How do geckos stick to walls?
Hey, y'all. For this month's rebroadcast, we're gonna go back in time to our 12th episode about geckos because we talked about geckos in last week's episode about tattooing.
Jam:And that was in a really cool series about intermolecular forces.
Melissa:Mhmm.
Jam:And so this one Specifically, it's just one of the 3 of those, but it's a cool one, and it connects to the tattoos thing a little bit loosely.
Melissa:Loosely.
Jam:But it's one that if you're a even even if you've noticed our podcast for a while, because that was so long ago, almost 3 years ago, you may not have heard it.
Melissa:Yeah. It's a really good one, so we hope you enjoy, and we'll see you back here next week for learning about how tattoos get removed.
Jam:Happy listening.
Melissa:Hey. I'm Melissa.
Jam:I'm Jam.
Melissa:And I'm a chemist.
Jam:And I'm not.
Melissa:And welcome to Chemistry For Your Life.
Jam:The podcast that helps you understand the chemistry of your everyday
Melissa:life. You almost took my line, Jam.
Jam:Wait. What?
Melissa:You opened your mouth on the, and welcome to chemistry for your life part.
Jam:Well, you paused unusually long, and I was like, yes. You want me to do that?
Melissa:No. It's my don't be a line usurper.
Jam:I think that's that's a really catchy phrase you've come up with for, what that is. I think
Melissa:it's gonna catch on. Thank you. Line usurper. Okay. Are you ready to get started?
Jam:Let's do it.
Melissa:Do you wanna know what you're gonna learn about today?
Jam:Oh, yeah. Yeah. I guess I'd like to do that first before I commit to anything.
Melissa:Yeah. So yeah. Have you ever seen a gecko?
Jam:Oh, yeah. I've seen lots of geckos in my lifetime.
Melissa:Where have you seen them?
Jam:Well, I guess I don't know what exactly breed of lizard it is or whatever, but I'm pretty sure they're geckos.
Melissa:Mhmm.
Jam:And they like to hang out on front and back porches of the houses that I've lived in.
Melissa:Yep. I remember.
Jam:Oh, yeah. Many of them.
Melissa:Yeah. When I was a little kid, we saw my grandma. It's just big window Uh-huh. That she never had curtains on or closed or anything, and we would just watch the geckos crawl around in the window.
Jam:Yeah. It's pretty normal for us to, like, like I say, it's already night time, and I'll walk out of our front door to go get something out of my car from my dad. For, like, I'll flip on the light, for our porch and then walk out and all that sudden change. Mhmm. All these geckos just go looks like you just see, like, the corner of your eye, all these little tiny shapes, like, scurry away.
Melissa:Yeah. Yeah. So have you ever thought about, oh, I don't know, how they hold onto the walls and walk around.
Jam:You know, I have not thought about that probably since I was a kid. Like, I'm sure something as a kid that I was like, what the heck? How are they breaking on the rules doing this? But I was just so so used to it now, and I see so many of them so so much of the time. So I have not thought about that in a while.
Melissa:You've lost your little scientist inside you. Yeah. I like to say that all children are Little scientists because they all have this sense of curiosity and asking questions, and we can either foster that or squash it out. You've squashed out your little scientist.
Jam:Or maybe my little scientist just got, like, numb from not knowing. It's like all this curiosity that went on can I use the phrase unrequited in the situation?
Melissa:Sure.
Jam:Unrequited curiosity. It just never got answered. So that little scientist, and they're just like, oh, man. I guess this I guess the world's just Dumb and boring, and it's all it's ever gonna be.
Melissa:Well, I'm gonna hear the undumb and boring it for you. I'm gonna liven the world up for your little scientist inside you.
Jam:Perfect.
Melissa:For the little little kid inside of you.
Jam:Okay.
Melissa:So do you wanna know how geckos walk on the walls?
Jam:Yes. I do. How do they do it?
Melissa:Are you ready?
Jam:I think so.
Melissa:Oh, do you wanna guess?
Jam:Okay. I mean, I can definitely try
Melissa:We can try. Don't look at my notes.
Jam:Okay. I'm not looking at your notes. One thought that comes to mind is thinking about how in Spider Man 1, the Tobey Maguire one that came out in, like, 2000 and something.
Melissa:Mhmm.
Jam:He has these, Like, it shows, like, a really close-up shot of whenever he gets to about his battery, and he first discovers he can crawl on the walls. There's this tiny little, like, fiber thing sticking out his fingers.
