneously the one million downloads commemorative bowls. And do you want to guess? I mean, maybe this is a terrible game to play, Beck.

Do you want to guess? You can either guess the absolute number of plates and bowls that people have purchased with our smiley faces on them. We will sign them. Or do you want to guess the ratio of plates to bowls? Ooh. Okay. What do you reckon? Ratio.

Of the 100% of orders, what percentage do you think of plates? 99. No. 62.7. Really? Yeah. Bowls. It's pretty much a third, two thirds.

We haven't been able to do the bowl spoon test, so. I haven't. Yeah, Bowls. It's pretty much a third, two thirds. We haven't been able to do the bowl spoon test. I haven't. Yeah, I know. So yeah, they're going to be real underwhelming, by the way. All 51 people, 51 people ordered a commemorative plate or bowl. 32 plates, 19 bowls. And then we also will be sending some out to our wizard supporters to thank them for supporting us at a wizard level on Patreon.

So I guess once a wizard has received it, we can't say whether it's a plate or a bowl. I think it'd be up to them to tell us whether they think it's a plate or a bowl. They can work out which one we sent them. I don't know if 51 people is way too many or way too few. Honestly, I have no idea if that's a ridiculous number and if it is in which direction, but talk about a limited edition. So there you are. Um, now, if you want to get one, if you're regretting it, cause this is very limited and due to either the overwhelming demand or very low enthusiasm.

I still don't know which has occurred. We may or may not do this for two million. Who knows? But your only remaining opportunity to get the very limited edition one million download commemorative Playtel Bowl is now via Patreon. So if anyone signs up as a wizard for the foreseeable future, tell you what, until the end of May,

if you sign up, I'll post you a commemorative plate or bowl. Wizard level only. Signed by my friends. Yeah, yeah, we'll sign it. I would love if someone sent it back and they're like, I ordered a bowl and you sent me a plate. I sent the bowl?

This is clearly, I could get. Oh, sorry. We mixed you up with someone else who wanted the plate. Sorry. Wanted a bowl and got a plate. We'll send you the bowl. The same one back. Same package. Good times.

I'd like to thank everyone, even if you didn't order one for enabling enabling everything that's happening right now Yes, absolutely Yeah, because do you know what we're not making a profit from them No, no very much quite the opposite We charge

good money for these by the way so thank you everyone who has objectively overspent. I also have some any other bathness. Ooh. Yeah. That was the bath problem. Yeah.

So a bunch of you did the bubble bath experiment for me so we could see what would keep hot water hot for longer and sent me the results. And going through everybody's research and calculations, it is definite that bubbles will keep the water hotter for longer. Oh, excellent. 100%. One thing that I thought was very interesting was on an incredibly detailed paper, which we are going to provide a link for, was sent by David Gustafson.

I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly. They also included the oil as one of the options to see if that would help. I just want to say for everyone listening, Beck is not using the word paper sarcastically. This is five pages of fantastic method and data and results and plots. And oh my goodness, David has gone above and beyond.

Yeah, I genuinely feel bad that this is just being used on our show. I feel like it should be a universally cited paper now. Well, it could be. The bath.pdf results. Oh, I love it. They used cups instead of full baths, so they weren't wasting too much water. And they said the cups with oil in them were the best insulated. Follow closely by the bubbles. I mean, now all we have to do is see if you put a spoon in there. Will it keep the bubbles lasting for just as long? Don't, don't. I still haven't recovered from that.

I've got to say that everyone who did send in their results went to an incredible effort. So it goes without saying thank you. But we did also get one from Tin who sent us a link to GitHub where they've done a bunch of coding. It's really fantastic that one as well. So we'll pop some pictures up on socials, do some links if people want to go see the research. I highly recommend it. It's fascinating. I mean, Tin's one is so,

it's got my favorite plot of the whole thing, where there's two, like, again, they did scale model baths. There's two of them with bubbles and two without bubbles, and all four lines start together, and you can clearly see the ones without bubbles are dropping faster than ones with a bubble little bubble hat it's it's so good but well done tin and indeed everyone amazing thank you to everyone who sent in all of their proper full research i will be in touch to get your addresses and see if you would like a commemorative

plate or bowl as a thank you. Oh, my goodness. We're going to be giving them away for months, aren't we? Anyway, the final bit. We're going to lose so much money. Thank goodness we're not in this for the profitability game. So, final bit of any other business in what I think is a problem squared first in episode 059 we have any other business feedback on the episode we are still currently in which is efficient even for us because we took a very brief edit break between our two problems and i happened to mention to

