How do polaroids develop pictures so quickly?
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From the brains behind Brains On, this is the Moment of Um. Moment of Um comes to you from APM Studios. I'm Lickety Split, the snail. Everyone thinks snails are so slow. Have you ever heard the phrase, a snail's pace? It means super duper slow. Rude.

Some snails, like me, like to do things quickly and efficiently. I can clean the inside of my snail shell in just two and a half minutes. I never talk while I'm eating so I can nibble up my leafy meals as fast as possible. Oh, and whenever I want to take a picture of something, I use my snail-sized Polaroid camera.

If you haven't seen one before, Polaroid cameras are a special kind of camera that takes physical photos almost instantly. As soon as you snap the button, a little piece of paper pops out of the bottom of the camera and in just a couple minutes, a photo appears on the paper.

It's super cool and fast enough for a speedster snail like me. I mean, if you want physical photos to hang on your wall, why go all the way to a store to print them when you can just have them ready in a minute? To understand how Polaroid cameras work, you have to know a little bit about how an old-fashioned camera works.

Long before we had smartphones that took photos instantly, we had cameras with film inside. Film is a thin, plasticky material that's sensitive to light. When you press a button on your camera, a little hole opens up that lets light inside, and that light hits the film. Then, a chemical reaction happens on the film, which turns into a picture.

After that, for an old-fashioned film camera, you'd have to take the film out and mix it with a different batch of chemicals to see the pictures on it. It takes a long time. Too long for this snail. So if that's how a regular film camera works, how does a Polaroid camera work? Madeline wanted to know about this too.

I'm Josie. I use she/her pronouns, officially Dr. Nardo at The Ohio State University. I'm a new assistant professor. Essentially, like when you have a camera, right, we know that cameras kind of let light in. You let the light pass through the lens and there's a film inside. And so that film is light sensitive. And so it kind of acts like a little handprint almost. But there's also layers in that film that have different colors in them. So

As the light passes through, it kind of makes the fingerprint on the film. There are these different color layers, and the chemistry in it is that the colors are made of these chemicals, right? They're these photosensitive chemicals. And so, like, they won't react if no light is on them. And then as the Polaroid film is passed through the camera, so it's actually like when it's ejected out, smushes all of those paint layers, and then it develops that we can see on the Polaroid.

the film coming out, like getting squeezed out of the camera is just as important as letting the light in to initiate the reaction on the film. Um, uh,

Galloping gastropods! Polaroid cameras are even more amazing than I thought. Remember how I mentioned that other old-fashioned cameras use something called film to take pictures? Once you've taken your pictures, you have to take the film out and put it in special chemicals to see the pictures on it. Polaroid cameras work in a similar way. But here's the really cool thing about them. Inside, they have the film and those special chemicals that make the pictures appear on it.

Once you take a picture, the film gets squeezed through some rollers, then it pops out of the Polaroid camera. It only takes a couple minutes for those chemicals to work, and turn the film into a picture we can see. Okay, this has been fun, but I gotta jet. I'm signed up for a snail 10K race today, and I'm determined to win it this year. Time to escargot for the gold.

If you like this episode, take a second to subscribe to Moment of Um wherever you listen to podcasts. And if you're a Critter fan, check out the Brains On podcast where we have a whole episode all about seahorses. It's called Seahorses, the curly-tailed wonders of the sea. 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 to help you answer it. Drop us a line by going to brainson.org slash contact. Moment of Um is produced by Molly Bloom, Rachel Brees, Rosie Dupont, Anna Goldfield, Ruby Guthrie, Mark Sanchez, Anna Weigel, Nico Gonzalez-Whistler, and Aron Moldeslassie. We had editing help from Shayla Farzan and Sandon 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 Mark Lorch, Jingme O'Connor, and Josie Nardo. See you next time and the next day. And until then, um... Okay, a 10K race is way longer than I thought.

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