Éclat for the smartest girl in the room
Today: why you love a wobbly bookshelf you built yourself more than a perfect one you bought, the tiny jeans pocket with a surprisingly old job, why ice floats (and why that saved every lake fish ever), dolphins that sleep with half a brain — plus a French verb for wandering on purpose and the case of the shortest suspect.
The Big Idea · Psychology
The IKEA Effect: Why You Love What You Made Yourself
In a famous set of experiments, researchers asked people to assemble IKEA boxes, fold origami and build Lego sets. Then they asked how much those creations were worth. People who built the item valued it far more than people who simply looked at an identical one. Even more striking, the builders thought their lumpy origami cranes were about as valuable as ones folded by experts, and they expected strangers to agree. The effect disappeared when the project was never finished or was taken apart again, so it is not just about effort: it is about completing something. This explains why a slightly crooked pot you made in art class feels precious, and why your group project’s ugly slide deck feels like a masterpiece to you. It also works as a handy warning label: before you defend an idea fiercely, ask yourself whether it is actually good or just yours.
Norton, Mochon & Ariely, Journal of Consumer Psychology (2012) · 2012
Why it's cool Your brain adds a bonus price tag to anything you made, which is a lovely superpower for creativity and a sneaky bias for judging your own work.
Read moreThe Tiny Jeans Pocket Has a Job Nobody Remembers
Look inside the right front pocket of almost any pair of jeans and you will find a smaller pocket, and right now it is getting attention again as vintage-style and workwear-inspired denim is trending. It is called the watch pocket, and it was designed to hold a pocket watch. Levi’s says the oldest pair of waist overalls in its archive, from 1879, already has one, and it has been on every version of the 501 since. Workers needed their watch safe from tools and rough days, so the pocket was built into the trousers. The watch is long gone but the pocket stayed, which is how many fashion details survive: the function disappears and the shape becomes a signature. Next time a trend feels random, ask what job it used to do.
Levi Strauss & Co.
Read moreIce Floats, and That Is Weirdly Rare
Most substances get denser when they freeze, so the solid sinks in its own liquid. Water does the opposite. As it freezes, its molecules lock into a hexagonal lattice held by hydrogen bonds, and that lattice leaves more empty space than liquid water has. So ice is about 9% less dense than the water it came from and floats. This matters hugely: a floating layer of ice insulates the water below it, so lakes freeze from the top down and fish can survive the winter underneath.
Tell someone If ice sank like most solids do, lakes would freeze from the bottom up, and winter would be much worse for every fish.
Dolphins Sleep With Half a Brain
Dolphins are air-breathers, but they breathe by choice, so they cannot simply switch off and fall into deep sleep. Instead they practise unihemispheric sleep: one half of the brain rests while the other half stays awake, and then they swap. One eye usually stays open too, the one controlled by the awake half. This lets them keep swimming, surface for air and watch for danger. Researchers have recorded it in several dolphin and whale species.
Tell someone Dolphins literally sleep one hemisphere at a time, so half of them is always on duty.
On Venus, a Day Is Longer Than a Year
Venus spins incredibly slowly, taking about 243 Earth days to rotate once. It travels around the Sun in about 225 Earth days. That means one full spin takes longer than one full orbit. Venus also rotates backwards compared with most planets, so the Sun would rise in the west if you could see it through the thick clouds. NASA has measured these numbers with radar from Earth and from spacecraft.
Tell someone Venus takes longer to turn around once than to circle the Sun, so its day is longer than its year.
flâner
flah-NAY · verb
To stroll without a destination, simply to enjoy wandering and noticing things around you.
« Le dimanche, j’aime flâner dans les rues sans savoir où je vais. »
On Sundays, I love to wander the streets without knowing where I’m going.
The noun is le flâneur, a figure made famous by the poet Charles Baudelaire in the nineteenth century: a person who walks city streets as a way of seeing them. To flâner is different from a walk to get somewhere, because the point is the wandering itself. Use it for a lazy afternoon in a new town, or when you want to say you are taking the long way on purpose.
The Case of the Highest Shelf
Someone took the school’s silver debate cup from the top shelf of the display cabinet, which is exactly 2.05 metres high. The cabinet is bolted to the wall, every stool and chair was locked in the storeroom, and the dust below the top shelf is undisturbed. Only a smear of fingertip marks remains at the edge of the top shelf, so the thief simply reached up. A person’s fingertips reach about 30 centimetres above their head with an arm stretched up. The three suspects are Dev, who is 1.70 metres tall in flat shoes, Noa, who is 1.72 metres tall in flat shoes, and Mara, who is 1.66 metres tall and was wearing chunky platform sneakers with 9-centimetre soles that day.
Who took the cup?
Reveal the answer
Mara did. Dev’s reach is 1.70 + 0.30 = 2.00 metres and Noa’s is 1.72 + 0.30 = 2.02 metres, both short of 2.05. Mara’s platforms made her 1.66 + 0.09 = 1.75 metres tall, so her reach was 2.05 metres, exactly enough. The shortest suspect turned out to be the only one tall enough.
Venus takes 243 Earth days to spin once and only 225 to orbit the Sun. It is the only planet that has been “getting ready” for longer than a whole year.
Why did the water molecule break up with the ice cube? It said it needed more space, and honestly, hydrogen bonds do that to people.
Dolphins sleep with half their brain at a time. It is the closest thing in nature to how I attend first period.
Run a Pre-Mortem Before You Start
Most people plan by imagining success, which feels good but misses problems. A pre-mortem flips this: before you begin, imagine it is a month from now and the project went badly, then explain why. A 1989 study on “prospective hindsight” found that picturing an outcome as already having happened made people come up with about 30% more reasons for it than picturing it as merely possible. The trick works because explaining a failure that already happened feels like storytelling, not worrying, so your brain is less defensive about spotting weak points. Researchers note it generates more reasons, not necessarily better ones, so the last step matters: choose the most likely and fix it.
Try it today Pick one upcoming thing, such as a test, presentation or project. Write “It went badly because…” and list three reasons in two minutes. Then fix the most likely one today.
Spotlight
Marie Tharp
In the early 1950s, Marie Tharp worked at Columbia University and noticed a deep valley running down the middle of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge while turning sonar readings into maps. Her colleague Bruce Heezen at first dismissed it as “girl talk” because it hinted that continents drift, but when the data held up and earthquakes lined up with the valley, the evidence changed minds. Her ocean-floor maps helped turn continental drift into the accepted theory of plate tectonics. More →