Amazing Secrets Hidden In Everyday Things - Part 6

It’s easy to assume you know everything about the objects you encounter on the daily. But even the most seemingly-mundane items can harbor a few secrets you’d never expect. From surprising functions in the gadgets you use every day, to game-changing elevator hacks, let’s check out some amazing secrets hidden in everyday things.

Car Door Closing Sound

Have you ever noticed how satisfying the sound of closing the door of a nice car can be? It’s a small detail that most people never notice, but you’d be surprised to know how much effort car companies put into creating that sound. Car manufacturers devote entire teams to making sure a car door feels and sounds solid, as studies have shown these factors create a perceived sense of quality.

While car doors nowadays can be manufactured out of lightweight materials, these naturally give off a tinnier sound than heavier materials used in the past, making them feel flimsy. To compensate, car companies employ sound engineers to ensure their cars have the right combination of foam, mats, door materials, and locking mechanisms for that hefty, satisfying ‘ca-chunk’.

The new Lexus UX door closing by AutoMotoTV

Open Clamshell Packaging With Can Opener

Clamshell packaging is, quite frankly, the work of Satan. It seems almost impossible to open without damaging either yourself or the item inside. But stress no more! Turns out, you can open this notoriously-infuriating packaging with something you probably have lying around in a kitchen drawer.

Simply take a can opener, latch it onto the edge of the packaging like you would a can, and twist! Before you know it, that package will be opened, and you’ll be saved from throwing your newly-purchased items across the room in a fit of rage!

Fastest Way to Open Plastic Packaging by Money Talks News

Antibacterial Doorknobs

Have you ever noticed how a lot of door handles and knobs are made of shiny, gold-colored brass? This isn’t a coincidence, and while it’s most often a stylistic choice, its usefulness goes beyond classy home-decor. Brass is a very durable metal, and is resistant to corrosion from oils and moisture from human hands, but it’s also useful for anyone trying to keep germs to a minimum.

Unsurprisingly, bacteria tend to congregate on places regularly touched by human hands, and doorknobs are no exception. That is, unless the doorknob’s made of brass, which contains copper; a metal with highly-effective anti-bacterial properties. In fact, copper molecules are so toxic to bacteria cells, they can kill up to 99% of bacteria deposited on brass door handles in as little as 2 hours. This includes dangerous bacterial strains like E-Coli!

The stainless steel and plastic door handle alternatives that are way more common nowadays, meanwhile, can harbor these same germs for days at a time. So, next time you’re thinking of redecorating, consider opting for brass fittings and handles, and keep your hands clear of unwanted free-riders!

Cedar Wood Hangers Against Moths

There are few things more concerning than opening up your wardrobe, only to see a moth fly out, or worse, multiple moths. Moths love to lay their eggs in certain types of clothing, usually, wool or silk, because the natural fibers, as well as the dust and skin cells our clothes trap, provide a food source.

Once the moths are in, it can be very difficult to get rid of them, but not impossible. Warding them off is sometimes just a matter of choosing the right kind of clothes hanger. Wood hangers are generally pretty great for sturdily storing clothes, but it’s cedar wood specifically that’ll give you the edge against the moth menace.

Cedar wood contains oils that are toxic to moth larvae eggs, so much so that moths have evolved to be repulsed by the mere aroma of the wood. Humans have been using this handy trick for millennia, opting for cedar wood in the construction of textiles stores and storage containers to keep wares safe from hungry moths.

So, put this ancient knowledge to use in protecting your finest garments, either by using cedar hangers, or better yet, buying cedar wood wardrobes and drawers!

Spaghetti Spoon Hack

Ever been happily ladling your spaghetti onto a plate, only for the hole in the middle of your spaghetti spoon to catch your eye, replacing pasta-based excitement with unquenchable curiosity? Well, let's delve into what the purpose of that hole really is.

For starters, it helps drain out any residual water from the pasta before plating, but the reason for its specific size is to help you before you start cooking. That hole is there to help you measure out the perfect amount of spaghetti for one person. Simply place your uncooked spaghetti into to hole, and when no more will fit, you’ve got yourself a portion.

Some particularly fancy spaghetti spoons even have multiple holes, accommodating for double and half-servings as well as the usual single-serving. But, of course, a mere half-serving of spaghetti is a crime against the great nation of Italy! Punishable by more spaghetti.

