Original subtitles

[narrator] On this episode of How Tech Works,

well hear the sweet sounds...

of home appliances!

It's the world's first orchestra

comprised of blenders, razors

and washing machines

and, we'll learn the secret link

between an athlete's peak performance

and jet lag.

[intro music]

Hi there, and welcome to How Tech Works.

My name is Dr Basil Singer

and we have a bunch of incredible stories

from around the world of tech.

This week features some unique individuals

who are...

there's no other way to put it...

obsessed.

[narrator] We'll meet someone obsessed with feet

but not human feet

I'm talking tarantula feet!

We'll also meet a man whose obsession with toothpicks

has fueled his dream hobby...

for the past 35 years!

But first,

the person in this story

is equally obsessed with his craft

and his passion is music

but not music made from traditional instruments.

Oh, no.

This garage guru

takes 'getting the most out of your appliances,'

to a whole new level!

[narrator] In Hamburg's Saint Pauli neighborhood...

you'll find a huge bunker left over from the war.

[soft vibrant music] Today it's a studio space...

for artists and musicians...

like Michael Petermann.

[Michael Petermann] I am a classically trained

orchestra conductor and know

about the technical side of musical instruments.

[narrator] Michael loves to play the harpsichord.

[harpsichord music ends]

[narrator] He also plays...

[razors buzzing rhythmically]

electric razors...

[blades spinning]

blenders...

[sucking noises]

vacuum cleaners...

[electric motors]

and spin dryers.

[Michael] The spin dryers are some of my favorites,

because they look so shiny.

I restored and renovated them.

[spin dryer overtone]

They would create overtones and they make sounds

you would never expect from a spin dryer.

[machines noises in rhythm]

[narrator] The appliances are members of an ensemble

that Michael created.

He calls it 'The Stupid Orchestra'.

[motors spinning]

[Michael] It just popped into my mind.

I thought of, well why not

take roughly a hundred kitchen appliances,

vintage ones...

and put them together

on a computer-controlled device

and call it the Stupid Orchestra.

[narrator] Today Michael and assistant Malte Munster

are busy.

I'm in the midst of a very tight timeline,

preparing the next exhibit of the Stupid Orchestra

at the Technical Collections in Dresden.

So I have two and a half more weeks to go

to assemble everything,

to do proper wiring,

and connecting of each single appliance,

test everything and then of course

compose a new piece

which I have started today with you.

So I would like to hear them individually.

[buzzing]

A little bit distorted.

[high speed whine]

Malte, I need you again.

See, they are fighting with each other!

[narrator] Malte can help now

but composing is something

Michael must do alone.

[electronic beat]

I compose in patterns and loops that can be repeated

to begin with.

So I will find the rhythm section mostly first

for those groovy pieces.

Once the rhythm is established,

I will use the voltage controlled appliances

to find melodies that can go with that.

[narrator] Eventually the computer

will control the appliances.

[electronic whirring]

On a G sharp and the second set,

on an A.

[sporadic noise]

[narrator] But right now Michael is composing 'Hands On'

saving what he likes for playback.

Quite vicious, don't you think?

[narrator] It might be the Stupid Orchestra...

but putting it together took a lot of brainpower.

[Michael] I had to do hundreds of meters of wiring,

and putting electronics together,

and redoing all the appliances.

They all had to be taken apart

into bits and renovated. You can't just...

switch on a 50 year old vacuum cleaner.

It might run for the time being, but then it will break down.

[narrator] Malte changes the capacitors in the appliances

so they run smoothly

on the power that's being fed to them...

by a custom designed interface created by Michael.

So...

the coffee machine did not blow the fuse,

it just triggered the circuit breaker.

[narrator] It's got 128 channels.

Half of the channels turn appliances on and off.

[spinning blade]

The other channels are dimmer switches

that change voltage to the motors.

In all, four and a half tons of gear

are headed for Dresden.

[Michael] I collected all of these appliances

over the last eight years,

so I was scanning flea markets,

friends of mine were scanning on my behalf also,

then the internet was of help of course.

