That Storm Over There 🌪 (10/22/20)
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Description
🌬️ Find out why this year we're naming hurricanes with Greek letters 🤑 Learn about an unexpected side effect of the Covid-19 pandemic: a national coin shortage 🐠 Visit an aquarium in North Carolina where they’ve figured out how to put their coins to good use ⁉️ Trivia Question of the Day: What artifact was recently sold at auction for $31.8 million and set a new world record?
Links
🌬️ Interested in hurricane names? Read the whole List of 2020 Hurricane Names For The Season
🤑 Want to understand the national coin shortage? The Federal Reserve can answer Why Do U.S. Coins Seem to be in Short Supply?
💨 Read more about this episode's Fun Fact, "does wind make it’s own sound?" at Science Made Fun
⁉️ Get to know Stan, the object of that record-setting auction in our Trivia Question of the Day over at CNN.com
📧 Do you have a story to tell us? A comment? A question??? Email us at: hello@thetennews.com
🎇 Join us on Instagram: The Ten News on Instagram
Transcript
Bethany Van Delft: [00:00:00] Hey there, I'm Bethany Van Delft. And this is The Ten News, the show where in the time it takes to gather up all the loose change around your house, we find out what's up in the world.
[00:00:12] In today's episode, we'll get acquainted with storms by their names, find out why quarters are currently hard to come by, visit an aquarium that made change in a pretty unexpected way, and find out what very unusual artifact was just recently sold at auction for a whopping $31.8 million.
[00:00:35] Stick around till the end of The Ten to find out. Okay, let's get into The Ten News.
[00:00:41] Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four three, two , one.
[00:00:48] This year's hurricane season has been stormier than usual producing a record number of named storms. So what's the deal in named storms anyway? [00:01:00] Let's go to friend of The Ten Lane Farber from the Nature Nerds podcast for an explanation.
Laine Farber: [00:01:10] Laura, Marco, Nana, and Omar. These are just a few of the many named storms which have formed in the Atlantic Ocean this very busy hurricane season. That's right, hurricanes have names just like you and me. Meteorologists, AKA, the scientists who study weather, name hurricanes for the same reason people have names, simplicity.
[00:01:34] Imagine, if you didn't have a name, your teacher would just call you "that kid over there." It works the same way for storms. Instead of saying "that storm over there," scientists give the storm a name. It makes things so much easier. It's important for meteorologists to be able to identify and talk about storms in the easiest way possible, because storms can be very dangerous. The most [00:02:00] powerful and dangerous storms we have in the United States are called hurricanes.
[00:02:04] Hurricanes are massive swirling storms of wind and rain that form over tropical waters. Now strap in for a few science facts. Hurricanes are created when warm water is met by strong winds. The wind causes large amounts of warm water to evaporate. The water vapor rises up into the atmosphere where it cools. Once it's cool, the water vapor condenses into big stormy cumulus, nimbus clouds. The wind pushes the clouds, which start to swirl. And once the spinning winds reached 74 miles per hour, a hurricane is born.
[00:02:44] Hurricanes are naturally occurring phenomenon. They've been happening for thousands of years. However, some scientists believe that humans may be responsible for the increased frequency and intensity of hurricanes in recent years. [00:03:00] Whether climate change has a direct effect on extreme weather events is a highly debated topic at the moment.
[00:03:06] But research from NASA suggests hurricanes are getting stronger due to rising global temperatures. This makes a lot of sense when you think about what causes hurricanes - warm water and wind. 2020 has been a super active hurricane season. In fact, it's so busy that meteorologists have officially run out of names.
[00:03:33] Yup. They ran out. Each year, the national hurricane center moves its way down an alphabetized list of 21 pre-approved names. This year, the final name on the list was Wilbur, which got checked off the list back in mid September. With a little less than two months of hurricane season left meteorologists have begun naming storms with letters from the Greek alphabet, and we've already made it to Delta. [00:04:00] Fingers crossed that meteorologists don't run out of letters, who knows what they call the next storm.
[00:04:06] My vote's for "that storm over there."
Bethany Van Delft: [00:04:15] What would you name a hurricane? Send us your ideas at hello@thetennews.com. And you might just get a shout out from us. Hey, hurricane, shout out and make sure to check out Lane's podcast, Nature Nerds.
[00:04:36] Did you know that wind doesn't make a sound until it passes through or comes into contact with something? Kind of blows your mind? Doesn't it. But dumb, ching.
[00:04:51] Have you noticed signs at businesses lately asking customers to pay with exact change? Turns out toilet paper wasn't the only shortage caused by the [00:05:00] coronavirus pandemic. To find out more. Let's go to our correspondent, Pamela Kirkland and our friend Sammy.
Pamela Kirkland: [00:05:08] Do you have a piggy bank full of coins sitting at home?
[00:05:12] Well, that might be a problem. One unexpected side effect of the COVID-19 pandemic is it has plunged the nation into a national coin shortage. You may have seen signs at stores, and restaurants asking people to pay with exact change, only. It's something that's hurting businesses that need coins to operate every day.
Sammy: [00:05:36] Why can't stores just give me change?
[00:05:39] Because coins aren't being spent as much as they would be. And banks that would usually give rolls of coins to restaurants, stores, and other places are holding onto their share of coins too. Pennies dimes, nickels and quarters aren't as available as they used to be.
[00:05:56] So why can't we just make some more coins?
