Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Tracy P. Wilson and I'm Polly Fry. Now, some
Speaker 1: people just do so much stuff that they cannot be
Speaker 1: contained in one podcast episode. It's happening today. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: is a fertile ground of information. I know. It's so.
Speaker 1: I feel like sometimes we talk about scientists whose achievements
Speaker 1: are particular to one field, maybe not like the exact
Speaker 1: same narrow field of study, but at least in the
Speaker 1: same basic neighborhood of science. The person that we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about today and in our next episode is
Speaker 1: Luis W. Alvarez. And he was a physicist who's broad
Speaker 1: interests wound up connecting him to some of the twentieth
Speaker 1: centuries most history making moments, including the bombing of Hiroshima
Speaker 1: and the assassination and of John F. Kennedy. His work
Speaker 1: was just so diverse and groundbreaking that he was nicknamed
Speaker 1: the wild idea Man of physics, and rightly so. Uh
Speaker 1: As if that all wasn't enough, he and his son
Speaker 1: also did groundbreaking work into the history of the world.
Speaker 1: They came up with what's now accepted as the most
Speaker 1: sort of popular theory on what happened to the dinosaurs.
Speaker 1: So we're already all over the map. We're really all
Speaker 1: over the map. Yeah, because of the breadth of his accomplishments.
Speaker 1: We're going to talk about him in two episodes, and
Speaker 1: so in this one we're going to talk about his
Speaker 1: early life and his education, which scattered as it was,
Speaker 1: became really formative in how he wound up approaching the
Speaker 1: world of science. We're also going to talk about some
Speaker 1: of his more theoretical work in physics, so that would
Speaker 1: be a really dense place to end the episode, so
Speaker 1: so that we don't leave on that note of here
Speaker 1: is some physics that many people will have trouble understanding.
Speaker 1: We're also going to talk about some of his groundbreaking
Speaker 1: work on radar during World War Two, which is much
Speaker 1: easier to talk about in a practical way. In the
Speaker 1: second part of the episode, we will continue to talk
Speaker 1: about the World War two story with his work in
Speaker 1: the nuclear weapons program before we get into this unexpected
Speaker 1: role that he grew into. It is sort of a
Speaker 1: scientific mystery solver. Again, all over the map. I It's
Speaker 1: like if it's one of those biographies that if you
Speaker 1: just read it out of context, without knowing who this
Speaker 1: person was or even the particular world events, you would
Speaker 1: be like, this is the wildest fiction ever? Does this
Speaker 1: author have no direction? Well, and we are in the
Speaker 1: very lucky position that he wrote an autobiography which you
Speaker 1: can get in read and he was a character. So
Speaker 1: I recommend that if you find these two episodes interesting,
Speaker 1: there is so so, so much more because even with
Speaker 1: two episodes, there are various side trips and other ancillary
Speaker 1: things that we're going to just skip completely over because
Speaker 1: there is too much. So let's start at the beginning. Yeah.
Speaker 1: He was born in San Francisco on June thirteenth, nineteen eleven.
Speaker 1: His parents were Walter C. And Harriet Smythe Alvarez. Most
Speaker 1: people during his life called him by the nickname Louis,
Speaker 1: and that just feels a little film of familiar to
Speaker 1: me when you see him, when you when you see
Speaker 1: his name in in academic writing, he's he's called Louise,
Speaker 1: but his friends called him Louis, And just because that
Speaker 1: nickname feels a little familiar, we're going to stick with
Speaker 1: Louise today. Uh. And his grandfather on his father's side
Speaker 1: was born in Spain. I mean he lost his parents
Speaker 1: at quite a young age, and he moved to Cuba
Speaker 1: as a teenager, and from there he moved to the
Speaker 1: US and became a doctor. And his mother's family was
Speaker 1: actually from Ireland, which is kind of a fun combination. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so he had a Spanish and Irish heritage. Louise's father
Speaker 1: was Walter Alvarez, who was a noted physician who did
Speaker 1: medical research in the morning and worked in family practice
Speaker 1: in the afternoons. Walter became a research physiologist at the
Speaker 1: Mayo Clinic and worked as a clinician there after the
Speaker 1: Great Depression, and after he retired, he wrote a syndicated
Speaker 1: newspaper column and became known as America's family doctor. And
Speaker 1: one piece of advice that Walter gave to his son,
Speaker 1: in Louise's own words, were, my father advised me to
Speaker 1: sit every few months in my reading chair for an
Speaker 1: entire evening, closed my eyes and try to think of
Speaker 1: new problems to solve. I took his advice very seriously
Speaker 1: and have been glad ever since that I did. This
Speaker 1: was definitely great advice. It is when Louise was very
Speaker 1: young and living in California, he had to stay in
Speaker 1: bed for about a year because of a suspected heart condition.