Melissa:That is good. That's good. What is it about those fibers?
Jam:Well, he has those. And then be because of that, I guess it can, like, increase Friction enough. It's just a lot of them. I don't know. Really, they don't explain that part, obviously, because they're just showing a movie.
Jam:But he starts then putting his hand on the wall, and then it's like, It stays with these little things that with the brick walls, something like that. So he does that, and it works. And so that's my only theory because I don't think that they're like, they have some sort of glue. Maybe Right. Maybe, like, 5 year old may would've thought that.
Jam:But it seems like it could be likely that, they based Spider Man on or sorry. They based geckos on Spider Man?
Melissa:Oh, yeah. Definitely Spider Man campers.
Jam:So maybe there's something like that. That's my only idea.
Melissa:Okay. So that's a really actually good idea. Uh-huh. Actually, that's pretty smart.
Jam:Okay.
Melissa:I I'm gonna give you the brief, and then we're gonna go in-depth.
Jam:Oh, sweet. Okay. Cool.
Melissa:So this is stickiness part 2.
Jam:Oh, nice.
Melissa:The gecko story.
Jam:Dang.
Melissa:We talked about how everything in the world that is stuck to another thing is usually as a result of
Jam:Intermolecular forces.
Melissa:That's right. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. And geckos are no different. Geckos walking on walls from intermolecular forces.
Jam:Dang. Wow.
Melissa:But So
Jam:they have the force?
Melissa:The forces with geckos.
Jam:Yeah.
Melissa:Absolutely. Got it. Okay. Cool. May the intermolecular forces be with the geckos.
Jam:Man, so much more than with the geckos.
Melissa:There is.
Jam:You know?
Melissa:You're at a cocktail party with some friends. You're trying to impress them. You say, Did you know how geckos climb on walls? Mhmm. It's intermolecular forces.
Jam:But if at at this party, which I can't envision myself at because it sounds, like, fancy and stuff, Wouldn't the people around me be like, oh, yeah? Well, how?
Melissa:Maybe so. And that's what we're gonna talk about next.
Jam:Okay. So I gotta remember a lot in order to make
Melissa:Well, hopefully, you already remember a lot from all the other episodes you've listened to before. So you could pull out your microwave business if you want. That's true. The microwave pot. Boiling business.
Jam:Remember, I think it's a great, like, party story
Melissa:kinda thing. Yeah.
Jam:Because everybody wonders it. I mean, even if they feel, like, a little bit too down to mention it, it's like, okay. I still don't understand my question. Everybody's got that.
Melissa:So, intermolecular forces are responsible for geckos being able to walk on walls. However
Jam:Uh-huh.
Melissa:What kind of intermolecular forces is the question? And how do they allow geckos to walk on walls? So we talked about 1 kind of intermolecular forces, the strongest kind last week.
Jam:Hydrogen.
Melissa:Hydrogen bonding.
Jam:Yes.
Melissa:Yeah. So hydrogen bonding is what we talked about last week. Uh-huh. And this week, we're gonna talk about the weakest in molecular force, dispersion forces.
Jam:How is it the weakest one? Like, what makes it less strong than the hydrogen bonding?
Melissa:That's a good question, Jim. So do you remember last week we talked about how magnets have poles, and we use that as an analogy for dipole in molecules?
Jam:Yes. I do. Yeah.
Melissa:There's a negative on one side. There's a positive on the other. Mhmm. Well, in some molecules, that's built into the molecule. Right.
Melissa:It's permanently like that.
Jam:Yeah. Like, the same thing is true with the hydrogen bonding. Right? It's, like Yes. Totally built in.
Melissa:Totally built in, permanent, and very strong. Yeah. In some other polar molecules like we talked about with soap. It's less strong, but still built in. Uh-huh.
Melissa:What we haven't talked about yet is dispersion forces, which are those weak, weak forces.
Jam:Mhmm.
Melissa:So dispersion forces, What makes them so weak is that polarity is instantaneous, and then it goes away.
Jam:Okay.
Melissa:So we talk about it being an induced polarity in science. So do you ever remember this is the best way I can think about it. Did you ever have one of those things when you were a little kid that if you drag like, drag the pin along a glass, whatever. Mhmm. You would see those little magnetic shavings move with it.
Jam:Yes. Yeah.
Melissa:And then if you took the pin away, it would go away? Yeah. Yeah. Just fall down.
