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 Doug, the school bus driver. I've been driving this school bus for the past 30 years, and I know for a fact I have the best job in the world. I loved school when I was a kid. My teachers, the fresh new pencil smell at the beginning of the school year, but especially the school bus. Riding back and forth to school was my favorite.
It's when I got to hang out with my friends, trade snacks from our lunches, and sit on those brown vinyl seats that stick to the back of your legs. There's nothing like it. So when I grew up, I decided to become a school bus driver. The only thing I don't love about my school bus is the smelly exhaust fumes that come out of the back. The exhaust makes my nose itch and sometimes it makes me sneeze. Say, where do exhaust fumes come from anyway?
I know it has something to do with burning gasoline, but I'm not sure what. Oliver was wondering about this too. So I found an expert who knows a lot about this. So it's just vented byproducts of the combustion reaction that makes your car work. I'm Josie Bernardo at The Ohio State University. I'm a new assistant professor.
Chemistry is a lot of things from our perspective as people who do research, is that it's the science that kind of looks at how energy changes in our everyday lives. Generally speaking, like you have gasoline, right? And gasoline is consisting of hydrocarbons. So it's carbon and hydrogen bonds together. Essentially, like it reacts with like oxygen in the air and it reacts
combusts. So combustion reactions are a specific type of reaction where you produce water and carbon dioxide. And so when you put your keys in the ignition, it like starts that reaction, provides enough energy to get all the pistons in your car moving. The exhaust that you get is this carbon dioxide and this like water vapor. So yeah, that's how it works in your car.
You know, hydrocarbons are carbon and hydrogen, and those are kind of like sugar. So like if you eat sugar,
You get a lot of energy. And so this is essentially going to be like food for your car. And it helps the car get everything going and moving around. But then eventually you have to fill up again, right? So you don't have infinite energy. So you have to fuel up. Talking about exhaust, this is all of the stuff from your engine that was not used for the reaction gets moved out of the car in some way because...
The other thing too is that these reactions are really hot, right? They require a lot of energy going in. And so like if you don't have an exhaust, your car could get really, really hot and potentially explode. Like, you know, when you're cooking and you kind of like leave the pot a little bit open so that you can vent off some of the
if it's boiling or some of the stuff that's cooking out, it's a similar sort of thing. So the exhaust itself is kind of like the, it's the waste products is the byproducts of carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide. There's other stuff in there. There's unburned hydrocarbons, right. That weren't particularly used effectively for the combustion reaction that all gets out into the exhaust. So that's all like kind of smoky stuff that you see out of your car. Um, uh,
Lots of the vehicles we use to get around, like cars, trucks, buses, and planes, have engines inside that power them. These engines often burn gasoline as fuel, and that's what makes them go. When you burn gasoline, it reacts with oxygen in the air and makes heat. Then the vehicle's engine takes that heat energy and uses it to power the car.
But here's the thing: when you burn gasoline for power, it also releases all different kinds of gases that the car doesn't need. Those are called exhaust fumes. It's like the car is eating gasoline and pooping out exhaust. Unfortunately, exhaust fumes aren't great to breathe in, and they pollute our air. But the good news is that companies are trying to make new and better vehicles that release less exhaust, like electric vehicles. And of course, there are other ways of getting around that don't rely on burning gas at all, like bikes. Hmm.
Now that's an idea. Maybe I'll start a bike bus. I just need to get a really, really big bike that everyone can ride on. No, no, a bunch of regular sized bikes that we all bike together on. Doug, you've done it again. If you like this episode, take a second to subscribe to Moment of Um wherever you listen to podcasts. And if you want to learn more about electric cars, check out the Forever Ago podcast where we have a whole episode all about them.
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 Breeze, Rosie DuPont, Anna Goldfield, Ruby Guthrie, Mark Sanchez, Hannah Weigel, Nico Gonzalez-Whistler, and Aaron Woldeslossi. We had editing help from Shayla Farzan and Sandon Totten, and engineering help from Derek Ramirez. 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 Varajan Ghorjian, Jake Miesbauer, and Josie Nardo. See you next time, and the next day, and every weekday. Until then...