Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
From the brains behind Brains On, this is the Moment of Um. Moment of Um comes to you from APM Studios. I'm Philippa the Pillow Stuffer. I sit in a room filled with heaps of white fluff and I spend my days stuffing pillows till they puff.
Let me show you how my job works. See this pillowcase? Empty as a sock! Time to stuff it with fluff! Grab a handful of white fluff from the pile and stuff with style! Stuff and fluff and stuff and fluff! How fluffy puff stuffing makes me smile! And I'll tell you a secret: This white fluff is made from cotton. The same thing your t-shirt is made out of. Or the cotton balls in the nurse's office. Or your favorite towel.
And I've got piles of it, pounds of it, perfectly pleasing mounds of it! When I get tired, I recline in a giant pile of cotton fluff and rest my eyes for a while, till I'm ready to start stuffing in fluff-puffing pillows again. Now, you might be wondering, "Gee, what gives this cotton stuff its fluff?" And you wouldn't be alone.
My friend Eben was wondering the same thing. Why is cotton so fluffy? Lucky for you, I know just the person to answer this question. Cotton plants are really amazing because they produce dozens of fruits. My name is Candace Hagler.
I'm a professor at North Carolina State University. I teach plant biology and I also do research about cotton fiber. So why is cotton so fluffy? A cotton plant is about five feet tall. And so the cotton fruit, when they're closed,
are about the size of golf balls, but they open up to reveal a white fluffy mass of thousands of fibers surrounding the seeds inside the fruit. So those white fluffy mass is what we pick in the field and that is a mass of cotton fibers. Those cotton fibers get turned into many things including our cotton clothing,
and cotton balls. So if we ask the question, why is the cotton fluffy? It's because the white mass is really a large group of individual fiber cells. Each single cell is very long, over an inch long, and it's very strong. So these long, strong individual cells
twist naturally by themselves. So cotton fibers in a cotton ball can't get close together because each one is twisted like a really curly ribbon. And because they can't get close together and there's a lot of air trapped with them, the cotton is very fluffy. Um, uh,
Stunning! So cotton plants have lots and lots of seeds, each one wrapped up in a soft little puff of cotton fibers. Each fiber is a single cell, the building blocks of all living things. Cotton fiber cells are over an inch long and coiled like a curly ribbon, or my curly, whirly hair
To make a thread out of cotton, you twist those long, strong, curly cotton fibers together, pulling them tight as you spin, and they coil around each other and turn into one long strand. Then, if you're me, you weave those beautiful cotton yarns together and make cotton fabric, which you cut and sew into pillowcases for stuffing and puffing with glorious cotton fluff. ♪
If you liked this episode, take a second to subscribe to Moment of Um wherever you listen to podcasts. And if you want to learn more about the magic of plants, check out the Brains On podcast where we have an episode that answers the question, do plants sleep? And if you want to see our shows come to life, head to YouTube where we've got awesome animated Brains On episodes. Search Brains On Universe on YouTube and subscribe.
If you have a question, we'd love you to answer it. Drop us a line by going to brainson.org slash contact.
Moment of Um is produced by Molly Bloom, Rachel Breeze, Rosie DuPont, Anna Goldfield, Ruby Guthrie, Mark Sanchez, Anna Weigel, Nico Gonzalez-Whistler, and Aaron Moldeslossi. We had editing help from Shayla Farzan and Sanding Totten, and engineering help from Alex Simpson. Our theme song is by Mark Sanchez. Our executive producer is Beth Perlman. The executives in charge of APM Studios are Chandra Kavati and Joanne Griffith.
Special thanks this week go to Wendy Hunter, Kenji Lopez-Alt, and Candice Hagler. See you next time. And the next. And every weekday. Until then. Oh, this stuffing's got me huff-puffing, but these pillows are worth it. Is there a teen in your life who needs a little extra help learning how to manage their finances?
Financially Inclined from Marketplace is a podcast you can trust to help Gen Z get serious about money. I'm the host, Janelia Espinal, and each week I talk to experts about essential and practical personal finance topics, like choosing a college that you can actually afford, finding internship opportunities, and how to start a business while you're still young. Let's make sure the next generation gets these financial lessons sooner than we did.
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