Speaker 1: During this time, his mother taught him at home, and
Speaker 1: that went on until he got to about second grade.
Speaker 1: Luise was interested in science and electronics from a very
Speaker 1: early age. He would go to the lab with his
Speaker 1: father and he liked to use the tools in his
Speaker 1: father's shop to make sir katry. When he was eleven,
Speaker 1: he and his father made a radio together from a kid,
Speaker 1: which doesn't sound like a big deal today, but radio's
Speaker 1: were not uh everywhere the way they are now. They
Speaker 1: weren't zy to assemble. This is a couple of years
Speaker 1: ahead of radio is becoming ubiquitous, so they were still
Speaker 1: kind of a new technology in the household at that point.
Speaker 1: When he got to high school, Luise went to Polytechnic
Speaker 1: High School rather than going into a college prep program,
Speaker 1: even though his plan was to go to college, and
Speaker 1: this was because of his love of electronics and mechanics.
Speaker 1: He could focus a lot of his study at this
Speaker 1: high school on those more practical skills, and he was
Speaker 1: one of the few students enrolled there who was pursuing
Speaker 1: a more academic program rather than a straight up technical one.
Speaker 1: Luise was actually still in high school when his father
Speaker 1: got the job offer at the Mayo Clinic and the
Speaker 1: family moved to Rochester, Minnesota, from California, where they had
Speaker 1: been living in February. The big change in their lifestyle. Yes,
Speaker 1: so a winter moved from h warm and delightful to
Speaker 1: the more northern parts of the States which get very,
Speaker 1: very cold, is a pretty huge gearship. It went from
Speaker 1: sonny and beautiful to cold and snowy very immediately, and
Speaker 1: he enrolled in Rochester High School, which did not have
Speaker 1: the same technical focus as Polytechnic High had. So Luis
Speaker 1: got an apprenticeship in the Mayo Clinics instrument shop, and
Speaker 1: his father, who noticed his love of what he was doing,
Speaker 1: got one of the Mayo clinics and machinists to tutor
Speaker 1: him on the weekends as well. So he was really
Speaker 1: able to maintain his mechanical interests and keep up with
Speaker 1: that study even though his school wasn't focused on mechanics.
Speaker 1: Here's a story from his high school days which I
Speaker 1: think really sums up his character and his attitude of
Speaker 1: what scientists are all about. And this is in his
Speaker 1: own words. In Rochester, a friend and I used to
Speaker 1: climb the buildings under construction, usually by sneaking past the
Speaker 1: guards in the middle of the night. We climbed the
Speaker 1: three foot clinic tower when it is only a skeleton
Speaker 1: of steel beams. We explored the powerhouse and scaled the
Speaker 1: inside of its two ft rick smokestack. I mentioned these
Speaker 1: escapades not to brag about being a scoff law, but
Speaker 1: only because I'm convinced that a controlled disrespect for society
Speaker 1: is essential to a scientist. All the good experimental physicists
Speaker 1: I have known have had an intense curiosity that no
Speaker 1: keep out signed could mute. I know he's a troublemaker. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a little charming. You know, everybody loves a little
Speaker 1: bit of a like smart rogue. But of course, don't time.