lucy we were talking about the formation of the moon oh She was able to confirm that, yes, the current theory is that another proto-planet slammed into the then proto-Earth. The proto-planet that hit us on the scale of Mars, like a proper, could have been a planet in its own right, so big, in fact, they named it Theia, T-H-E-I-A, is the name of the planet we could have had, slammed into Earth, a bunch got knocked off, and then that then formed the moon. So I can confirm that is the current theory. Lucy then looked at me with a dead serious expression and said, that's why people say the moon's made of cheese. Because after that collision, it formed from the debris.

And then she left the room. That's like an actual astrophysicist mic drop. It was. She didn't have anything to drop, but she did leave the room. That's fantastic. Pretty impressive. There you are. Do you know what?

Lucy just becomes my favorite person. My aim of this podcast is that by the time we eventually have to stop doing it, I am now married to Lucy. Yes. I mean, I'm biased. I mean, I think she's the greatest person ever. So there you are. We'd like to extend a special welcome to everyone listening to a problem squared today.

It was a Patreon supporter. You'll be able to receive some in-flight entertainment, which will be known as I'm a wizard. Oh, yes. I say in-flight entertainment, like they're going to listen to it while listening to this podcast. Listening to this one. It's a whole separate podcast. Either before this podcast or after it, you'll be able to listen to I'm a Wizard, which is the bonus podcast for any of our Patreon supporters.

But we're looking for other wizards. If there's any other wizards out there that would like to suggest. Offer us a wizard's choice. Offer us things that we would like to take and also what the dire consequence might be if we take that. Then please get in touch on Patreon. There'll be a Patreon post. Yeah, if I'm a wizard and in the chat.

Yeah. Because then our producer Lauren will choose some and then give them to us next. Next wizarding. Speaking of which, we like to choose three of our Patreon supporters at random to thank in each episode. And might I add that to be a Patreon supporter, you can give as little as $1 a month. That's US dollars because it's a US site. You're pulling a face, Matt.

No, no, I wasn't. I was just looking ahead at the pronunciation of the Patreon supporters we have this time. Oh, right. Don't give a dollar. Give more. I mean, hit one of the tiers. I, right. Don't give a dollar. Give more. I mean, hit one of the tiers. I'll just, I won't do that bit then. Yeah.

I think, yeah, I just said it's worth mentioning. So you can cut out before that part, Lauren. And this episode, those people are... Jacob Heiss. Heiss. Seppo Sirianen. Jacob Heiss. Heiss. Sepposirianen. Matthew Tompsett.

We do such a nice job of thanking them by getting their names wrong every time. Getting their names wrong. Sorry. As we disembark this podcast, I'd like to thank my co-pilot, Matt Parker. I've been your captain, Bec Hill. And I'd also like to thank our head of cabin crew and all the crew. And during the recording of this, also our passenger, Lauren Armstrong-Carter. Have a pleasant day. So, Bec, we are a percentage, an amount,

an unknown amount through BuzzFeed Which Muppet Are You survey. Oh, yeah. And this post-credit sequence question is, pick a movie. Ooh. And here are your options. The Last Waltz. The Last Waltz. I don't know that movie.

No. Chicken Run, Die Hard, Revenge of the Nerds. I don't think that's aged well. Jumanji, I guess the original. Your choice. The Brave Little Toaster. Paul Blart Mall Cop. Harry and the Hendersons.

Pitch Perfect. Oh, I think I have to go Die Hard. Yeah, none of them are jumping out at me. I think it's Die Hard or Chicken Run. Yeah. Die Hard. I do like Die Hard, yeah. Yeah. Die Hard. Die Hard or Chicken Run. Yeah. Die Hard. I do like, no, Die Hard, yeah. Yeah.

Die Hard, Die Hard. I do, you know, I did like Jumanji, but I haven't watched it in a long time. Yeah. I don't think I've watched it since I saw it in the cinema in the 90s. Yeah. So, yeah, Die Hard. Yippee-ki-yay, Mother Muppet. Yippee-ki-yay, Mother Muppet.

I love the fact there's a much more obvious place to put Muppet in that sentence. Then I would be swearing. I bet I wouldn't have rendered it podcast safe. Muppet Felter? Yippee-ki-yay, Muppet Felter.