Jam:Yeah. Well, actually, I thought first we needed to shake it to get that to happen.
Melissa:I think I might be thinking of something at a museum instead.
Jam:Oh, okay.
Melissa:But if you you can have something that it's temporarily
Jam:Yeah.
Melissa:Going to stick. And then when you take the thing that's causing it to stick away, it won't be that way anymore.
Jam:Got it. Yeah.
Melissa:So dispersion forces are like that.
Jam:Okay.
Melissa:Dispersion forces, if you they come into contact with another molecule because 2 negative charges don't wanna be near each other, 2 positive charges won't be near each other, they will momentarily create a one will be negative and one will be positive. It'll be a momentary dipole, and then it'll go away.
Jam:Okay.
Melissa:You got that?
Jam:Yes. I do.
Melissa:Can you say it back for me and the listeners?
Jam:So, basically, the other types of, intermolecular forces that are stronger are kinda built into the structure in some way.
Melissa:Yes.
Jam:For whatever reason, which I guess we'll get into a little bit more. But in this case, they are not built into the structure.
Melissa:Mhmm.
Jam:They're able to be induced by something Mhmm. That causes there to be that force temporarily
Melissa:Yes.
Jam:Like the Temporary magnet thing.
Melissa:Exactly.
Jam:Which makes sense. The illustration's helpful because it is like, oh, yeah. That's easy. Like, you take the you take the magnetic thing away. Mhmm.
Jam:And things gonna fall. That's, like Exactly. Makes a lot of sense.
Melissa:Yes. That's it. That's exactly right.
Jam:Okay.
Melissa:You got it. So they're induced basically by being near each other.
Jam:Okay.
Melissa:That's a thing that causes the in induced dipole. It's just coming close to another electron cloud. They'll both polarize to where the negatives are opposite sides and the positives are on opposite sides, so they're touching each other.
Jam:Interesting.
Melissa:It and it's hard to explain. That's why I saved it for last
Jam:Yeah.
Melissa:In our intermolecular forces, exploration. So that is the basics of dispersion. Really, that's all of dispersion forces.
Jam:Yeah.
Melissa:So does that make sense to you?
Jam:It does actually. Yeah. I'm surprised kind of
Melissa:That it was. Surprised. You're you're good at learning.
Jam:It just sounded and at the right off the bat, it sounded like it was gonna be more complicated to, like, even get a little bit of a foothold in. The other ones are built into the structure. This one's like it's temporary. And it's like, okay. That seems like it's the area that's gonna have the most exceptions.
Jam:Like Mhmm. Like, there's so many things where it's like, hey. Here's a clear cut thing. A clear thing, and then here's the exceptions category. Here's all where all the crazy stuff happens that we had to lump into a category.
Jam:And so I kind of maybe thought there was gonna be more like that.
Melissa:Well, you did it. You got it. Woah. Congratulations.
Jam:So the geckos Are magnets? I'm just kidding.
Melissa:No. That's a I mean, they kind of can do that. So now we'll get into geckos. So Okay. You know the overview.
Melissa:We talked about how do geckos stick on walls.
Jam:Mhmm.
Melissa:Well, they use dispersion forces. Dispersions are the temporary induced weak intermolecular forces.
Jam:Okay.
Melissa:So how do they use those weak, relatively weak intermolecular forces to hang on walls. Well, I'll tell you. They use a bunch of them.
Jam:Uh-huh.
Melissa:So you talked about how Spider Man has those little tiny, almost hair like things on his Uh-huh. On his fingers.
Jam:Uh-huh.
Melissa:Geckos have that. They have now let me look to make sure I get the word right. So they have lots of I mean, we're talking hundreds of thousands of teeny tiny hairs on them. Uh-huh. And each one of those hairs is also branching up into a bunch of hairs.
Melissa:The thing it made me think of, was when you have split ends
Jam:Okay.
Melissa:And you have your one strand of hair, and then sometimes it'll split, and then that split will split, and it will have all these teeny tiny hairs coming off of it. Yeah. That is what geckos have.
Jam:Okay.
Melissa:So they have teeny tiny hairs, and each one has I am sure this is at the microscopic level. Uh-huh. A flat triangular
Jam:tip. Uh-huh.
Melissa:They actually call those I think it's pronounced spatula, but it's basically little spatulas. And so because there are so many of those tiny spatulae Uh-huh. On the gecko's feet, there's a huge surface area. And all over that surface area, there is weak the possibility for weak intermolecular forces. Yeah.