Nail Polish Hacks

When you think of nail polish, you probably picture beauty treatments at the local salon. And, for most instances of its usage, you’d be right. But very few people realize that nail polish is actually a very handy thing to have in your household toolbox.

Sounds crazy, but thanks to its unique waterproofing and adhesive properties, it’s super useful for creating protective seals and sticking certain things together. If you hate licking envelopes, you can save yourself the trouble by applying some clear nail polish along the flap instead before sealing. It’ll hold the envelope shut even more securely than the cheap glue that’s usually used.

If you notice your shoelaces are fraying at the end, you can fix them by twisting the strands together, and either dunking the end into a pot of nail polish or painting some on. Colored or clear polish, it’s your choice! And if you’re sewing, but are struggling to thread the needle, there’s a nail polish solution for that too!

Applying a little polish to the end of a thread makes its fibers stick together, while also making it stiffer and therefore easier to push through the eye of a needle! Whether or not you decide to paint your nails a fabulous color before you carry out all these modifications and repairs, it's entirely up to you.

Silica Packets Functions

These small packets of silica gel are a common source of confusion when people find small piles of them inside newly-purchased items. They’re usually clearly marked "do not eat", but don’t give many clues to their actual purpose, which it turns out, is keeping things free from moisture.

The packets contain little balls of silicon dioxide, or silica, a highly-porous compound that’s extremely effective at absorbing water molecules from the surrounding air and environment. This is handy for making sure products arrive to you in top-condition, but there are also a surprising number of other uses.

For starters, they’re one of the best ways to attempt to safely revive a non-waterproof phone that’s been dropped in water. If the phone is turned off before the water damages its circuitry, placing it in a bowl filled with silica packets in a warm place increases its chances of successfully drying out.

Assuming the worst of the water is dried off with a clean towel beforehand, it should dry internally if left completely surrounded in silica packets for around 72 hours. As long as enough internal moisture is absorbed, it won’t short-circuit when switched back on, though if the phone has already short-circuited, the irreparable damage has already been done.

But smart-phone resuscitation isn’t the only use of silica packets. You can place them in gym bags to absorb sweaty moisture and prevent a stanky build-up, or place your shaving razor in a sealed container with a handful of them to prevent rust. You can place them along the bottoms of windows to reduce condensation build-up, or even put a glass filled with them inside a carved Halloween pumpkin to slow its decay!

Essentially, any instance you want to keep something moisture-free, silica packets are the way to go. One thing silica packs aren’t good at, though, is being a tasty snack. Those "do not eat" warnings are there for a reason, given the toxic additives the gel contains, so don’t swap them out for popping candy!

T-Rex’s Offline Game

Losing your internet connection in the middle of doing something is a truly infuriating first-world problem. But thankfully, Google Chrome users can distract themselves from that WiFi-dropout rage thanks to a little secret hidden in their browser.

When you’re using Chrome, and find yourself disconnected, the page below will appear.

When it does, just press the ‘up’ key on your keyboard, and it’ll trigger a fun platformer minigame where you guide a jolly T-Rex on his adventures through a cactus-filled landscape! Because nothing soothes rage like goofy, 8-bit dinosaurs.

Stainless Steel Removing Odors

Have you ever wondered why, even after vigorous, soapy hand-washing, the smell of onion or garlic can remain on your fingers after cutting some up for a meal? The reason the smells from these types of foods tend to linger on skin is that cutting them releases acidic sulphurous molecules which adhere to the skin. Soap doesn’t help much with removing these, and water can actually react with the molecules, making the smell worse! The quickest way to stop the smell, it turns out, it rubbing your hands against stainless steel.

This specific metal is easily found, in everything from kitchen pots to cutlery, and binds with the pungent molecules, removing them from your hands! You can even buy stainless steel ‘soap’ bars specifically for this purpose. So, next time your fingers get stinky, rub them on the faucet, basin, or any other source of stainless steel nearby.

Why Do We Drive On The Left Or Right

Left or right, that is the question, now only when it comes to politics but also about which side of the road people drive on. Most of the world favors the right side, but a handful of places, including the UK, Australia, Jamaica, Barbados, and other former British colonies opt for the left. But why?

From Roman times up until the 18th century, horseback and wagon-based traffic typically stuck to the left side of roads around the world. Historians believe this was so that horseback riders could hold the reins with their left hands, freeing-up their right hands to wave at, or use a sword to defend against, passing riders on their right.

