A Problem Squared - 074 = Chocolate Powder Fails and Consonant/Vowel Details

Episode Date: December 4, 2023

On this episode… 🍫 Can you prevent hot chocolate from clumping? 🖊 When is a vowel a vowel?  👾 We have some Discord news!  💼 And a small amount of Business, of Any Other nature.  The holidays have arrived early because, and APS DISCORD IS FINALLY HERE! Head on over using this link: https://discord.gg/pt4WsfhMCY You too can make your computer talk! Here's a link to the Praat vowel software Matt was using at the start of today’s Dinglet: https://www.fon.hum.uva.nl/praat/ If you’d like to see the Vowel Space video referenced by Matt follow this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FdldD0-kEcc And for more from linguist and phonetics expert Dr Geoff Lindsay (and with that voice, who wouldn't!) you can do that here: https://www.youtube.com/@DrGeoffLindsey If you know anything about the Apollo 11 flight diagram depicted here: https://tinyurl.com/4wjwcu6c let us know!  As always, send us your problems and solutions to the website: www.aproblemsquared.com If you want more from A Problem Squared, you can find us on Twitter, Instagram, and of course, on Patreon.

Welcome to a Problem Squared Podcast. podcast. The only podcast where every sentence has a square number of words all the time. Most podcasts would plan this out in advance, but not me. My name is Matt Parker, and I thought it would be funny to do this live oh no I went too far I am joined by Beck Hill yeah you're looking so proud with yourself except I'm not counting. I don't know. People will check if I did it correct. It sounds like I'm holding you hostage. I just realized I'm actually doing triangle numbers, not square numbers. Can everyone pretend I said triangle numbers at the beginning?

If you're a new listener, I'm so sorry, but that is a really good gauge of what this show is like. It's accurate. It's very accurate. If not successful. Anyway, on this episode. I believe in miracles. By which I mean I'm going to be looking into some hot chocolate.

Oh, I'm going to sort out some vowels. And we'll have some any other business. Any other business. Triangle number. Triangle number. Nailed it. So dumb. I'm very sorry So nerdy

Such a freaking nerd So Bec How have you been? I'm good Actually speaking of Freaking nerds Yeah So a couple of episodes ago

I believe it was Episode 072 You talked about Rubik's Cubes. I did. And I was saying that I like to use them as fidget toys. Yes. Because I have a habit of picking at the skin around my fingers. Well, that's not good.

Until they bleed. It's very... I know. You leave the skin alone. I know. I know. It's really bad. Like Gav, my husband, he'll give me a whack in the arm if he notices me doing it.

Because it hurts. Yeah. Yeah. Not like a... He's not horrible. Yeah. It's just a little like a flick. like give me a whack in the arm if he notices me doing it because it hurts yeah yeah not like i've he's not horrible yeah it's just a little like a flick it was getting really bad and i always try to have something i can fidget with in my pocket and i had a gig in worthing of course my favorite thing about seaside towns in britain is that there's always an arcade oh yeah and i am a bit of an addict for the penny pushers. Uh-oh. This is why I don't go into proper adult casinos

because it would be far too easy for me to just lose a bunch of money. But I like to go in and be like, look, I'm going to spend, you know, five pounds penny pushers. Yeah. And, you know, just get five pounds worth of 2p coins and go nuts. And I was... If you make it sound too good, that'll make you a penny pusher yes that's true i don't want to big it up too much don't push the penny pushers no you're gonna

lose money on average i was there with a fellow australian josh blank who had never played a penny pusher before wow and he gave he looked at me and just went this is hitting all the right stimulus and i was like oh no i've created a monster tantalizing it's not gonna fall yeah he was very excited well we want a bunch of stuff but the thing i was most proud of is that not long after we recorded oh becca's reaching into a bag yeah oh i have an apple in here oh my goodness it's a tiny rubik's cube i've got a little rubik's cube on a key ring it's the the perfect size for my pocket. Yeah. So, I can fiddle with it without- That's been well fiddled. Yes. So, I've been sort of fiddling with it nonstop, but also I did start trying to learn

how to solve them. Ah. Now, every now and then I will forget how to do a Rubik's Cube, but that's kind of okay because when I did know how to do a Rubik's Cube, I made a bunch of instructions about how to solve a Rubik's Cube. Were you practicing things, trying to do things or were you just twisting? I was mostly just twisting. But do you know what? At one point, I was trying to work out if I could get it so that at no point there were two of the same color next to each other. Oh, that's nice. And I couldn't. Every time I do it, I look around and there's on one of the faces, there's-

I feel like that's technically possible. I feel like that can be done, but I wouldn't say with absolute certainty. Do you accept diagonals or do they have to be on different faces? Do I accept diagonals? Like if two of the same color are touching diagonally, that's okay. That's fine. Okay. Just that they don't want to...

