5 Ordinary Household Items That Led To Huge Discoveries

The syrup is the magma, and six rotating belts represent the Earth's tectonic plates. The belts move the syrup around, and one minute of syrupy flow represents a million years of time. If you need your own minute to get over the crushing feelings of cosmic insignificance this instills in you, we'll understand.

You good? Alright, so by observing the flow of syrup, the researchers get a sense of the effects that plate tectonics had over the course of billions of years, and what they're doing to the planet today. It's not going to fill every gap in our knowledge, but it's a new tool in the box that's already come up with a couple of theories, like the idea that volcanic lava comes from a shallower depth than we currently think. Just try not to think too hard about the implications of living on a planet that can be accurately simulated with a few tubs of corn syrup.

It works by installing an app on your phone, then leaving the phone on and facedown overnight so the camera is pointed up. The camera then scans images at around 5-15 frames per second, and sends the results to the project's servers. From there it gets pretty sciencey, but roughly one in 500 images will have some evidence of cosmic ray interaction in the form of "weakly activated" pixels that are distinguishable from random background noise.

So far, the app has only been used as a proof of concept, but the dream is to build a network across the phones of millions of science enthusiasts. Then researchers will be able to develop stronger theories about cosmic rays, taking us all one step closer to becoming a nation of X-Men.

The benefits were twofold. Researchers collected data that helped them better understand seizures, and participants could map out a history of their seizures, medication use and side effects, etc. to see what was causing them trouble. Stress and a lack of sleep were the most common triggers, while menstruation, overexertion, diet, and illness were also factors. And while it may sound like obvious advice to eat well and get enough sleep, we were up until 3:30 a.m. eating pizza topped with wings last night, because self-improvement is easier said than done. But seeing a clear pattern between problems in your life and epileptic seizures can help cut down on the fundamental unpredictability of seizures, even a little bit.

Researchers hope that in the future, they'll be able to use wearable technology to predict seizures before they happen. Unfortunately, despite thousands of hours of study, they couldn't think of literally any other reason to own an Apple Watch.

It's an issue complicated by countless variables, but the fact that some cities are increasing their minimum wage while others hold fast does give researchers some data to play with. In San Francisco, minimum wage went up 21 times between 2008 and 2016, because the cost of living in the Bay Area ranges from "What the?!" to "Nuh-uh."

One study also used Yelp data to see how restaurants fared as the cost of paying employees rose. What they discovered was that, while a restaurant with a perfect five-star Yelp rating was unaffected by wage increases, a restaurant with an average 3.5 rating saw a 14 percent increase in their likelihood of closing. They didn't say what the effect was on restaurants that had one-star ratings because something in their salads kept moving, but you can probably guess their fates for yourselves.

The conclusion was that minimum wage increases could be thinning the restaurant herd, as mediocre ones are forced to close while the popular ones survive without issue. Before you start writing your angry screeds, keep in mind that this says nothing about whether an increased minimum wage is generally good or bad for the economy. Researchers answered that question with a shrug, because research is complicated. In fact, their point is that it's too simplistic to say that a minimum wage law -- or any law -- is either good or bad for business. You also need to look at which businesses are affected, because there are huge differences between a beloved family restaurant and Sal's Roach Trap. And because this kind of research can be done with crowdsourced data like Yelp reviews, that time you got drunk and complained that a Mexican place wouldn't let you wear the hats they had on the walls could help shape public policy.

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For more, check out 5 Bizarre Accidents That Helped Invent Modern Medicine and 5 Accidental Inventions That Changed The World.

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