Speaker 1: You had to follow the rules. Oh. When Louise started
Speaker 1: college at the University of Chicago, he had planned a
Speaker 1: major in chemistry, which is what he studied until his
Speaker 1: junior year, but it turned out he didn't really like chemistry.
Speaker 1: He liked the lectures, but he described the labs as
Speaker 1: quote repulsive. In his junior year, he took a class
Speaker 1: called Advanced Experimental Physics Light, which he described later as
Speaker 1: love at first site. He had made bees in all
Speaker 1: of his chemistry classes, and he came to hate the
Speaker 1: idea of being a b chemist when he felt like
Speaker 1: he could be a great a physicist. So he changed
Speaker 1: his major to physics and made up for the lost
Speaker 1: time by taking twelve physics classes in five quarters which
Speaker 1: makes my head spin a little bit to think about, uh,
Speaker 1: and pouring over textbooks to make up for the physics
Speaker 1: lectures that he wasn't able to attend in his earlier
Speaker 1: years because he was in chemistry. That's a lot of
Speaker 1: hard science crammed into a very short period of time,
Speaker 1: it is, and I like changing your major because it
Speaker 1: was during his junior year. It was not prior to
Speaker 1: his junior years. During his junior year that he actually
Speaker 1: completely changed tracks. Had to make up for a lot
Speaker 1: of lost time. He graduated from the University of Chicago
Speaker 1: in nineteen thirty two, and he went on to get
Speaker 1: his Masters and PhD from there as well, and he
Speaker 1: got the PhD in nineteen thirty six. He wrote pretty
Speaker 1: candidly about how this edge cation didn't on paper prime
Speaker 1: him for what was to come. When you look at
Speaker 1: all of his achievements that go on for pages and
Speaker 1: pages and pages. It seems like he must have had
Speaker 1: just an exceptional education. The word he used for it
Speaker 1: was atrocious. He had very little, very little theoretical physics
Speaker 1: work compared to the other physicists who were educated at
Speaker 1: the same time. And his PhD thesis, for example, was
Speaker 1: on the diffraction of light, and this was not particularly
Speaker 1: groundbreaking or notable um and it also just came from
Speaker 1: an experiment he had actually been working on earlier in
Speaker 1: his graduate work. Then it was not a clear indicator
Speaker 1: of the greatness that was on the horizon. Well, and
Speaker 1: it's interesting because it seems like he worked so hard
Speaker 1: to cram so much of the physics study track in,
Speaker 1: but yeah, he felt it was fundamentally pretty worthless. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: and because that continued on through his his graduate program.
Speaker 1: He also talks about how his graduate advisor was the
Speaker 1: per ficked advisor for them because he just never checked
Speaker 1: on him and had no idea what he was ever
Speaker 1: working on. He just sort of made his own educational path,
Speaker 1: doing whatever he wanted as long as it was hardcore
Speaker 1: study of physics. Love it. Uh. He did get married.
Speaker 1: He married Geraldine Smithwick just after he took his oral
Speaker 1: exams for his pH d, and the plan had been
Speaker 1: for the two of them to go abroad for a
Speaker 1: year for Louise to continue his study. His Spanish grandfather
Speaker 1: was going to pay their way, but just as their
Speaker 1: wedding date was approaching, his grandfather wrote again saying that
Speaker 1: in fact he should not come. At this point, it
Speaker 1: was ninety six and the Spanish Civil War had started,
Speaker 1: so for them to travel there was really not the
Speaker 1: smartest place, right It seemed like no longer a wise plan. Fortunately,
Speaker 1: physicist Ernest Lawrence offered Louise the opportunity to come to
Speaker 1: Berkeley to work with the cyclotron, which is a type
Speaker 1: of particle accelerator in the radiation lab at the University
Speaker 1: of California at Berkeley. So the wedding went on his
Speaker 1: plan end, and Louise and Geraldine later had two children.