I think there are even like some patterns you can do that will achieve that technically but i think it's a harder challenge to do it freestyle like you're doing yeah i'm just messing around so that's how you're that's how you've been yeah that's how i've been that's my catch-up chat is that i've been playing around with a tiny rubik's cube and hopefully next time we do catch-up chat i'll be able to show you a complete do you want to borrow the regular-sized one? No. No, okay. Actually, no, I do.

Yeah, I'm going to take it. Okay, you can take the regular-sized one. It's much more fun for me. It's way more pleasing to turn. I find the little ones, or at least the cheap plastic ones, frustrating to turn. Whereas a nice Rubik's Cube, I find it pleasurable and fun to turn in its own right. The key ring was hard to start with, but I've worn it down. You've worn out the plastic.

Yeah. You know, you can buy Rubik's Cube lubricant. For the people who really like their Rubik's Cube. I'm just saying, it's a thing that exists. So I've been good. Yeah. Have you? Yeah, tell me.

I've been great. You know what I've been doing again that i and this is some closure for listeners and you can correct me because i can't remember how much of this i've mentioned i got my new bicycle oh yes yeah i had a bike i talked a little about a bicycle leading up to the bike being stolen bike got stolen very sad got a new bike and i suddenly realized i don't think because it's the first time in my adult life actually ever i think i was gonna say bought a new bike but i think i got a new bike as a kid where basically the first time in my adult life, actually ever, I think. I was going to say bought a new bike, but I think I got a new bike as a kid. Where basically the first time I bought a real proper bike from like, I went to the bike manufacturer and said, one bike, please. And then got to choose from a menu all the bits they put on it.

Yeah. And because they were making the frame, well, the frames are made and then they assemble everything on it. They're like, oh, you can get like a security name or something etched in the top tube of the bike. Oh, yeah, yeah. And so they're like, well, how many, what would you like? And I'm like, well, what if I give you a lot of digits? Could you run the digits of pi?

Don't look at me like that. It's for your bicycle. Well, for my bicycle, exactly exactly and so now it's my bicycle and i originally i was going to put things like matt's bicycle some like like a pun yeah and i was like no i just want the digital supply because then i'm imagining is because the point of the security etching is that someone steals the bike like someone steals my bike and i'm like if you look at the top tube it's got the digits of pi written down the top yeah you've just given them extra homework to do yeah then they've got to look up what pi is rather than just look for your name well unless they try and claim

that they're just really into maths as well they would have to convince the police they're more into maths than I am. And that feels like a high bar. Yeah, you'd have to be. It turns out that, like, two brown, one blue. Yeah, Grant could steal my bike. He's stolen your bike, yeah. Then I got nothing. Yeah, you're right, yeah. To be fair, if someone could improv an argument

that they're more into maths than me, I would give them the bike as the prize. Yeah. But then I was like, actually, actually you know what it's a good point what if grant does do my bike and so i ended up not actually getting the digits of pi etched on the bike good digits of pi etched on the bike but some of them are wrong it's ever so so it's not actually pie. So if anyone's like, but I love pie, I can be, well, why is it wrong? And from about 20 digits in, there's a patch, which is incorrect. And then it's right again.

So you've double bluffed yourself because now someone's like, you know, I love maths. I put that on there. Yeah, exactly. And then you'd be like, but it's wrong. And where'd you get it wrong? Oh, you're right. I don't actually love maths that much. Because I got it wrong.

Is your bike back? Yeah. I think that is a terrible idea. Because if someone tried to sell me a bike. Yep. That had Matt Jeremiah Parker. That'll do. Matt Jeremiah Parker, right?

Yep. Was etched into the bike. I'd be like, hang on. This person I'm buying it from is not Matt Jeremiah Parker. I'm pretty sure this is stolen. Okay, that's a good point. And so then I'd be like, oh. Either I'd be like, well, this is a stolen bike. Or I'd report them and so then i'd be like oh either i'd be like well

this is stolen bike or i'd report them and say this person is selling a stolen bike yep a number of things or if i found a bike if i found a bike that had those things about i better return this to matt jeremiah parker or try and get in touch with him yep no yep if i just put matt parker on the i don't know i feel like i don't like to put my actual real name on my belongings because i had them around a bunch when I'm doing shows and things. What are you talking about? You write your name on literally every cup. I write my name on literally every cup.

Every time you have a cup, a plastic cup, you write your name on it. Let me restate. I do like being Matt onto things. That's a very good point. Okay, you're right. I'm an enigma, Beck. Yeah. So, the compromise I came to is I put pi on the bike with 20 digits that are wrong.

What I did do, though, was make all the digits slightly smaller than they should be in a very strategic pattern. So, if you subtract the number on my bike from the real value of pi and give you the positions in the alphabet of the letters of Matt Parker. Yeah, I should have done that with my phone. I could have it back by now. So anyway, there you are. I just thought that's my little bike update. Our first problem was sent in by David. They went to the problem posing page at problemsquared.com. They first of all highlighted the fact that they had David from Ottawa. Oh, that David.