Melissa:And so they use that where they can curl or uncurl their toes. And when they're changing the way their toes are, they can induce that dipole and use it to stick on the wall.
Jam:Wow. That is crazy.
Melissa:Isn't that amazing?
Jam:Yeah. That's nuts.
Melissa:I could not believe it. And I wanna give a shout out. I'll do some references at the end, but I had No idea this was true Uh-huh. Until I listened to a podcast called Ologies. And there was an interview with a graduate student Uh-huh.
Melissa:Who studies geckos
Jam:Okay.
Melissa:Or all lizards maybe.
Jam:Yeah. Yeah.
Melissa:And they started talking about these intermolecular forces, and I was so excited. And then I went and do more research, and, actually, there's information about this in every organic chemistry book I've been looking at. Uh-huh. I had no idea.
Jam:Wow. That's crazy.
Melissa:Yeah. So I thought that that was so exciting.
Jam:So each of the little so you got the hair thing that comes off Mhmm. Then splits it into a lot more hairs Mhmm. And then has a spatula at the end.
Melissa:Mhmm.
Jam:And so because
Melissa:a spatula. Yeah. Just call it a spatula. That's Uh-huh. Sorry, biologists, but it's a spatula now.
Melissa:And
Jam:Because each of those little ones, each of those little spatullet spatulas
Melissa:Mhmm.
Jam:Create that dispersion Mhmm. Force.
Melissa:When the gecko knows how to basically move its foot to induce the charge.
Jam:To induce it. But each of those make a little bit of that charge. And because there's so many of those little hairs Mhmm. And spatulas Mhmm. It all had to be enough to hold their weight?
Melissa:Yes. And to hold their weight onto the surface.
Jam:Yeah. That's pretty crazy because it's like I mean, like, it seems like just 1 would be almost Nothing. Right? One little hair and thing like that would not be enough to hold anything on there.
Melissa:Yeah.
Jam:But it's like, if you need to pack them in there, they all add up Enough.
Melissa:Yes.
Jam:Which which is it's fascinating. I mean, I'm sure there's a lot of, like like, engineers who are like, oh, no. That's how it works. Like, any structure you build is a lot of things.
Melissa:Little things adding up.
Jam:Things adding up to to be a strong structure. But to me, I don't I don't know anything about that. And so it's, like, amazing that it's, like, this little These little hairs that can do that just because they have strength in numbers kinda deal.
Melissa:Right. It's pretty incredible. And it's incredible to me that also that that's developed and then that the geckos know how to use it. And because they can pick up their foot. Their foots don't feel and this goes back to last week.
Melissa:Their foot still feels sticky when you touch them, but they know how to turn their toes to get it to where they're going to stick on, and they're suddenly, quote, sticky.
Jam:I wonder what it feel like to have a gecko do that on your hand, like, actually engage it, like, you held those and maybe it wouldn't feel that weird, but, like I
Melissa:don't know.
Jam:Now I'm wondering. I mean, I'm I think I probably have held a gecko, but I don't think I ever had it, like, try to, like, Stick to me. You know
Melissa:what I mean?
Jam:I wouldn't I don't think I've experienced that.
Melissa:Well, I wanna say one more thing.
Jam:Okay.
Melissa:And this to me is really impressive. So Do you wanna know how the scientists figured out that it's dispersion forces and not one of the other ones?
Jam:Yes.
Melissa:So this is going a little deeper into the science. Uh-huh. So if you're just happy knowing to the listeners out there, if you're just happy knowing its dispersion forces and that's that. Mhmm. That's fine.
Melissa:But the way they figured it out is they tested to see how well geckos stuck on both a polar surface and a nonpolar surface.
Jam:Okay.
Melissa:So remember polarity, that's where it's built in the negative and positive into the molecule.
Jam:Mhmm. Mhmm.
Melissa:And nonpolar, the electrons are equally shared. There's no positive or negative. Mhmm. And the geckos could stick on a nonpolar surface
Jam:Mhmm.
Melissa:As equally well as they could stick to a polar surface. Woah. Which means their feet had to be inducing the positive or negative, and it wasn't a built in positive or negative on their feet.
Jam:Got it. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense.
Jam:So, like, if it wasn't their feet, then then there would have been a clear difference between the service. Like, they would've just been not not been able to stick to one of them?
