Dirt bikes, flat earthers and illegal drugs
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How did the show open and introduce Dr Karl and motocross stories?
This is a Triple J podcast.
Hey, you're listening to Science with Dr. Carl on Triple J. Sam Lane here with you. I was filling in for Lucy this week and it was a banger. We covered a lot of things from helping someone whose friend doesn't believe in gravity to talking to a professional motocross racer. This episode had it all. Dr. Carl, hello.
Good morning. How are you? It's lovely to be working with you again, Dr. Sam.
Yes, we're back. We're ready. I mean, I'm bringing my expertise of year seven accelerated science to the table and I'm ready to party.
Let me talk about the motorbikes and the motocross people.
Yes, motocross people.
Do you know that by the time They're up and running and fully professional. They've broken one-sixth of the bones in their body. Wow. So that's about 37 bones out of 216.
I imagine it's collarbones, shoulders. Collarbones are the most frequently broken bone in a body. Nose?
No, they've got the helmet on. Oh, and legs and stuff. And... There's two Robbies, Robbie Adelberg, Robbie Morrison, and they're sort of like the Evel Knievel. I think it's Middleton, Middleton. Okay, here's a question for you without notice. You ready for it? Oh, God. Here we go. Yep. At what age did the two Robbies start riding motorbikes?
Give me six years old. Three.
Mate, can you imagine? So they're three years old. They can't speak words properly, right? They're toilet trained and everything. They're riding around on motorbikes and on their little properties with their parents and they still believe in Santa and the Tooth Fairy. That's so fun. Oh, my God, isn't it a weird thing? And then when Robbie Middleton wanted to learn how to do a backflip, he went to the University of Sydney and spoke to a physicist and she took him through it And on average, to be able to do a backflip from when you decide is two years. Two years? Two years of training. How long did it take him? I think it was two years. He was the guy who actually jumped the Arc de Triomphe.
Oh, my goodness.
Exactly.
And I love how the parents are still okay with, like, he's broken so many bones, but he just loves it. And I think that's beautiful.
And they're different from you and me. They don't have fear in the way that you and I have. And also they seem to heal from their broken bones a lot better. And when they're doing that, when they're doing a backflip, That's three quarters of a turn or a forward flip. That's one and a quarter turns. There's only three people in the world who can do a forward flip. And they've got a phrase where they want to land RSD, which stands for rubber side down. RSD. RSD. And during their flight from takeoff to landing, over three seconds, they'll have their hands on the handlebars and then shift their body around so it's at right angles to the bike in a straight line. And then they'll grab the actual handles, the seat, and then occasionally they'll let go of the bike entirely.
And during that three-second window, there are these two lumps of matter, a human and a motorbike, travelling through the air, and they have to join up to it. And they do this complicated thing with tucking in and moving out to change their rate of spin... So they land RSD. But also during the actual three-second flight, they might flick the accelerator on and you'll see the occasional one and occasional two puffs of smoke, all of this in three seconds. OMG.
Oh, my goodness. Well, that's one reason that I'm never going to be a professional motor biker. But we have some callers on the line with their questions. Coco in the gong. What's your question?
Hi, doctors.
I was just wondering how do one-way mirrors work?
They're not strictly one way, but they work on having one side light and one side dark. And you can see this in the daytime when you're in an office building. And even though you've got lights on inside the office building, it's much brighter outside. And so unless it's really bright inside, basically the glass... It just reflects you. But then at nighttime, when it's really dark outside and the lights on the inside are just as bright, you can see in, but they can't.
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