That David. Ottawa David. There's more than one David. They have a problem, which they've summarized in a single sentence. How. I'm going to chew back over. A lot of people roll their O's. How do I stop my hot chocolate powder from clumping up?

That is a problem. Now, they give some extra details. If this was a lab report, this is the method section. Yes. I warm up a mug of milk in the microwave, then add the powder and stir with a teaspoon. Except I usually end up mashing chunks of clumped up powder against the side of the mug to break them up. It feels like getting a smooth mixture is impractical, maybe impossible using this method. They wonder if there's a better way.

And while we're on the topic, they're also curious why this happens in the first place. Shouldn't the powder just dissolve like good powders should? So, Beck, you've been on the case. What do you got? It's hot chocolate season, baby. And I love me some hot chocolate. I really do.

And I also sometimes have the problem where you're trying to push it up against the side of the mug with the back of the spoon. And I too wondered. So I looked into it and there is a scientific reason. Oh, now as a hot chocolate heathen, it's always with 100% milk that you're making this hot chocolate well see i make it with i make it the same way i'd make an uh like an instant coffee oh hot water and then a dash put the powder in yep then hot water then milk yeah uh but i still sometimes end up with clumps apparently it's because cocoa powder or hot chocolate powder that's not a good reason well it's starchy starchy and when That's not the word I was predicting.

When you hydrate a starch, it expands. Oh. Which then condenses the inside, keeping it dry. Oh, okay. It forms a protective layer. Yeah. Yeah, essentially. I just thought it was a hydrophobic powder.

So, it just repels water. No. No. If you would like to pull out. It's the same as like if you add, again, like water to flour. If you pull out the flour, it's not going to magically all become dry. No, exactly. Yeah, it's just forming a doughy layer on the outside.

Exactly. May not be actual dough. So, David from Ottawa, you are correct. It is very impractical and potentially impossible using your current method. It is very impractical and potentially impossible using your current method. So I noticed that I don't have the lumps issue as much since I started using boiling water instead of milk. And I think that's because I tend, because when I boil milk, I will like, I'll heat the milk and then put the stuff in. With boiling water, you just pour it in straight from the kettle. And I was getting less lumps so i looked into it and apparently that is exactly how you get rid

of clumps in things oh hey and it's not far from what you were saying about creating a small dough so what it says is only add little bits make a paste make a paste that'll show those clumps and so then you can slowly keep adding it and keep adding it. So I thought we should test this. In front of us, I have a teapot wrapped in a tea towel. That's a teapot of hot milk. Full of hot milk. Love it. So I thought we could try three different types to compare.

So I've gone for some traditional bog standard cocoa powder. Becca's pulled out the name of the product is literally just cocoa by Sainsbury's. It's less a product and more just an ingredient. So I've done that. Then I've gone for the slightly more upscale Cadbury's hot chocolate. Oh, that'll be fun. And then finally for us. Oh.

I've brought a tin of Milo. Oh my goodness. Which is a chocolate malt drink in Australia and South Africa and a few other countries. Yes. Matt is shaking it because quite often what happens when you get Milo is that it gets the tiniest bit of moisture in there and then it forms a cement. So let's make some hot chocolate. Okay.

So Becca's first of all opening up the cocoa by Sainsbury's. First with the cocoa, traditional cocoa. So in one mug, you're going to put some cocoa at the bottom. Yep. You're going to add hot milk. And we're going to make a paste. Yep. The sound you can hear is milk going everywhere.

I think I've put too much milk in because I'm already getting clumps. Already getting clumps. Mm. Problem is, I had very little control over the milk. Operation paste has got a lot of milk in it I will give you that. But how many lumps? I don't know, you're right I think you are lump free. There's definitely some some variation but no no no lumps. Okay for comparison what I'm gonna do I've got a scoop of powder in the second mug. I'm just gonna try and add it to the milk and stir at the kind of speed where I think it won't have a chance to clump. I got clumps. These are definitely lumps. I'm gonna have to smush these against the

side. Okay, so paste. Paste has been more successful than just rapid stirring. Minimum lumps. Oh, yeah, that's a solid cocoa. There's no sugar. Now, you were opening the Cadbury's. Yeah, first ingredient is sugar.

There is more sugar than cocoa. Than cocoa powder. Than acidity regulator. carbonate flavoring make and tame milk well we'll do in a minute cocoa solids 31 minimum do you think that that means we'll have 31 minimum lumps instructions it says swirl three teaspoons of cabri drinking chocolate into a mug of hot semi-skimmed milk and stir. Alternatively, mix the powder with cold semi-skimmed milk in a microwavable mug and heat in an 800 watt microwave on high for one minute. Stir the microwave for a further 30 seconds. Stir before drinking. We're not going to do that.

No, but we could still do one paste and one full. Yeah. May I be team paste this time? Yes, you can. So, three teaspoons. That's what you want. One. Two.