Melissa:Yes.
Jam:Okay.
Melissa:They could have only they could have even been repulsive by 1. If the positive charge was the one that was out, and then they came to the positive side of a surface. Maybe they'd be repulsed. Or if it lined up right, they could maybe easily climb up a polar surface, but not a nonpolar surface. Yeah.
Melissa:But geckos can climb up any surface equally well, which means that they are inducing the charge on the tips of their feet without Regard to what the surface they're climbing up on, they can induce a pull in their feet that climbs up on the surface no matter what.
Jam:Oh my gosh. We've gotta figure out how to get this to humans.
Melissa:Isn't that amazing?
Jam:We've gotta learn how to do this kinda climbing video.
Melissa:And I do wanna Shout out the scientists who did this because I think it's really cool. Mhmm. It said it was Keller Autumn who leads institutional gecko research team.
Jam:Wow.
Melissa:And this research was done in 2000. And I'm gonna give I wanna give my references at the end. Uh-huh. But, I just wanted to give a shout out. Scientists are doing such cool work.
Melissa:Yeah. And that was in 2000.
Jam:Yeah.
Melissa:So
Jam:Man, that's crazy.
Melissa:So cool. Right?
Jam:Yeah. That really is cool.
Melissa:Mhmm.
Jam:And, like, I love that the little scientist inside of those that team was, like, still alive.
Melissa:Yeah. Yeah.
Jam:And they're like, Listen. We've been wondering ever since we were all 5 years old how geckos do it. Yeah. Let's get together. Let's figure this out.
Jam:Okay?
Melissa:Well and I think that they're going to be able to use that in engineering and Mhmm. Technology, whatever, the people who develop that stuff to develop better adhesives and other good applications.
Jam:Wow. Yeah.
Melissa:Like Spider Man's gloves.
Jam:Yes. Exactly.
Melissa:Oh, what it's his hands, though, not his gloves. Hands. Yeah. But he wears gloves over his hands.
Jam:Yeah. So it still works through them somehow.
Melissa:So it's probably on the gloves. Maybe he's inducing a dipole through the gloves.
Jam:Through it. Yeah. Yeah. So
Melissa:so they could make real life Spider Man gloves that hold us when we climb up.
Jam:That'd be awesome. Seriously, that'd be so cool.
Melissa:It would be awesome. Gosh. Okay. So that's it.
Jam:Wow.
Melissa:Now you know how geckos climb up walls and glass and everything else.
Jam:Dang, those sneaky geckos.
Melissa:They've been Sneaky geckos.
Jam:These little chemists this whole time all over our Portuguese, our eaves, and stuff.
Melissa:They've been little Spider Man using their science magic.
Jam:Also, shout out to, Spider Man one. Sam Raimi, I believe, directed that one. Tobey Maguire, looking at you.
Melissa:Yeah. I don't know anything about those people that you just said, but I do like Tobey Maguire. So good stuff. So now it's your turn. Will you teach me about Will you teach me about how geckos climb up walls, Jim?
Jam:I'll be happy to. So Just like we saw in the 2002 movie, Spider Man, life changing movie.
Melissa:For some reason, I thought you're gonna say in 2000 is it 2001 A Space Odyssey?
Jam:Oh, yeah. That's a new movie. I can't find a way to reference that one in this situation.
Melissa:So really thought that's what was about to come out of your mouth. I have no idea why.
Jam:That is probably my most referenced movie in my life. Like, well, you know, just like in 2001, 2000, some people haven't seen it too that I really probably could reference anything
Melissa:I've not
Jam:seen it. And say that movie, and people would think, like, wow. That's a crazy movie. Like, how many different crazy scenes and eras are there? Okay.
Jam:So in the life changing 2002 movie Spider Man, by Sam Raimi, we see Spider Man have his little hairs on his fingers.
Melissa:And his fingies.
Jam:And his fingies. And just like Spider Man
Melissa:Mhmm.
Jam:Geckos have that. So that the little hair Splits into more hairs Mhmm. And then has patches at the end.
Melissa:Mhmm.
Jam:At the end of all of that, they're able to, in some way, They know how to do it consciously
Melissa:Mhmm.
Jam:Create the type of intermolecular force that's called dispersion force.
Melissa:Mhmm.
Jam:Which creates a polar temporary polar dipole
Melissa:Mhmm.
Jam:Force
Melissa:Mhmm.