Speaker 1: They were Walter, who will talk about later in this
Speaker 1: episode in jean Um. They also sadly had another daughter
Speaker 1: who died at birth. Louis spent almost all of his
Speaker 1: career from that point in California, so the move to
Speaker 1: Berkeley kind of really settled him in one place, although
Speaker 1: there were was sometime during the forties, when World War
Speaker 1: Two brought him to radiation Laboratory of the Massachusetts Institute
Speaker 1: of Technology, and then the Metallurgical Laboratory of the University
Speaker 1: of Chicago and then the Los Alamos Laboratory of the
Speaker 1: Manhattan District. He's kind of touring all of the labs
Speaker 1: of high science. Yeah, during World War two, for sure. UM.
Speaker 1: A lot of his earlier career had to do with
Speaker 1: areas of physics that are interesting to other physicists. They
Speaker 1: are kind of hard to apply to everyday life in
Speaker 1: real world terms that non physicists they're likely to understand.
Speaker 1: And please understand. I say this as a person who
Speaker 1: loves science. I'm not ragging on the world of theoretical
Speaker 1: physics at all. But we are not going to go
Speaker 1: into giant detail about these achievements, uh, because they are
Speaker 1: really dense in terms of their their physics knowledge. Um.
Speaker 1: I I felt very self conscious about that fact, and
Speaker 1: then I mentioned them to the boyfriend, who in fact
Speaker 1: has a master's degree in engineering, and he was like, no,
Speaker 1: that is hard. Well. It also reminds me of Stephen
Speaker 1: Hawking's famous quote about when he was writing A Brief
Speaker 1: History of Time and how people told him for every
Speaker 1: formula you include in your book, half of your audience disappears. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think there's just Uh, physics is a little bit
Speaker 1: it's challenging to grasp and it's it's exciting work, but
Speaker 1: it's not always easy to um to suss out if
Speaker 1: you're not really educated in that realm. Yeah. He gave
Speaker 1: this address to Berkeley students in nine that has a
Speaker 1: quote in it that I think applies to what we're
Speaker 1: about to talk about, and he said, people often say
Speaker 1: to me, I don't see how you can work in physics.
Speaker 1: It's so complicated and difficult. But actually physics is the
Speaker 1: simplest of all the sciences. It only seems difficult because
Speaker 1: physicists talk to each other in a language that most
Speaker 1: people don't understand the language of mathematics. So for the
Speaker 1: next few points, we are going to be talking in
Speaker 1: a language that only physicists understand. Uh, and as simplest
Speaker 1: terms as possible. Because it really like these were notable
Speaker 1: achievements and we would be leaving important stuff out if
Speaker 1: we did not mention them. Yeah. One of the things
Speaker 1: that we're going to touch on, Louise Co discovered the
Speaker 1: East West effect in cosmic rays, and that's the fact
Speaker 1: that different numbers of cosmic rays reached the Earth's atmosphere
Speaker 1: depending on which direction they're coming from, so to sort
Speaker 1: of submate it into a long story, short scenario. This
Speaker 1: provided evidence that cosmic rays include positively charged particles. There
Speaker 1: was very little known about cosmic rays at the time,
Speaker 1: and most scientists had actually theorized the opposite. Yeah, he
Speaker 1: proved lots of people wrong. In NY seven, he gave
Speaker 1: the first practical demonstration of K capture, which is a
Speaker 1: phenomenon in which adams decay by absorbing an electron from
Speaker 1: the lowest electron layer, which is called the K layer.