Three. Now, may I have that milk? You know what? I'm going to add it so I have no one to blame but myself. All right. Okay. I'm adding a very small amount of milk to this. You know what I think is happening?

I think that by telling us to make a paste, they're just hiding all the smooshing into the stirring. Like, I think we're still smooshing all the lumps out. We're just doing it in a more concentrated fashion maybe that's the point maybe it's just a more efficient way to de-lump okay so that's it's not a paste it's still pretty liquidy so that's what we're up against but now i'm sick of stirring it so i'm going to dilute it out while matt finishes preparing i'm pouring some milk into my mug you know that is clump free i'm very happy with that two three oh oh

yeah we're there i mean look look at that that's not good i've just pulled the spoon out and it's just like one it's just covered this it's more clump than spoon at this point. I've put my mug next to Beck's for a comparison of a post paste. Oh, that's... Can you knock it off? There you go. Oh, I just... There was a central dry packet of hot chocolate powder in there.

You know what, though? The actual finished product... Let's have a wait for it. There's some small clumps. There are some small clumps but it's not bad now that just could be maybe the sugar is breaking up maybe maybe the sugar is better and if the sugar is dissolving and it was mixed through the cocoa powder it's leaving behind voids that then break up the clumps. That's my theory. Look at that. That's pretty good. Yeah. It's the tiniest of clumps, but I wouldn't say it's clumpy.

But you did have to do some clump management. Yeah. There was some solid mixing involved. Should we give it a drink? Oh, that's sweet. Oh, that's so much sugar. That's so sweet. Oh, sweet.

It's more sugar than cocoa. Oh, it really is. Here's a game changer. Yeah. I've got clumps at the bottom. Not loads clumps at the bottom to the bottom that's what they call me that was your nickname in high school yeah old clumps at the bottom hill it was definitely less clumpy than pure cocoa would that then break up you know make it less likely to clump together yeah but still it wasn't impervious you still had some clump management. Yeah. So, let's go to the third one. This is the major test.

So, while I take the lid off, I also want to point out that you and I are used to drinking this cold. Yeah. But the serving suggestion says put six heaped teaspoons. Six? Heaped teaspoons of Milo into a mug. It says add hot water, but we're doing this for David. We had cold milk.

Yeah. But David from Ottawa. David from Ottawa wants hot milk. Wants hot milk. Funnily enough, it says for a milkier choice, try adding milk powder and hot water to your Milo. I'll do a paste. Okay, then I'll do lots of liquid.

No, you do a paste. Okay. Okay. Plenty. I want the listeners at home to know that such a paste, I can pretty much stand the spoon up in it. All right. So, can you...

Now, that's definitely a paste. Top me all the way up. While Matt stirs his paste into that milk, which, I mean, he's having to put a lot of work in. I'm just going to pour the milk straight into mine with no mixing. Oh we're getting lots of bubblage. So the paste on the spoon is not coming off and dissolving. I don't know if that counts as a clump.

It might be a two spoon operation. Meanwhile over on my mug I'm getting large clumps being released from the bottom coming up to the top and sort of oh wow just got a big clump just came up. It's looking pretty good though. Other than the paste that stuck to the spoon that is clump free not a single clump inside not a clump inside and i wasn't able to resist starting to drink it i'm afraid no that's fine apart from the paste that stuck to the spoon that was impeccable beverage assembly

yeah this one has definitely got clumps. It's already in my teeth. I'm not complaining. I like it. I like the clumps, to be honest. So what have we learned, Bec? I think we've learned that, I think the paste has been proven

to be the least amount of clumpiness. Now I'm getting down though. There's a lot of paste sticking to the side of the... Oh, yeah. I didn't do a good enough job of removing the paste from the sides. I think the paste is the best option. Yeah. You know, unless you're going to get one of those proper hot chocolate machines.

But if you're using instant, paste seems to be the way to go. But I also think you're right. I think making a paste isn't taking the work out. It's taking the clumps out. It's just easier to hold them down in the paste so you can get them. Yeah. So then you're not having to do it later and you'll have fewer clumps. I also think it might come down to the ingredients and what you're using in your hot chocolate.

So it might be worth, David from Ottawa, trying different brands, different types. Yep. Perhaps if you make it with traditional cocoa powder put the sugar in with it first and then create a paste from that we've definitely made some hot chocolates today without clumps so the answer is buy a blender yeah yeah yeah but one that can be hot well you know what you can do actually joking aside if you have a coffee maker with a steam wand you can use that to make hot chocolate by heating the milk and stirring it with the steam wand at the same time ah now you're gonna have a chocolatey steam wand yeah you're gonna want to clean that which you're gonna do anyway with milk oh true you know

always purge your wand that's guess who does that's the first rule of being a barista uh so there is a better method your Your current one is impractical. And I believe that I've answered the question as to why it happens in the first place and why the powder doesn't dissolve by itself. Yeah. So I think I've answered it. I'm going to give you a dissolved ding. Thank you. And we will wait for David from Ottawa to report back.