Jam:Between The gecko's pairs
Melissa:Mhmm. On
Jam:its hands and whatever surface they're trying to walk on. And it and because of that, it can be any surface. Yeah. It doesn't have to be some perfect material that works well with that. They're creating that in American Air Force just because they're in control of it with the hairs and stuff on their hands.
Melissa:Yeah.
Jam:And then that's how they are the top of the food chain.
Melissa:And it is a cumulative effect of all of those little specialists that do it.
Jam:I think
Melissa:you had said that earlier, but I just wanna make sure. So that's how even weak intermolecular forces help the world go around and do really cool things.
Jam:Yeah. Gosh. It's so crazy.
Melissa:Isn't it amazing?
Jam:I wish I could kinda see like this. I mean, I'm sure like they're probably something out there like this. But some, like, it has to be CGI, but, like, zoomed in kind of thing of what that would look like If we could see it, we're, like the gecko, like, opens its hand, and you see all the little hairs come out and then, like, kind of see, like, a little bit of a You'd have to make it visible because it's probably pretty interesting. But seeing it and then go onto the wall Mhmm. Would be so cool to watch.
Melissa:Would be. You know? So if there's any really skilled graphic animators out there that want to use their skills to make a brief design of Yeah. Yeah. Of how gecko's feet work.
Melissa:We would think that was beautiful. We could not pay you, but we would definitely retweet and share it on Instagram. Yeah. Or you
Jam:know what? If we could work it into I think if Pixar could find some way to need to, like, work that into a movie they're already developing. Mhmm. So, you know, In Coco 2, if you guys do that, add a lizard in there, gecko specifically, and then do a really detailed animation about how to sink through the wall. Just include it in there so that budget wise, it kinda makes a little more sense.
Melissa:Perfect. So Love it. Okay. So we're gonna go into our references. I just wanted to and I think I'm gonna start doing this.
Melissa:I stole this idea from another podcast that Emily told me about Mhmm. Mhmm. Where I just put all my references at the end. And a lot of times, it'll just either be stuff I learned in class or my textbooks, but I'll even share the references of what I used to double check what I've learned.
Jam:Okay. That sounds great. Especially because, like, there are probably some people who, would be at the ready interested in, like, exploring those references themselves if they're that interested. It's kinda cool to give that ability to people.
Melissa:Well, not yeah. So if you if you want to, you can check these out. So the first one, you may not have access to, but it's the 11th edition of the Solomon's organic textbook, and we've put pictures of that on the Instagram before. And then I also used a textbook available on OpenStax mostly because I don't have a PDF of chemistry, a Gen Chem textbook. Mhmm.
Melissa:And this OpenStax one is available on my computer. So this is The book is called Chemistry. It's the 2nd edition, and the authors are Paul Flowers, Klaus Theopold, Hope I said your name right, Klaus. Richard Langley and William r Robinson.
Jam:Woah. Wonderful. Related to him. So, William sorry.
Melissa:Are you related to him?
Jam:No. I was saying Will Will Robinson's like Will Robinson from, Lost in Space.
Melissa:Not seen that either, but Those are our senior contributing authors to this open stack textbook that is available online. Uh-huh. And The last source I used was the episode of Ologies called serology, which is the ology of lizards.
Jam:Mhmm.
Melissa:And she interviewed that's Ali Ward
Jam:Mhmm.
Melissa:She has a podcast about, where she just interviews scientists. Mhmm. And she interviewed Erin McGee, who is a Blizzard scientist, I believe she was a grad student. So go check out that episode because it was really cool. Those are the sources I used to put together this episode of chemistry for your life.
Jam:Awesome, Ding.
Melissa:Now before we sign out, I wanna hear about what was one thing that made you happy this week.
Jam:Okay. This one's a simple one. It's not as cool as previous ones, but a very small thing that just brought me a little bit of joy this week is that they came out with a Version of Mario Kart for phones. I think it's on Android and iPhone and whatever else. And I just haven't played the game in So so long.
Jam:And when I played the most was, like, the super old Nintendo 64 one. Wasn't the 3rd one, but that was, like, one of the really popular ones. And so I've been playing that little app game. I'm not even, like, a game on my phone kinda personal.
Melissa:No. You're not.
Jam:Yeah. But there's just The the joy of like, oh, yeah.
Melissa:Remember how fun this game was
Jam:so simple. Just you're in these little carts going around tracks, whatever, but just like all those fun memories about having played that for hours when I was a kid. So that's made me a little bit happy this week thinking about simpler times.
