Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Welcome to the Rest of Science.
I'm Hannah Fry. And I'm Michael Stevens. Today on this episode of Field Notes, I've brought some very cool things that are important to me.
Chapter 2: What does Michael Stevens bring to the episode?
And I'm going to just ask that you indulge me as I nerd out about mechanical pencils. Cool.
Oh, this is a kind of nerding out I can get behind, Michael Stevens.
I try to nerd out to everyone I meet about this. And by everyone I meet, I mean my wife and daughter. My daughter's into it. My wife is just done with all the little things that I need to say about mechanical pencils. But today, I'm going to get it out of my system.
Okay. Do we need to make this into a two-parter, three-parter, seven-parter?
I think it's going to be a new podcast.
Okay.
Yeah. Or we just have a third episode every week, you know, for the rest of time.
Hopefully not. My goal is to get to a point where I'm exactly happy with all the features. It's exactly what I want. And I think I'm gonna have to make it myself.
Okay. All right. Well, this is something for us to look forward to. Yeah. Let's get on with it. This episode is brought to you by Cancer Research UK.
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Chapter 3: Why does Michael prefer mechanical pencils over pens?
One of those like conversion stories. Yeah. I thought pencils were ridiculous. And honestly, it began with my father who did crossword puzzles every day. The New York Times crossword. Oh, nice. And you know how they get harder through the week. And he was very adamant that you do it in pen. Confidence. Commitment. Confidence. Commitment. Being bold. Pencils were for people who were like...
well, I'm not really sure. Is this the answer? Well, we'll erase it later. And he's like, grow up. When you commit to a letter, it's the way it is. Yeah, he's a hardliner. And I said, that's me. And I made this my mantra. And I got really into pens. And I had my favorite types of pens. And the pens said they were archival quality pens, that the ink was waterproof and fade proof.
And that was all a lie. Oh, go on. So I have... a shelf of notebooks of all of my ideas and thoughts and everything. It's not really a journal and maybe it journals my thoughts, but I fill these notebooks up and I've got them on a shelf and they're all in pen. Well, one day I had like four of them that kind of all together had all my thoughts about some topic.
Had them in a bag with an energy drink. I was an energy drinker back then and they were just in like a little plastic bag and the energy drink exploded in the bag. spilled liquid all over the journals and it just washed the ink away. I'd say about two thirds of each journal lost. Like I can't even tell what it used to say because the ink bled through the pages and these were moleskin notebooks.
I'm going to name brands, okay? It was a sugar-free rockstar energy drink that spilled on moleskin notebooks. That's why you're not allowed to have energy jinx in libraries, you know? I know now. Yeah. I know now. Human knowledge, it's too fragile. Wait, all three of the notebooks. Many of the pages are just I can't even recreate what they were. I had I quickly dried them.
I put them on a heater and I they're dry. They're all crispy and wrinkled up now. They don't shut all the way. And so much of what was in them is lost. So I looked into it and I found that like pencils are just better.
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Chapter 4: What is the significance of the dark genome in cancer research?
You can't wash them away, essentially. They don't wash away, but they erase everything. Here's the thing. They can be erased, but they scratch the paper so much they leave a groove. You can see it. Like it is a frustrating part of pencils is that when you try to erase, you can always tell.
There's always a ghost left, even like a mechanical, actual physical groove in the paper where it was scratched. But that means it's still there. Rockstar energy drinks can't get rid of that.
OK, here's a question, though, because what about the indelible mark that those notes made on your mind? Right. Because the thing is, is that if they were really, really good ideas, you wouldn't have forgotten them.
Yeah, I haven't forgotten the details. I can kind of get a sense of like, oh, this is more stuff about philosophy of the past. But the exact words are important to me. In fact, some of the words I would scratch them out and I would like choose a different word. I want to see that process. And that's all gone with pencil. You're talking about carbon on the paper. It's not going to fade again.
It can be erased, but there's still something left. Whereas my ink journals gone.
I mean, because there are some people, I remember talking to, I think it's Stephen Moffat, the guy who writes, who wrote Sherlock, the one with Benedict Cumberbatch.
I remember having a chat with him once and he was saying that actually, a lot of the time, he doesn't write down his ideas for the purpose that the act of him managing to remember them or not demonstrates whether it was actually ever a good idea. And he said, he was like... Having a really amazing idea is like being complimented by God, right?
And like, what, you're just going to forget being complimented by God? No.
I think that's a little lie he tells himself. I think that there are a lot of good ideas that you still don't remember. Okay. Even if they're good, I don't think that's enough to trust that the idea won't go away. And I also think that some bad ideas are worth keeping because of what they can inspire later.
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Chapter 5: How did Michael's experience with ink lead to his pencil preference?
I need to get as many different modules in my brain involved to really remember, own and move forward with an idea. It can't just be, oh, I thought it or I typed it or I voice recorded it. I need the muscles to get into it. And then I really I really have that idea. So I write and I fill up notebooks of stuff for.
For the fiction that I read, I don't underline stuff because I didn't get indelibly deep enough into my brain. I copy down verbatim. Is it all longhand? Hang on, your writing is so tiny. It has to be tiny in order to... He's got two lines per line, people.