In the 1700s, however, people in the US and much of Europe began driving bigger wagons pulled by larger numbers of cattle or horses. In these, the drivers typically sat on the left side of the wagon, freeing up their stronger right arm to control all the animals. As a result, to ensure they could clearly see anyone passing by, the drivers would use the right side of the road.

Eventually, these practices became law, and were solidified with the emergence of motor vehicles, which followed the traditions of their countries of origin. For example, American manufacturers like Ford developed cars to be driven on the right, while British manufacturers like Vauxhall developed cars to drive on the left. This tradition continues to this day, though most manufacturers produce both left and right-hand-drive vehicles for international markets.

iMessage Confidential

While Android super-fans like to make fun of iPhone users for their phone software being overly-simplistic, iOS does have some interesting hidden features most people don’t know about. These intriguing secrets can be found within the iMessage app, and are triggered by sending specific messages.

Sending the words "pew pew" for example, triggers a spectacular on-screen laser show, with haptic vibrations that sync to the lasers movements. Wishing someone "happy birthday" swaps out those lasers for balloons. A general ‘congratulations’ brings confetti to the party. And wishing someone a "Happy Chinese New Year" lights up the screen with a pocket-sized fireworks display! These fun little additions can bring a little extra life to your messages.

How To Do Cool iPhone iMessage Tricks Like Pew Pew by Bin Zubaier

Hack To Stop Microwavable Rice Packets From Falling Over

Microwave rice packets are a life-saver for people who don’t have the time, or patience, to stand watching over rice cooking in a pan. But there’s one common source of frustration with microwaveable packets. Once you’ve torn a hole in the top to let the steam out, and placed it in the microwave to cook, the packs tend to topple over, spilling some of their contents.

However, the designers of these handy packets actually factored something into their design to prevent this very issue! While the bottoms of the packets appear tightly held together, you can actually pry them apart, opening them out into a more flared shape. This gives the base more surface area, allowing it to stand more sturdily as the microwave plate rotates. It’s a total game-changer for rice micro-wavers worldwide.

Elevator Secrets

Nobody likes being stuck in an elevator full of people. It’s even worse when you realize the buttons for pretty much every floor before yours have been pressed. However, most elevators have a secret button combination, usually used by emergency workers, that will skip all other selected floors and go directly to yours. Of course, you should be stealthy using this trick, as it’s not really meant to be public knowledge, but we'll reveal anyway.

For a lot of elevators, the express mode is activated by holding the close door button, then pressing your floor number. Keep both buttons pressed until the elevator starts to move. This should let you go directly to your floor without stopping.

Some elevators require you to double press any other highlighted floor buttons to skip to yours, as double-pressing often cancels those other selections. Others require you to hold the "open door" button while you double-press the floors you want to cancel. For some, it simply may not work at all, as unfortunately, it isn’t universal to all elevators.

It may take a little experimentation when no one else is around to figure out if and how it works for your particular elevator, but it’ll be well worth it when you finally crack it. Once you do, you’ll be riding the express elevator to new heights of glory!

The Raised Lines On F And J Keys On Keyboards

Have you ever noticed the little raised bumps on the ‘F’ and ‘J’ keys on most keyboards? They’re raised for a reason, and it isn’t because F and J are typists’ favorite letters. Those raised bumps are there to help orient a person’s fingers on the keyboard without them having to look down.

They’re in relatively central positions for where most people will place their left and right hands while typing. This comes in particularly handy for people who type without looking down at the keys, like people who need to transcribe spoken words at a rapid pace.

On full-sized keyboards, another raised bump can be found on the 5 key. This, again, is to orient users over a central, familiar point from which they can use their mental map of the surrounding keys to input data quicker. So, if you feel a little lost when you’re writing your next email, just feel around for your good old buddies, F and J.

Tiny Bits Of Metal On The Pockets Of Your Jeans

While slipping into your favorite pair of jeans, you may have wondered what the purpose of these little metal buttons is. But while they may look like a way to clip tiny accessories onto your denim, their reason for being there is actually a leftover from the past.

Back in the late 1800s, jeans were often worn by American laborers who required sturdy clothes that could withstand a lot of strain, movement, and wear-and-tear. Certain varieties of jeans, initially developed by Levi Strauss and his associate Jacob W. Davis soon became popular among workers, thanks to those little metal buttons we see today.

Those small metal rivets, placed at the points on the leg likely to experience most stress, reinforced the jeans, preventing the seams from pulling apart. With modern, sturdier stitching techniques and technologies, rivets are no longer really necessary, but they’re so ingrained in our ideas of how jeans should look, they’ve stuck around regardless.