Melissa:Nostalgia. I think that's why Pokemon Go is so popular.
Jam:It probably is.
Melissa:I was like, we're back. In our childhood, I would lose it if a Pokemon game Like, they had the Game Boy Color red, blue, crystal version. Uh-huh. If I could play that on my phone Yeah. With just an app that was, like, cheap and easy to download.
Melissa:I didn't have to do anything crazy. Yeah. I would love that. I would absolutely spend so much time playing that.
Jam:Yeah. I think they could easily do that. I mean, those games, like, if you ever look at Just the size of, like, a Game Boy game. It's it's kind of amazing stuff, but they'll be like, oh, yeah. This is this Game Boy game that you you spent hours on was about this many megabytes of data.
Jam:Like could put that on a phone. You could put that on a phone so fast.
Melissa:Oh, and I would love it. If it looked the same and had the same noises, I would be So happy. Yeah. Yeah. And I had kept my Game Boy Color until college, and then I let someone borrow it, and they never gave it back.
Jam:Oh, no. Brutal. Shout out to that person.
Melissa:No. I won't. Okay. But I'm mad about it.
Jam:Just you know who you are.
Melissa:You know who you are. And if you wanna give that Game Boy Color back, I would Be very, very happy because I'm not willing to go And then
Jam:find 1. If you could share about it at the end of an episode just like this.
Melissa:Oh, absolutely. I would.
Jam:So what about you? What made you happy this week?
Melissa:Well, I, I've had a pretty good week school, and everything is going well. But I did have some weird unexpected struggles. I I won't go into too much detail. Yeah. It's just, you know, the regular ins and outs of grad school.
Melissa:Mhmm. And I had some friends who were really willing to help me and took some stuff off my plate and just stepped up whenever was having a really hard time. I mean, everything else in my life is really good, but there is this one weird, hard area. Mhmm. And a lot of My friends just stepped up and were really kind when I was open and shared with them that I was having a hard time.
Melissa:And so I think Friendship is my happy thing this week is having, yeah, like, good friends that you can tell when stuff isn't going well, and they're They're willing to get in the trenches with you and and bear that with you so you're not all by yourself with this just, situation. You know?
Jam:Totally. Totally. Man, that's awesome.
Melissa:Yeah. Yeah.
Jam:That makes a huge difference.
Melissa:It does. Do trying to do it by yourself is not it's just not how humans are designed to be, I don't think. So
Jam:Agreed.
Melissa:So that's it. That's this week of chemistry for your life. I wanna say thanks to Jam and you guys for listening and learning, but I Also wanna give a shout out to some of our new and fun countries that we have listeners in this week. So we added in Nigeria. Mhmm.
Melissa:And this one's very cool and very small. Cyprus
Jam:Oh, yeah. Whatever that is.
Melissa:Island country.
Jam:It's just off of, Away from the Holy Land. Mhmm. Like, right near there.
Melissa:Yes. We also added listeners in the Holy Land Uh-huh. And in Lebanon. So we've got Lots of people there in in, what is that, the Mediterranean Sea and just off of it. Yeah.
Melissa:So that's cool and exciting. And we added a listener or 2, it's hard to say how many, in New Caledonia.
Jam:Woah.
Melissa:That's a Pacific island country.
Jam:Wait. That's awesome. I have heard of that place, but never know how much anything about
Melissa:it. Yeah. So, thank you guys so much for listening in those areas, in those countries. It's really fun to spot them. The little blue dots are adding up and just to see our entrepreneurship grow all around the world is really incredible, and we can never thank you guys enough.
Melissa:So thanks so much for listening and tuning in.
Jam:Yeah. It's totally mind blowing. Thank you all so much. Wilson and I have a lot of ideas for topics of chemistry in everyday life, but we wanna hear from you. So if you have questions or ideas, you can reach out to us on Gmail, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook atchem for your life.
Jam:That's chem, f o r, your life to share thoughts and ideas. And if you enjoy this podcast, you can subscribe on your favorite podcast app. If you really like it, you can write a review on Apple Podcasts. That helps us to be able to share chemistry with even more people.
Melissa:This episode of Chemistry For Your Life was created by Melissa Colini and Jame Robinson. Jame Robinson is our producer, and we'd like to give a special thanks to A. Kewasong and V. Garza who reviewed this episode.