[narrator] A little over two weeks later

and the Stupid Orchestra is ready to perform.

The half-hour long composition is stored in Michael's laptop

The audience settles in.

A keystroke starts the whole thing.

[key tap]

[ringing]

[blenders]

[scraping]

[whirring]

[buzzing]

[Michael] When the music starts, people smile

at the way they see their

what I would say, beloved household appliances being used.

It is a completely different way of using those things

which makes them laugh and smile.

[ringing]

I love it.

[clapping]

It's my way to look at art, to look at music

with some humor...

and I still feel quite serious about it.

[musical cacophony]

Our next story

involves putting an animal on a treadmill,

a very fast animal.

As in: a thoroughbred race horse at full gallop.

You see, researchers in southwest England

have discovered a direct link between jet-lag

and athletic performance in humans

and they've done so by studying our equine friends.

What they've learned will definitely surprise you.

[narrator] In Southwest England

a racehorse is getting a workout on a giant treadmill.

[hooves on rubber]

[upbeat music]

It's not a weight loss program.

It's research into the effects of jet-lag.

Jet lag sucks.

You're wide awake in the middle of the night.

And during the day

there isn't enough coffee in Kenya

to keep you awake.

[man] It will affect your wakefulness,

your digestive tract,

your cognitive performance,

and also your physical performance.

[narrator] It can take days sometimes more than a week,

to adjust to your new time zone.

[man] So when we fly across time zones, our rhythm becomes

out of synchrony,

with a new solar time.

And that lack of synchronization

is the underlying cause of jet lag.

[narrator] Now, imagine you're a horse.

[bugle call]

Horses are the only athletes

apart from humans,

who are normally flown

across time zones for competitions.

[narrator] For high performance animals

flying across the Atlantic to race

jet lag isn't just a minor inconvenience

it's a multi-million dollar problem.

Or is it?

Are you ready to go today? Let's go, okay?

Let's go.

[narrator] Domingo Tortonese started out expecting horses

would suffer from jet lag

the same way humans do.

But what he is finding could

change the entire horse racing industry.

His research starts in a lightbox.

[Domingo] A lightbox is a light controlled room

where you manipulate the amount of light and dark

the horse has every day.

[narrator] Domingo is putting a series of horses through

a virtual trans-Atlantic flight.

At the flip of a switch the hours of daylight and darkness

shift by seven hours.

Today's subject is Kusadasi.

Yesterday he was on North American time,

but today his light-dark pattern is set to a European time zone.

[Domingo] Exercise time. Let's go to the walker.

[narrator] Everything else, including his food

and exercise routine has been kept constant.

[Domingo] So, we do 20 minutes.

[woman] Good, 20 minutes.

[narrator] Twenty minutes in an equine sized merry-go-round

and Kusadasi is ready for the treadmill.

[upbeat music]

There are many ways to judge a horse's performance.

[woman] ECC electrodes.

[narrator] So before he runs,

Kusadasi wires up.

[woman] This is our heart rate monitor.

And we use it to evaluate the heart rate of the horses

at each speed step that we do.

Okay, let's go!

[Domingo] Let's go.

Fan's going on!

[narrator] Horses have four distinct gaits.

Walk, trot, canter and gallop...

and Domingo plans to test the horse at all four speeds.

We're ready for a trot. Okay, let's go.

[narrator] At the start Kusadasi's heart rate

was just 30 beats per minute.

But it's rising quickly.

[pounding on treadmill]

[Domingo] Now he's galloping. This is the next gait.

This is a gallop. Not a canter anymore.

And the heart rate is 180.

[narrator] That's six times what he started at

but actually a little lower than normal

for a horse at this speed.

That means he isn't working as hard as expected.

Domingo also records the amount of time a horse can gallop

full out before it's exhausted.

That's where the most shocking results have come.

We found that not only jet lag

is not detrimental to a horse,

actually it helps the horse,

it improves the performance.