Yeah. By then we might've actually returned from our sugar rushes. Oh my goodness. That was, I don't think I've had that much sugar in that short a space of time for a while. Yeah, you're not a sweet tooth person. I'm not a sweet tooth person. A sweet tooth person?

My tongue is slipping into a sugar coma. Yeah. And I've got half a black coffee left to finish. So goodness knows what that's going to taste like now. Wow. Well, it's a good thing there's still another problem to go. Yeah. Oh, that's okay. That like now. Wow. Well, it's a good thing there's still another problem to go. Yeah. Oh.

That's okay. That's been done by me. This next problem comes from unknown. Oh. They did not leave a name. Well, either they

didn't want to leave a name or they incorrectly filled in the form. Possibly. Yeah. Maybe they're just a ghost. That's an option. A whisper on the wind.

A thought. A concept. Some bug in the system. Or they don't know how to use a Google form. Yeah. At the problem posing page at problemsquared.com. That's right. And they've said, what makes a vowel a vowel?

Why do we need them, at least in English, to form a word? Maybe they haven't given their name because they're an alien or AI. They're like, yeah, exactly, AI going, that is a vowel. What is love? Are there any sounds that could function as vowels that we do not use in English? Can you name a vowel? Okay.

And can you name a different vowel? Well done. Now, can you seamlessly transition from one of the R vowel to the I vowel? Oh, it is hard, isn't it? There you go. Yeah. E-R. Yeah.

O. I-O. It's actually. Now, pick two consonants and can you transition between them? Like an L. St. That's just one than the other. Yeah.

There's no intermediate. So, if you go from like. Yeah, like stand. St. Yeah, but you're not gradually turning an S into a T. Oh, I see. But you can gradually turn an E into an OO. EEEEW.

EEEEW. I see what you're saying. So, as a very superficial answer to this question... Does that work? That's good. That's good. You went M to N. Yeah.

Nicely done. Thank you. So, a very superficial answer. Vowels, you can transition from one to another. And consonants, you can't. You can go from one to the other. You can't. I just did it.

Transition. Well, now, MNN is interesting. So, park that one for a second. All right. So, it turns out vowels, if you're into phonetics and pronunciation and these things, there is a vowel space, which is a bit like the color space you'll get in editing software, where you can move a slider around between different colors. Because colors vary continuously. And people look at vowels the same way like a spectrum and someone's like a spectrum of vowels and i've got here some software that has the full spectrum of vowels and i'm going to see if i can make it say something okay so okay here we go oh that's awesome that's like the throat singing that we did in one previous episode

pretty it's very very close to that actually let me try and speed that up a little bit give me one second that's very try to make it say how are you one more go ready how are you oh okay yeah it's not a million miles away i love you so i'm going to show you the screen How are you? Okay, yeah. It's not a million miles away. I love you. So I'm going to show you the screen. So there's the screen. Here's all your different vowels.

Now, they're not using letters the way we would use letters for vowels. They're symbols to represent all the different vowels. And by starting at one vowel, like here's E e i can slide e down to r like ear yeah oh i can go up to o which is kind of fun that is fun and so you got the symbols for the different vowels on there and you can slide from one to the other and vowels are understood well the better definition i said before it's when your i think maybe your airway is unobstructed so consonants you're blocking the air getting out vowels it's just resonance through a straight open pipe and very crudely you can alter

the shape of your mouth and you can alter the shape of your throat. Yeah. And depending on which ones, what size, you get different vowels. Yeah. And that's also how we get like different tones and stuff, right? Yeah. Like when you're whistling, you can get different notes because you're changing the shape of your throat. So you're not like stopping the air from getting out.

No. But you are altering how it resonates. Yeah. And you've got two different frequencies. I forget which is which. I think like F1 is like the resonance of your mouth and F2 might be your throat. And you can alter them relative to each other. And that's what gives you this two-dimensional space of vowels that I can drag that thing around to pronounce things.

Now, I only know all this because I know nothing about phonetics, but I watch a lot of YouTube and there's a great channel called Dr. Jeff Lindsay. And I love watching Dr. Jeff's channel and does all sorts of incredible videos about accents, pronunciation, all these things. And I can't believe that the way that words sound can be completely different to how they're written so you think it's like you understand what you're reading yeah it's totally different and it's often vowels so in that previous sentence i used can't and i used can but i did not pronounce them anything like can't and can yeah yeah so yeah. So the bit where I said, and I can't believe.

And actually, I didn't even pronounce the T. There's no T when I said can't. I said can't. But our brains just went, that was can't. And when I said can, I didn't even put a vowel in it. I just said can. I can believe that's how it works. Yeah, it's very British, actually.