Flat Engine Bottoms

Most of us are used to seeing planes flying above our heads, but few people really understand the reasoning behind aeroplanes’ most intriguing design features. For starters, have you ever noticed that the bottom edges of some plane engines are flat, rather than round?

These engines, usually found on Boeing 737s, are flattened on the bottom because of the plane’s design history. Originally, the 737 was designed to be as low to the ground as possible, which worked great for the jet engine types it originally featured.

But as aero-technology advanced, quieter, more efficient, yet larger, engines emerged, known as turbo fan engines. This posed a problem for the Boeing 737, as being so low to the ground, there wasn’t enough space to accommodate these larger engines without totally redesigning the plane.

So, instead, they brought the engine placement forward, so they sat slightly in front of the wing, rather than underneath it, which helped maintaining the plane’s center of gravity. They also modified the turbo fan’s outer casing design, flattening the lower lip slightly while keeping the engine inside circular. This raised the bottom a few more inches higher, reducing the risk of the engine hitting the ground on rough landings without sacrificing efficiency!

Wing Flaps

Another thing you’ve probably wondered, especially while looking out the window on an airplane, is what those wing flaps do. These canoe-shaped pods house the mechanisms responsible for moving and extending the flaps along the trailing edge of the wing, which affect the plane’s lift.

As you can imagine, moving a big metal flap against the wind to change the forces acting on a particularly large aircraft travelling at around 580mph requires a lot of structural integrity. This is why the pods are so large; they have to be sturdy enough to withstand these changing forces. The bulky-looking white covering surrounding them, meanwhile, ensures the air is streamlined as it passes over it, reducing unwanted drag.

Rear Vs Wing-Mounted Engines

One more thing you may have noticed is that some airplane engines are placed under the wing, while others are located on the back part of the plane’s fuselage. Most commercial airliners have their engines under the wings, because being lower to the ground makes maintaining or repairing the engine much easier. Plus, the extra weight prevents the wings from bending too much during flight.

Another benefit is that, if an engine catches fire on the wing, the heat source is further away from passengers than with an engine directly attached to the rear-end of a plane. You can also fit larger engines, in larger quantities, underneath wings than at the back of an aircraft, which is why the largest aircrafts usually have under-wing engines.

A benefit of rear-mounted engines, however, is that if one engine fails, there’ll be less turning force on the aircraft in the direction of the failed engine, as both engines are closer together. With less rotation to have to compensate for, this makes it slightly easier to steer to safety.

Back-mounted engines, being further from passengers, also appear quieter, and the chances of them scraping the ground, or sucking things in like rocks and grass, are near-zero. Generally, though, neither placement is objectively better than the other. It’s merely a matter of matching the engine placement to the purposes of the aircraft.

Unsurprisingly, there’s a lot more to airplanes than meets the eye. These giant metal birds are true marvels of technology, so take some time to appreciate their complexity next time you see one pass overhead!

Making Tweezers With Coins

If you’re out exploring the wild, or even doing a little DIY carpentry in your yard, and find yourself with a splinter, getting it out can be a painful hassle. But you don’t need to go running for the tweezers. As long as you’ve got 3 coins of any kind to hand, you can make your own!

All you need to do is stack the coins between your thumb and forefinger so that the two outer coins jut out above the central one, then squeeze the end! The impromptu contraption provides a surprisingly firm grip, and can also be used if you need to pluck out a stray hair. Or, alternatively, as an unnecessarily extravagant way of retrieving other coins from your wallet.

You Have Been Drinking Gatorade Wrong

Many of the best secret features of everyday products are hidden in plain sight. If you’re a fan of Gatorade, for example, you probably never noticed that many bottles come with a built-in storage area to secure your cap while you’re taking a sip. It’s true. For the bottles featuring this design with an indented base, the cap fits snugly in place, ensuring you never lose it while drinking.

However, this feature is likely not even intentional on the part of the bottle’s designers. It appears to be a happy accident; a by-product of the design, which is most likely intended to allow these bottles to stack on top of each other in storage.

Sadly, not all Gatorade bottles come with this hidden feature, as the bottle design varies by geographical area and the type of Gatorade. But if you’re one of the lucky few, be sure to make the most of your handy cap-catcher next time you’re revitalizing your electrolytes!

I hope you find these hidden purposes useful. You might also want to read our entire secrets hidden in everyday things series. Thanks for reading!