Dubsmith

I Wonder Why?

Questions about the world, answered in about ten minutes with real footage.

New episode

A Moon Rocket Can Throw Off Your GPS

GPS corrects for the ionosphere with a model of an ordinary day; rocket exhaust empties that charged layer, so the correction is wrong by metres until it refills.

Episode 138:08

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The one-minute versions

One reveal from an episode in each Short. All Shorts on YouTube

  1. One of the men who measured a rocket's hole in the sky wrote the guess your GPS uses
  2. Self-steering tractors across the Midwest wandered off their rows. The Sun did it
  3. The biggest hole a rocket ever tore in the sky came from a much smaller burn
  4. A moon rocket left a hole in the sky over 4,000 km long
  5. Perth's petrol stations must tell the government tomorrow's price. Their margins doubled
  6. Why would a petrol station raise its price, then cut it a cent at a time, again and again?
  7. Before the noon rule, a German petrol station changed its price 22 times a day.
  8. Americans complained their dishwashers took too long. So fast ones got their own rules.
  9. This washing machine's eco wash takes 3 h 39 min. That's Europe's legal limit
  10. Your washing machine's eco programme takes 3.5 hours. It's slow on purpose.
  11. This Hisense washing machine takes over 25 hours to wash and dry one load.
  12. Germany said petrol may only get pricier once a day, at noon. Then the noon jump grew

Every episode so far

Each one starts from a news story and asks why it works that way.

  1. 12 The 25-Hour Washing Machine 8:11
  2. 11 Germany Tried to Calm Petrol Prices. They Went Up 8:22
  3. 10 Someone Hacked the Supermarket Freezers 8:19
  4. 09 84% Said Stop. Europe Kept Changing Its Clocks 8:07
  5. 08 Your 100% Renewable Power Might Be Norwegian Paperwork 8:57
  6. 07 This Ski Track Is Made of Last Winter's Snow 7:25
  7. 06 Never Bring This Flower to a French Dinner 8:35
  8. 05 The US Dropped Poisoned Mice on Guam. On Purpose 8:45
  9. 04 Turkey Publishes a List of Fake Food. With the Brands. 7:23
  10. 03 This Glacier Slides Up to 20 cm a Day Above a Village 8:48
  11. 02 Why a Japanese Town Paid ¥100 a Beetle 8:20
  12. 01 Why Slovakia Has Spent 54 Years Building One Motorway 8:25

Read every episode as an article

Most watched

This Ski Track Is Made of Last Winter's Snow

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