Yeah. Well, obviously now accents are weird. And so the way we do different vowels so i would typically say can't instead of can't yeah so accents are all over the place but you i get so used to thinking about words as being these discrete individual objects and you look at the spelling and that's the word. I mean, having learned Japanese for a couple of years now and I just started French to help me out while I was overseas, it makes you realize how difficult English is

because when you're reading another word in another language and then suddenly what you've learned about how that character or spelling is meant to be pronounced and suddenly it changes for no reason. And then you start to realize, oh, no, we do that all the time. All the time. English is the worst. All the time.

There's several subjects that I absorb information via YouTube. And this is one of them, but that's like my only source of information. And Dr. Jeff happened to be at the same YouTuber conference that I was at. No, that's awesome. So I walked past him. I went, hey, you're the phonetics guy. So we had a good old chat, and he goes, oh, I'm working on a maths question at the moment. He's like, would you mind?

He's like, I don't know what the etiquette is. I'm like, mate, get it out. Let's have a look at this maths problem. So we had a look at it. I went away and looked at it for a little while. So I just quickly did a screen grab and voiceover of what I had done sent it over to him and he put it in his video which was a huge amount of fun to be able to look at some of the stats that he was collecting about the way things are pronounced and so when i saw this problem about what is a vowel what are they doing in english

and do we need them or could we use different letters or vowels or sounds instead, I just emailed him, and he sent back a recording. So, everyone, if that is the correct response, put your oohs together for Dr. Jeff. Hi, Matt. Jeff Lindsay here. You asked me what makes a vowel a vowel. Well, vowels are basically sounds, not the letters that people associate with them. There may be five vowel letters, but English actually has about 15 to 20 vowels, depending on the accent. So what makes

them vowels? Well, think about Kermit the Frog when he talks. His mouth opens and closes, that's all it does, but this movement is so fundamental to speech that we have no trouble believing he's actually talking. We can say that when his mouth is open and most sound gets out, that's a vowel, and when his mouth closes and less sound can get out, that's a consonant. Each cycle of opening and closing we call a syllable. Now if you've seen my video on the vowel space you'll know that true vowels are all similar in kind. They're a bit like colors. So that's what I was mentioning before. Mmm. So I just totally stole that from one of his videos. Thanks for stopping to clarify. Thanks for selling me out there Jeff.

Everyone thought I was really clever until then. Yeah so he shows how it's a lot like the color space and in fact he even goes into how it's strictly speaking it's a three-dimensional space because if you look at the third dominant frequency down you can then distinguish vowels that are the same on the first two frequencies that our vocal system can produce so super interesting and we will link to that video below. In fact, his whole channel is amazing. Okay, back to the answer. But consonants vary a lot. And in linguistics, we place them on a sonority hierarchy with really consonant-y consonants at one end and more vowel-y consonants at the other. For something really consonant-y, take the T in Matt Parker, which isn't much more than a brief silence. We know it's there because if it wasn't, your name would be Matt Parker,

but its sonority is just about zero. At the other end of the scale, we have sounds like M and L. Like vowels, these let the voice out more or less unimpeded. In M, for example, the mouth may be shut, but the sound gets out freely through the nose. Mmm, Matt Parker. So that's what you were saying before. You could do M to N.

Yeah. But they're at the vowel-y end of the consonant spectrum. Yeah, right. So, mmm, you can get from M to N. This is reminding me of how people tell you to learn a Newcastle accent, which is to say photocopier. Photocopier. So as an Auss, which is to say photocopier. Photocopier. Which also, as an Aussie, I'm saying photocopier.

I'm not really pronouncing the T. I'm sort of doing a D for... Yeah, photo. But with Newcastle accent for photocopier, they almost don't pronounce any of the vowels. So, it's photocopier. Like, it's just a... It's a series of stops. Yeah, photocopier.

I love the fact about when you say Matt Parker, there's often there's no tease when people say Matt Parker. They say Matt and then a hard stop and then Parker. And that's the consonant. Yeah. It's just a little bit of, I don't know if that's strictly a glottal stop, but it's just a bit of nothing. It's similar.

When I looked into misheard lyrics and why our brains mishear them and i think i'd done some similar stuff for a previous problem on here come in which one i spoke to a specialist and like an expert and they were saying that when we talk we don't put the gaps there our brains put the gaps in and the best way to describe that as if you're listening to someone speaking in a different language it sounds like it's just one long series of sounds if you looked at english like the waveform yeah yeah exactly there's no gaps we can't see the individual words on when we're recording the podcast all we can see is waveforms and sort of it being louder and quieter but you can't tell what the individual words are except for when we're doing it one word at a time like triangular numbers yeah yeah yeah