Pamela Kirkland: [00:05:59] Well, the U S mint, the place where coins are made, says it's not a supply issue. Earlier this year, the US Mint produced fewer corns than normal to keep their employees safe. But they're making as many coins as they can. A whopping 1.6, 5 billion coins were minted in June.
[00:06:20] The problem is that we're holding all the coins in spare changed drawers or that one weird water jug your parents have that's full of pennies.
Sammy: [00:06:32] What can kids do to help?
Pamela Kirkland: [00:06:33] The U S mint is asking if you'd think about breaking that piggy bank open to spend some of that change, you've been saving or head to one of those coin dispensers or a bank, they'll take your change and give you some crisp dollar bills to take home.
[00:06:48] And fun fact, a coin can remain in circulation for up to 30 years while paper bills are usually retired after only 18 months.
Bethany Van Delft: [00:06:59] I didn't [00:07:00] know that Pamela. And I have a fun fact for you. Earlier this year, two teenagers in Israel, unearthed and 1100 year old clay jar containing 425 ancient gold coins. Experts say the buried treasure discovered during an archeological date. Would have been worth a small fortune at the time it was hidden. What's the takeaway? If you're going to hide something valuable, draw yourself, a map, so you can find it again. Mom, mom, have you seen my 1100 year old clay jar? It's got my gold coins in it.
[00:07:37] Next panel, Pamela takes us to an aquarium in North Carolina where the coin shortage isn't a problem at all. In fact, they've figured out a way to put their spare change to good use.
Liz Baird: [00:07:54] My name is Liz Baird and I'm the Director of the North Carolina Aquarium at Pinal Shores. We [00:08:00] have been closed to the public since mid March. We took advantage of not having the public here and have spent a lot of time, uh, refreshing, um, paint on the walls and power washing the wooden railings at the front, and really trying to make sure that when we are allowed to bring them guests back, that they are greeted with a sparkling, um, clean and bright aquarium that may have a few new additions.
Pamela Kirkland: [00:08:29] And so I want to get to what you guys did in terms of emptying the waterfall.
Liz Baird: [00:08:36] We decided to turn off the waterfall, it was because we were looking at cost saving measures, and one of the ideas was to save electricity and water use by turning off the waterfall. And when somebody is, I said, Hey, well, if we're turning it off, why don't we clean it out?
[00:08:52] I thought, Oh, that's a great idea. That's something we can't do very easily while we have the public here with us. So we spent the better [00:09:00] part of a day and a half, uh, shoveling buckets of coins and rocks and mud and strange things that have been dropped into the waterfall out of the bottom of the waterfall, and then cleaning the coins and realizing that we had many more coins than I had ever imagined.
Pamela Kirkland: [00:09:19] So what was the grand total that you ended up collecting?
Liz Baird: [00:09:23] The grand total was $8,563 and 71 cents.
Pamela Kirkland: [00:09:31] That's amazing. Not bad for just cleaning out a water feature.
Liz Baird: [00:09:35] Not bad at all. Of course it had not been cleaned out for nearly 15 years. And so I, it, it was really shocking to me. I was one of the folks who climbed down into the bottom of the waterfall to help dig coins out.
[00:09:50] And there were times that I was standing in, you know, four or five inches of coins.
Pamela Kirkland: [00:09:55] Wow. And so it's two fold. You're helping the country in the [00:10:00] middle of a national coin shortage, and you're also helping the aquarium that's not getting as much funding right now since it's closed to the public.
[00:10:08] Thank you so much.
Liz Baird: [00:10:10] Thank you so much. And I hope that you'll get a chance to come visit us and see our terrific exhibits.
Bethany Van Delft: [00:10:21] It's time for your trivia question of the day. What unusual artifact was recently sold at an auction for a whopping $31.8 million? Was it A) a pair of queen Victoria the first's underpants B) the world's largest collection of petrified fish heads. Or C) a T Rex skeleton.
[00:10:47] Did you guess it? The answer is C. At an auction for modern and impressionist art, a 40 foot [00:11:00] long T Rex fossil known as Stan made a big impact when he sold for a cool $31.8 million. Which begs the question, where exactly does one keep a 40 foot T-Rex skeleton named Stan? You would be the talk of the town if you kept that in your yard, better yet on your front lawn.
[00:11:23] And in case you were wondering, Queen Victoria, the first's underpants fetched a mere $16,300 when they sold. At an auction in 2015. Yuck!
[00:11:34] Times up! That's the end of The Ten for today. You can catch new episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. The Ten News is a co production of Small, But Mighty Media in collaboration with Next Chapter Podcasts and distributed by iHeart Radio. The Ten News writing team is led by editorial director, Tracy Crooks with contributions from Steven Tompkins and Pamela Kirkland.
[00:11:58] The creative producer is [00:12:00] Jenner Pascua. Marketing is led by Jacob Bronstein with web support by Adam Pharr, editing and sound designed by Pete Musto under the production direction of Jeremiah Tittle. Executive Producer, Donald Albright and show creator Tracy Leeds Kaplan round out the team. If you have a question about the show, a story idea, or just a fun fact, you want to share, email us at hello@thetennews.com.
[00:12:25] And don't forget to subscribe, rate and review The Ten News on Apple podcasts. iHeart Radio, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Now, go spend those coins in your piggy bank. Don't tell your parents, I said to do that!