Speaker 1: They absorbed that electron into the nucleus. This was a
Speaker 1: phenomenon that had been theorized before but not proven, and
Speaker 1: he published a report showing everything about In along with
Speaker 1: Felix Block, he created a method for producing beams of
Speaker 1: slow neutrons, which allowed them to measure how powerfully magnetic
Speaker 1: neutrons were, which is very cool. Along with his student
Speaker 1: Jake Wines, he developed a mercury vapor lamp that used
Speaker 1: the artificial mercury isotope mercury. The U S Bureau of
Speaker 1: Standards adopted the wavelength of life that comes from this
Speaker 1: lamp as an official standard of length and as a
Speaker 1: side note which may explain some things about him. He
Speaker 1: also used mercury lamps while working on his doctoral thesis,
Speaker 1: and his lamps would just sort of blow mercury everywhere
Speaker 1: on a regular basis. Um. He joked this ought to
Speaker 1: have made him mad as a hatter, and also that
Speaker 1: perhaps it explained some things may about him in fact
Speaker 1: that as a hatter. So yeah, those are the highlights
Speaker 1: of some of the more esoteric physics work that he
Speaker 1: has worked on. Thanks to World War Two, Louise left
Speaker 1: California for Cambridge on November eleventh of nineteen forty to
Speaker 1: work on the development of radar technology at the Massachusetts
Speaker 1: Institute of Technology, and there he played a role in
Speaker 1: the development of a microwave early Warning system or m EW,
Speaker 1: which allowed the detection of aircraft when it was too
Speaker 1: overcast to see them, and the Eagle high altitude bombing system,
Speaker 1: which allowed bombs to be dropped on targets the crew
Speaker 1: on the plane couldn't see. But he left m I
Speaker 1: T where those projects were being developed before either of
Speaker 1: them had come to fruition, they weren't completely finished when
Speaker 1: he exited. He did make some major contributions to radar
Speaker 1: technology while at m I T, which had a meaningful
Speaker 1: impact on the Allies during the war. One was the
Speaker 1: Vixen radar system, which was named because it let American
Speaker 1: pilots out fox the German U boats. So for a while,
Speaker 1: Allied airplanes had been able to use their radar to
Speaker 1: detect German U boats um so that then they could
Speaker 1: attack the U boats while they were surfaced. Because unlike
Speaker 1: today's nuclear submarines that can stay underwater for a really
Speaker 1: long time, submarines at the time had to come to
Speaker 1: the surface on a really periodic basis. It didn't take
Speaker 1: long for the Germans to figure out what was up
Speaker 1: and put radar detectors into the submarines, which would warn
Speaker 1: them of the incoming plane a long time before the
Speaker 1: plane could actually detect the submarines. They were getting serious
Speaker 1: advanced warning of the incoming threat, and aboard the U boats,
Speaker 1: the crew would decide whether to dive or stay where
Speaker 1: they were based on the way the strength of the
Speaker 1: radar signal changed. But if the plane had a Vixen
Speaker 1: system installed, the signal red as though the plane was
Speaker 1: flying away rather than getting closer. And this innovation, of
Speaker 1: course made it possible for Allied planes to destroy U
Speaker 1: boats from the air. Again, it made the sneaky in
Speaker 1: a whole new way. This had to do with with math.
Speaker 1: That uh, I like their reverence and slight fear with
Speaker 1: which you say the word math. Math was never my
Speaker 1: strong subject in school. I tried really hard to come
Speaker 1: up with a great analogy to explain exactly what this
Speaker 1: math was um And if you have one, you may
Speaker 1: write to it and and help us out with that.
Speaker 1: Because that I had a hard time quantfine that with
Speaker 1: something that made sense. So we're just gonna say magic.
Speaker 1: We're not really gonna say magic. It was in fact
Speaker 1: science and math. His other big contribution to wartime radar
Speaker 1: was not nearly as easy to fix as the Vixen
Speaker 1: system was. During World War Two, returning aircraft, especially in
Speaker 1: the UK, really frequently faced horribly treacherous landing auditions because
Speaker 1: of the weather, and a lot of times the situation
Speaker 1: was worse because the airplane was damaged or had injured
Speaker 1: crew on board. So unlike in the civilian world where
Speaker 1: flights get canceled because of the weather. You can't really
Speaker 1: do that during a war, and there often was not
Speaker 1: a different place to land that had any better weather
Speaker 1: conditions going on, So they really needed to find a
Speaker 1: way to to help plans land safely. Radar was being
Speaker 1: used to track enemy planes, uh Luis thought it should
Speaker 1: be easy enough to use that same technology to track
Speaker 1: friendly planes and therefore be able to guide them in
Speaker 1: safely for landing. So instead of using it to track
Speaker 1: and evaid, they were going to track and guide. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and this is something that happens all the time now,
Speaker 1: Like that is not a thing that we even blink at.