fine fine fine meanwhile back to jeff these sonorous vowel-y consonants can even make a syllable like the m on the end of rhythm at least the way some people say it. Or think of the way Americans say hurdle. Hurdle. It's got two syllables, but where are the vowels? It's really just H-R-D-L. Hurdle. Other languages can go further. I made a video in Prague where I talk about the river there, the Vltava, where Czech has a syllabic L that's stressed, something English can't do, Vltava, or the Czech city of Brno, written B-R-N-O, which has a stressed trilled R. Is that a vowel? Depends on your analysis, I guess. Anyway, I hope that helps. That was very impressive. It's like how you rolled your O when you asked, how do I stuff

my hot chocolate? Yeah, I know. As I was saying it, I was like,ck doesn't know at the moment but this is a setup yeah so huge thanks to jeff do check out their channel we'll link to it in the show notes and everywhere else jeff has a lovely voice by the way jeff is great i could listen to jeff talk about they're really good videos and there's one about australians saying no because it's like no yeah it's so good so and there's one all about the vowel space and there's him it was in in town i'm not going to try and pronounce talking about in czech you've got these extra letters that are vowels so we'll check it out below but i think that has answered the problem what makes a vowel it's the unobstructed airway and it's not necessarily the letters that you see

it's not like there are five letters that are vowels. No. There's like 15 to 20 sounds that are vowels. And you can glide between them. And there's more or fewer in different languages. Why do we need them? But we don't. I got teased because I was an international student before I moved back to Australia from Hong Kong.

Oh, yeah. And I got my accent teased out of me. But I used to say girl. Girl. Instead of girl. Girl. I got made fun of when I was an international student for encyclopedia, putting an R on, like encyclopedia.

And I'll say encyclopedia. Encyclopedia. Encyclopedia. Yeah. Yeah. Encyclopedia. And finally, are there any sounds that could function as vowels we do not use in English? Yes, a lot.

There are ones between the ones we use that we don't distinguish between. Actually, it's very hard to even notice the difference as a native speaker of one language when a different language has vowels between the ones that we use. Because we just hear all of them as the one vowel. Yeah. And they subdivide them differently. And then bring into it things like accents and tones and everything. Accents and tones and everything else.

And then on top of this, we've got, as was pointed out in Czech, you can use a type of L as a vowel. They can use a rolled R as a vowel. Yeah, I'm fairly certain Welsh will have something as well. Yeah. I at least know that double L is like a h-h sound, I think. Oh. Because I have a joke about how whenever I gig in Wales, I'm like,

I'm Beck Hill or as you guys would say, Beck h-h. Ooh. Ooh. Ah. So there you are. I think, I mean, I didn't do a lot of the heavy lifting on this one. Dr. Jeff did. But do you know what? Dr. Jeff is the right person to do the heavy lifting.

Oh, 100%. You saved yourself. My job is just knowing smart people who can answer these questions. So there you are, anonymous, possibly alien or AI. That's what makers are about. I. That's how you pronounce AI. I.

I. I. I'm going to give that a ding. A ding. Any other business is a triangle number of words already. As was the whole sentence. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, yeah, very good.

You could tell by the spaces. It feels like starting the episode was so long ago. It's been a real long day in the studio real right and that sugar i think we're coming i think we're crashing back down okay okay we can do this what do you got so i've got a little update well sort of an update okay so in episode 064 a tetris education and candy bar formation yeah as a little aside you remember we found out that there was an auction where there was the first- The Game Boy.

Yeah. Now, I don't have an update on that. Don't get excited. Remind me how cheap it was so I can feel sad again. It was like $1,400. For the first video game ever played in space. Yeah, yeah. And for new listeners, we tried to hunt down who bought it

and if they're prepared to sell it again. And the answer was, if they're going to sell it again, it's going to go to auction. Yeah. And then the auctioneer will let us know. Yes. Pretty sure it's going to be more than $1,400 this time. And if I was going to sell it, I would not go through the same auctioneer because they only got it for $1,400. I would take it to a better one.

Yeah. But on that auction, we looked at all the other things that had sold. It was all like space memorabilia stuff and there was a book called apollo expeditions to the moon i think it was published in 1975 or something so that particular book was signed by like all of the original apollo the apollo mob or the apollo 11 crew but what struck me about this book on the inside cover yes if you remember i do remember it's very childish is is a diagram of the apollo missions yeah and earth yeah but for some reason they've put the moon twice two moons well two depictions of the same moon yes and i think

we chatted to your wife lucy about it yep and she's a space scientist for yes and less childish and she was like oh i think it's to show the different directions in which the flight the different flights have gone she just gave us a fact yeah but and we will find this and put on socials because i laughed a lot seeing the diagram because to me i was like they definitely knew what they were doing like they definitely knew what this looked like it looks like a penis it does looks like a penis with testicles and like a childish drawing like a cartoon graffiti penis yeah but it's a scientific diagram yeah and it's on the inside cover of this book but it's so obvious i don't think you get

plausible deniability saying i was just trying to depict the so obvious i don't think you get plausible deniability saying i was just trying to depict the orbital trajectory i don't know how anyone looked at it and went yeah this is fine that's fine and so what i want to do is find now the artist may not be with us anymore no but if they are i want to ask them if it was intentional. Yeah, how about that? So, I found a copy of the same first edition, not with the autographs. Yeah, a bit cheaper if it's not signed by the actual astronauts. Yeah, but I do have a copy of it. I can't find any because I was thinking the book will have the credit for that.