The horses were able to run

at full gallop, at full speed

for an additional 25 seconds.

[narrator] That's the difference

between first place prize money

and a trip back to the pasture.

You have to realize that if you are surprised about the results,

so were we.

We were extremely surprised.

[narrator] Domingo believes the cause

is an increased amount of a hormone called Prolactin.

So there was more Prolactin in the peripheral circulation

of the horse at the time

the performance tests were conducted.

[narrator] Now protraction is known to calm the mind.

Domingo believes the horses are producing more of it

to deal with the stress of time change.

He believes that since the horses are calmer,

they perform better.

That's great news for race horses

crossing the Atlantic to compete

but it doesn't really help you to get back to normal

after your long flight home.

[upbeat music fades]

Don't go away there's lots more coming up on How Tech Works.

[theme music]

Hello, and welcome back to How Tech Works.

I am Basil Singer

and I'd say it's time for a close-up look at a spider,

the tarantula.

Ooh, I hate spiders.

But not the whole tarantula fortunately, just the feet!

A researcher from Newcastle

is making some incredible discoveries

about how, when and why these enormous spiders spin silk

from their feet.

[ominous music]

[narrator] Tarantulas!

They're big, hairy and scary!

But while most people try to get as far away as possible,

Claire Rind wants to get close,

very close.

[Claire] I think I have a curiosity.

You need it as a scientist.

A sort of a fascination with the world around you.

[narrator] At her lab, Claire's out to solve a mystery

about the world's largest and heaviest spiders.

How do they climb glass?

It's occurred to a few people,

that something as big as a tarantula might have difficulty

when they go on vertical surfaces.

Because they are so heavy.

[light upbeat music]

[narrator] For smaller spiders,

their size makes climbing a breeze.

Thousands of microscopic hairs on their feet

help them cling to vertical surfaces.

It really relies on the spider not being very heavy.

[narrator] So how does a giant tarantula do it?

[Claire] There was a report,

published in Nature, that suggested that one particular

species of tarantula could secrete silk from its feet.

[narrator] All spiders can produce silk

from special glands on their abdomens

but no foot silk has ever been found.

Claire hopes to change that.

Step one, build a climbing wall.

Using microscope slides,

she lines one side of a clear aquarium.

Step two, insert tarantula.

Step three, rig a video camera to record the action.

Four, raise the wall into position.

If the feet are producing a sticky silk,

Claire should find traces of it

on the slides where the tarantula's feet are gripping.

We took the slides, and...

looked at them under the microscope,

and...

there was no silk.

[narrator] Time after time she tries, but still nothing.

I didn't really think that we would find anything.

[narrator] Time for a slightly different approach.

[Claire] We placed the spider on the microscope slides

and then raised it up to the vertical.

But this time we shook it up a little bit.

Not so much that the spider fell off

but when we videoed it, we could see,

in some instances,

the feet slipping down the microscope slides.

[narrator] As Claire scrolls across the empty-looking slide

something comes into view.

[Claire] Ahh!

[soft drumming music]

There we see the fine silk that the spider has left

when it's begun to slip.

It was a real surprise

and shock that we had actually found something.

And then the precision of it.

Whenever, the video showed that there was a slip

in this position, when we inspected

that there was 20 or 30 strands of silk.

[narrator] These ultra-fine strands are the first ever proof

that these spiders can secrete silk from their feet.

But Claire still wants more answers.

We wanted to know, what structures there were

on the feet, that could be producing this silk.

[narrator] To dig even deeper, Claire brings the University's

scanning electron microscope onto the case.

[Claire] That view is looking right down on the foot

-so that's the top of it? -[woman] Right.

[narrator] Inspecting the foot of a dead tarantula

they can blow the image up to 500,000 times its regular size.

At first, it looks like the same as any other spider foot,

covered with a forest of tiny hairs.

Then they spot something. A different kind of hair

poking out far above the canopy.

It was amazing an amazing thing.

We saw these hairs, which in many cases had little holes

at the ends and we did find there were still some tiny

fibers of silk which we see emerging from these hairs.