Speaker 1: But this did not exist at that point, and it
Speaker 1: turned out to be a way more complex project, acquiring
Speaker 1: a lot more trial and error than the Vixen system
Speaker 1: had been. They started out just by talking a blindfolded pilot.
Speaker 1: It through walking around on the floor of the hangar
Speaker 1: to to sort of get a feel for how this
Speaker 1: interaction would go between giving somebody instructions verbally and having
Speaker 1: them change what they were doing. And I think we've
Speaker 1: all done that as part of like a game or
Speaker 1: like a party activity, and we're doing that in middle school. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we had to write directions. So tricky, Yeah, it is tricky.
Speaker 1: We had to write directions of how to get to
Speaker 1: the cafeteria from the classroom to give to a blindfolded person,
Speaker 1: and then we all got horribly lost in school. So um.
Speaker 1: They went from that to using tests with a small
Speaker 1: radar device and a set of optical devices that would
Speaker 1: let the people on the ground figure out the angle
Speaker 1: of the airplane's approach and use that to give direction.
Speaker 1: A test pilot named Bruce Griffin practice getting closer and
Speaker 1: closer to the ground without using any visual cues, while
Speaker 1: his radio man, who was in the plane with him,
Speaker 1: acted as a backup just in case. When he finally
Speaker 1: got all the way to touch down with no visual input,
Speaker 1: acting only by instructions from the ground, everyone celebrated and
Speaker 1: they're like, all right, we're ready to be for the
Speaker 1: next big thing. But that not go so well. When
Speaker 1: they tried that same experiment using an actual anti aircraft radar,
Speaker 1: it failed completely. The radar system kept locking onto the
Speaker 1: actual airplane and the airplane's mirror image under the runway surface.
Speaker 1: Not a good plan for that. Everyone was really enormously
Speaker 1: disappointed by this failure. UM scientist and investor Alfred Loomis
Speaker 1: invited Louise to dinner at the Ritz Carlton and Boston
Speaker 1: and basically gave him this ultimatum that he could not
Speaker 1: go home until they figured out how to fix this problem. Together,
Speaker 1: they worked out a narrow beam radar that was too
Speaker 1: small to have the mirror image problem, and they combined
Speaker 1: that with with an antenna configuration that they thought would
Speaker 1: actually work, and along with an engineering team at m
Speaker 1: I T. Louise made a prototype of the ground controlled
Speaker 1: approach system. He called this work one of the happiest
Speaker 1: times of his life life and the result was so
Speaker 1: promising that the Royal Air Force actually asked for more
Speaker 1: of them, since the same tools could be useful for
Speaker 1: US forces. Of course, the U. S. Air Force and
Speaker 1: Navy got development under way as well. Yeah, this new
Speaker 1: UH system worked a whole lot better, and once it
Speaker 1: was ready for use in the whole thing was so
Speaker 1: highly classified and valuable enough to the war effort that
Speaker 1: the Royal Navy transported it across the Atlantic Ocean during
Speaker 1: this very meandering route that took three weeks to do,
Speaker 1: with d Day actually happening while they were in the
Speaker 1: middle of the voyage. They were trying to evade enemy
Speaker 1: submarines through this long and circuitous route just to get
Speaker 1: the technology to the other side of the ocean. And
Speaker 1: after that first unit was in place and the technicians
Speaker 1: were being trained on how to use it, factories scaled
Speaker 1: up production so they could be able to make more
Speaker 1: of them and get them installed at all the air
Speaker 1: fields that needed them. Louise also spent about six weeks
Speaker 1: in England helping to get the gc A going. Although
Speaker 1: the war was in its later years by the time
Speaker 1: the ground controlled approach was really in full swing. It
Speaker 1: went on to have further military applications after the war
Speaker 1: was over, and it's credited with saving the lives of
Speaker 1: many many pilots and crew who needed to land during
Speaker 1: bad weather or for some other reason involving load of visibility.