I couldn't find anything online. I did a ton of research online. Oh, no art credit? No. So, then I, because I did like a reverse image search, trying to find the original source, like if it appeared anywhere before the book. Risky search?

Yeah. But yeah, so I bought the book. Still nothing. It doesn't say who drew the diagram. It just says it's like from NASA's, it's like the source is NASA. Yeah. So I'm putting it out there.

If anyone knows a way that I could find the person who did this diagram. Or someone contemporary. We'll put it on all the stuff in the show notes. Contemporary with NASA at the time, diagrams, the publisher, anything. Yeah. I'd love to find out. Next bit of business. We now have the A Problem Squared Discord server up and running.

So get in there, you know. It's a Discord server. Come along. Say hi. We'll answer questions, discuss problems. If you're going to give us a problem, still go to the problem posing page at a problemsquared.com because we are too disorganized as humans

to keep track of problems coming in from more than one direction yeah so discussing problems and solutions is great but if you actually want to enter a problem to be solved in a podcast episode a problem squared.com yeah but if you're like oh hang on people need to know this matt made a mistake head on over to discord or if you're like actually i want hang on. Hang on. People need to know this. Matt made a mistake. Head on over to Discord. Or if you're like, actually, I want to debate this. Yeah. With others.

Exactly. Get involved. We'll keep an eye on that. And finally, we just want to say a quick thank you to a Patreon supporter. I mean, thank you to all our Patreon supporters. They keep this whole enterprise up and running so that everyone can enjoy the podcast for free. They are podcast users. Everyone is not paying for it.

Everyone is not paying for it.'s not paying for it which is the vast majority of people this is true they have a patreon name which is the word unintelligible in square brackets i had one of my patreon supporters for my youtube work has a patreon name with the symbols for a broken character where it's not great and i was like oh no like i don't get their name wrong and so i had to get in touch with them. They're like, no, I just put in like the empty boxes. Brilliant. As my name. Love that.

You jerk. I love you so much. That's excellent. That's great. So unintelligible here, similar energy. So we do, because when we're warming up to do the main high quality podcasts, we do a practice podcast, which is available only to patreon supporters and it's us chatting catching up being wizards getting ready and we kind of we make it it's fun it goes out this is they actually went onto patreon to say how much they enjoyed that and in it i don't want to

you know give this away for free but beck did a rendition of the match of the day theme and they came to say i cannot tell you how absolutely surreal it was to look up the match of the day theme hear it for the first time and realize beck's rendition was a spot on 10 out of 10 yes yeah amazing work goal back so if you want to hear that if you're a patreon supporter and you haven't listened to that i'm a wizard bonus episode it's in there and if you're on the fence unintelligible does say these are the kinds of life-changing experiences i subscribe for absolutely superb so i just thought we'd we'd share their enthusiasm because without the patreon supporters we wouldn't be able to do this yeah so thank you so much to everyone who

supports us and if you don't want to support us but you just want to exchange money for an extra podcast it could also be quite transactional get involved yeah although they do say it's the best thing to listen to when they've just woken up oh because we're kind of waking up while we're recording it. Yeah. They said it's better than TikTok. And I would say that's true. Because you don't want to look at your phone when you wake up.

Then you'll never get out of bed. And it's a bit jarring. But stick on us. Us being like, oh, where are we? What's happening? Yeah. Getting ready to record. That's a waking up experience.

Yeah. Just set it on a timer. Yeah. Make us your alarm. That's pretty special. If anyone does that, let us know how it goes now as is our tradition always we pick three patreon supporters to thank a random i'm just looking at the three random names now because we've got a tradition of mispronouncing names

and i'm wondering if people are leaning into that yeah it's unintelligible as a name. But this time we'd like to thank... Belt Shazamouse. Belteshazah. Do you reckon they're going for a shazah? Beltshazah Mouse. Beltshazah Mouse. E-lean or violet. E-lean.

We should do them all in that app. E-lean or violet. Violet Elenor We should do them all in that app Elenor Adam John A dame and John's on Adam John's on Sugar's kicking in I think we're back in the sugar zone

All those clumps just dissolved if if you know what I mean. So that's it for the episode. I've been Matt Parker. That's Beck Hill. And thanks to our producer, Lauren Armstrong Carter. You're doing that as one word. You're pronouncing the dash. Yes, that was one word.

The end. Now. So, Beck. Huh? Last time, you guessed. What did you guess last time for the dice in the jar? 486. And you said less than.

I said less than. So, I'm going to say 398. More than. Ooh. It's above that. We're closing in. It's between 398 and 486. All right.

Getting there. Getting there.