Two lines per line. This is like, do you remember when, well, do you remember Darwin when he went off on his voyage? I remember, yeah. The paper was really short, so he would write like this, and then he would also write like that, and then sometimes like that. And if you're really careful, you could actually decipher all of it. It's incredibly neat.
I think pencil's just a bit smudgy though, you know. Gandalf continues, other evils there are that may come for Sauron is himself but a servant or emissary. You really are writing down the quotes.
I really am writing down the quotes. So obviously that's from when I was reading Lord of the Rings. And look at what kind of notebook I'm using, by the way. It's not... That earlier brand I mentioned, it is right in the rain, all weather universal. Oh. So this is waterproof paper. Yeah. And so pens actually don't really work on it.
I think you can use maybe a permanent marker, but pencils work best. And the same company that makes these waterproof journals also makes pencils. I mean, a pencil, it can get wet, whatever, you get a new one, but they make waterproof mechanical pencils as well. So that's what I'm using now. And I have, because I bike to and from work and it'll rain on them while they're in my pocket.
And they're just like, I don't care. And I'm like, finally, I feel so much stronger. And then the question became, what type of pencil do I use? And my favorite is wooden pencils.
All right.
I mean, I think classic lines. It's classic. The feel of it is great. What kind of softness are we talking here? 2B? Oh, I'm talking 4H.
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Chapter 6: What happens to fizzy drink bubbles in zero gravity?
B is soft. B means black because soft graphite will just it'll smear off onto the page so thickly that the line is very black. B for black. In the other direction, you get into the H leads where H means hard. These are hard. There's less clay in the graphite. So the line that it leaves is much fainter. It's almost more of a silvery color, but it doesn't, of course, wear down as fast.
It'll keep a sharp point for longer. There are some 4Hs. Mark Art makes a 4H that is actually still quite dark, but it's like you're scratching a needle on the paper. And I love the physicality of like, I'm doing this to you.
Ha ha ha.
You know, but a soft like you're using like a 6B. You're just smudging around paint on the page, basically.
You're massaging the paper into something brilliant.
It's too kind. It's too massagey. I need to be scratching and tattooing the page. So problem. Wooden pencils. You have to sharpen. Eventually, they get too short. They don't really fit in your hand very well. Also, I became too obsessed with constantly sharpening my pencils. And so I would write a sentence and then halfway through it, I'd be like, I could give this a few more cranks.
So I moved on to mechanical pencils. And mechanical pencils, you know, you can get lead of any kind of softness or hardness that you want. You can also get mechanical pencils with different lead widths. So you can get thinner and thinner leads, which simulate a sharper and sharper pencil.
Mm hmm.
Now, where should I begin? Here's what I'll say. For the last few months, my go-to pencil has been the Graphgear 500 0.3 millimeter with H lead. And it's this one right here. And here's what I'm proposing. I think that we should write with these on a sheet of paper. And I don't know if we can do this. The producers can tell me.
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Chapter 7: How did early scientists misunderstand sperm's composition?
I don't know if we'll bid that way. But yeah, leave us comments anyway, because it's good for engagement.
This also, this feels a bit like, you know that scene in American Psycho where they're comparing their business cards? Yes. I think it was when you gave me the exact name of this. What was it called again?
The Graph Gear 500. Now that's 0.3 millimeter lead, which is quite thin. It's very thin. Usually a mechanical pencil that you might find like in an office supply closet is going to be a 0.7 millimeter. It's still very thin, but I love the amount of control I have with such a thin lead. It's almost like it slows me down and it makes me write more legibly.
Wow. I think it's quite scratchy.
You think it's too scratchy?
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Chapter 8: What are gravitational waves and why are they beautiful?
Well, that's H lead as well.
So it's hard for me. I mean, look, it was a continuous experience, right? Like if you get a really hard pencil, I find it scratchy in sort of the lead doesn't flow smoothly across the table. It sort of catches almost. But yeah, it is like writing with a needle.
Yes, it is. OK, so let me give you the opposite. Now, this is a pencil that is known as the Rotring 600, and it is a completely metal body. This is much heavier. This one has a lead indicator on the end. So I can actually dial in which kind of lead I've put in it. So you don't forget. Yeah. And it's 0.5 millimeter lead. So this is thicker. Also, this is incredibly soft.
This pencil, let me just make sure it's working before I hand it to you. Because some of the leads have broken inside.
I don't actually know what lead is made from. Because it's obviously not lead.
It's not made from lead, the metal. Good question. It's made from graphite, which is a form of carbon, an allotrope of carbon, just like a diamond. But the atoms are arranged differently. But there are other things added to it to make it either stronger or softer. Like I think pure graphite would be extremely soft.
That would be like a thing that you would it's like a piece of chalk and you would be really putting down a lot. Pure graphite, I think, would be a little too hard. But you can add like clay or something to it to make it soft enough that it's smooth.
Because if you get pure graphite and you rub it, I mean, you can basically get down to like incredibly thin layers of graphite.
That's right. That's right. OK, so when it comes to again, just to give you context, pencil leads range from B to H and the number before the letter is a degree of blackness or hardness. So like a 6B is much softer than a 2B. The number two pencil that we use in school is right in the middle. It's an HB. So it's a hard black. It's right in the middle.
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