Speaker 1: Louise found up receiving multiple awards and honors for this
Speaker 1: particular accomplishment. And as a side note, one of the
Speaker 1: radar specialists who also worked on the g c A
Speaker 1: was Arthur C. Clark, whose book Glide Path actually drew
Speaker 1: from the experience and included a character that was modeled
Speaker 1: after Louis Alvarez. On another side, note Louise also had
Speaker 1: a love of aviation himself. He owned assessm A three
Speaker 1: ten and he logged more than a thousand hours as
Speaker 1: a pilot between the thirties and the eighties. And that's
Speaker 1: sort of the pause point for part one of Louis Alvarez. Uh,
Speaker 1: there is a gree feel more to go, so much
Speaker 1: more so. I think you have a touch of listener
Speaker 1: mail I do. This is from Amanda. Amanda says, Hi,
Speaker 1: Tracy and Holly. I just listened to the ice Cream
Speaker 1: episode and heard the discussion about George Washington. He was
Speaker 1: absolutely my favorite president and I just had the opportunity
Speaker 1: to visit Mount Vernon. I wanted to bring a slight
Speaker 1: correction to what you said. George Washington's dentures were not wooden.
Speaker 1: They're actually made of metal and teeth of humans, animals
Speaker 1: and ivory. They weren't all that attractive and probably still
Speaker 1: hurt a lot, but definitely not wouldn't. We saw the
Speaker 1: actual dentures, and I can attest that they aren't pretty
Speaker 1: like today's teeth or dentures are, but I guess they
Speaker 1: served a purpose. I can still understand why he might
Speaker 1: have eaten a hundred thousand dollars worth of ice cream
Speaker 1: to soothe his sore mouth, though it looked like they
Speaker 1: would hurt. Thanks for the podcast. I've thoroughly enjoyed listening
Speaker 1: to it. Thank you, Amanda. Yeah, I'm picturing those dentures
Speaker 1: in my head. It's a little live Parker. It sounds
Speaker 1: kind of motric conception to me. Yeah, we've gotten a
Speaker 1: couple of letters about George Washington and his teeth, and
Speaker 1: I think in the episode we say that it's wooden
Speaker 1: teeth mythology, but then we went on to talk about
Speaker 1: how his teeth really bad without actually saying what his
Speaker 1: teeth were made of. So so, yeah, we know they
Speaker 1: weren't woulden, but we didn't really know exactly what they
Speaker 1: were and soil this letter, I did not know animal
Speaker 1: teeth or in the mix. No, uh are a lot
Speaker 1: of metal. Yeah that sounds fun at all. I think
Speaker 1: I had heard before that there was metal involved, and
Speaker 1: I knew that there were human teeth, but I had
Speaker 1: not ever heard about the animal teeth. Yeah, like I said,
Speaker 1: in my head, it becomes a little clipbooker, right, So
Speaker 1: thank you very much, Amanda or writing that to us
Speaker 1: and telling us more about George Washington's fake Teeth. Yeah.
Speaker 1: If you would like to write to us about this
Speaker 1: episode or anything else we've discussed, you can we write
Speaker 1: History podcast at Discovery dot com. We're also on Facebook
Speaker 1: at Facebook dot com slash history class stuff and on
Speaker 1: Twitter at missed in History. Are tumbler is at mist
Speaker 1: in history dot tumbler dot com, and we are pinning
Speaker 1: things away on Pinterest. If you'd like to learn a
Speaker 1: little bit more about what Louis Alvarez spent some of
Speaker 1: his career researching, you can come to our website and
Speaker 1: type the word radar in search bar. You will find
Speaker 1: an article how Radar Works. You can do that and
Speaker 1: a whole lot more at our website, which is how
Speaker 1: stuff Works dot com for more on this and thousands
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