[narrator] With the puzzle pieces in place,

Claire has finally solved the case of the climbing tarantula.

But now, a new mystery awaits.

The fact is that there are only seven sorts of spider silk known

and could this be number eight?

[narrator] Pound for pound spider silk is known to be

one of the strongest materials on earth.

Could this foot silk be even stronger?

That question should keep Claire and her tarantulas

busy for a while.

Okay, so you think you're dedicated to your craft?

You work late hours.

You've done it for a number of years.

Well, we know catch up with an artist in San Francisco

whose taken dedication to new heights.

In fact he's spent nearly a lifetime on his craft.

And his medium of choice?

Toothpicks.

Lots and lots of toothpicks!

[upbeat music]

This toothpick is from Portugal.

This toothpick is from Bali.

These came from Morocco.

These toothpicks are from Africa.

These came from the top of Mount Kilimanjaro!

[narrator] Scott Weaver likes toothpicks.

He likes them a lot.

[laughing]

Combine that with his other love - San Francisco,

and the result is one of a kind.

The largest, interactive, toothpick structure

in the world.

This is 'Rolling Thru The Bay' Nine feet by eight feet,

thirty inches deep.

It has 104,387 toothpicks in it.

[narrator] Wow! Scott has spent over 36 years,

and thousands of hours working on it.

3,347 hours.

This week I've probably put in 20 hours.

Just don't let my wife know.

[laughing] She's at work.

[narrator] And if that wasn't enough,

What makes it a unique toothpick structure

is its ping-pong ball tours.

[upbeat music]

I've always said I'm gonna blow people’s minds one day

with this thing!

So it kind of shocks them, "What? It works?" you know,

as the balls tinker down.

[narrator] He's had close to 80 balls moving through it at once.

Why? Why not?

Over time, I thought of just the main

classic landmarks of San Francisco,

The Cole Tower, Transamerica building,

[unintelligible]

Lombard street, cable cars. The whole bit.

Those are classics.

[narrator] And yet the work never seems to end.

These are actual toothpicks from the 40s

that someone donated to me...

just recently!

[narrator] So into the sculpture they go.

It's a sticky process.

I put a little glue on my hand

as my palette.

I dip...

glue...

touch.

As soon as you dip and touch that toothpick,

you gotta let it sit for 15 minutes.

I use my next toothpick as a tool

to slide that one over about 1/64 of an inch.

Toothpicks are my tools too!

On the palm trees,

I do what's called the pressure technique.

I push in, and let it snap.

Only a little bit...

ten or 11 snaps and it has a perfect arch to it.

People think I'm an engineering genius.

[laughs] It's mostly trial and error.

If it works, I let it work!

[narrator] But the structure really started 'working'

when Scott batted around the idea of ping pong balls.

It just came to me, at some point.

I put a ball in it and I saw it roll.

So I altered its path, I put toothpicks going up

so the balls would roll different ways...

and it gave it life. And I wanted more life

so I kept building bigger and bigger and bigger!

[narrator] The balls and Scott are your tour guide,

as they roll through the toothpick city.

It starts up at the top of Colt Tower,

spirals down 10 times on the inside of the tower.

Behind the Transamerica building

it has my face looking up into my vision.

From the Cliff House they're now coming down Lombard Street,

behind my grandmother's house, 518 12th avenue.

They come down into the Palace of Fine Arts,

it has my heart that I left in San Francisco in it.

It goes across Golden Gate Bridge,

looking off the bridge you can see Humphrey the famous humpback

whale splashing goodbye to us,

ending in Flyshacker Pool at Ghirardelli Square,

which makes no geographical sense whatsoever!

[narrator] Scott's structure will be touring museums

across the U.S., but first, one last check before it moves out.

[upbeat music]

[Scott] Five day trip across the States

and this thing will make it just fine.

I'm really proud that it's getting out there.

The dream is coming true.

You've been watching How Tech Works.

I'm Basil Singer and I'll see you next time.

[ending music]