Things You Don’t Know The Purpose Of

Do you know what would happen if escalators didn’t have a specific fixture? Or why the handrail always moves faster than the stairs? How about the secret way you can tell if the highway you’re driving on is about to be invaded by airplanes? Let's answer all this and more, as we explore everyday things you don’t know the purpose of!

Highway Strips

Imagine you’re driving down the highway, when suddenly a 231-foot, 700,000-pound, Boeing 747-8i comes into land right behind you. While this sounds like a movie, it actually very much could happen, especially in an emergency!

Pay attention and maybe next time you’re on a highway, you’ll see the warning signs. Highway strips are sections of road designed to double as airstrips. They tend to be more common in remote areas where access for emergency vehicles is more limited.

29 countries around the world officially use highway strips, otherwise known as road runways, and while they may be hard to spot, there are three subtle signs to look out for. One, if you’ve been on a bendy road and it suddenly goes perfectly straight. Two, if the central reservation is suddenly replaced with a flat, painted line. And three, if you see enormous parking bays like the ones in the image below; yes, they’re not for trucks. Find all three and you probably have yourself a landing strip hidden in "plane" sight.

Singapore regularly holds military exercises to practice converting roads into airstrips. During one 2016 exercise, over 48 hours, 1 ½ miles of highway was rapidly converted into an operational runway, complete with an air traffic control tower. They removed any tall structures like streetlamps, traffic lights and road signs, providing an airplane-friendly flat surface in a seriously impressive turnaround.

The Makeover - The Republic of Singapore Air Force's Exercise Torrent 2016 by Ministry of Defence Singapore

Speed Limit Signs With Fractions

On the topic of road signs, while on your road travels, you may have come across some speed-limit signs with unusual numberings. These are sometime simply direct conversions of round numbers in imperial units to metric, like 20mph to 32 kilometres-per-hour. However, oddly-specific speed limits, like 16, 11, or 23 and a half, may also be chosen as a way to influence drivers into obeying them.

Research conducted by the University of California has suggested that drivers are more likely to obey these unusually specific speed limits, by nature of the fact that they’re unusual and stand out. They catch the driver’s attention, suggesting to the driver that there’s an important reason such an unusual number has been chosen for that specific road.

Similarly, unusual text-based road signs, like the Indian sign below stating “If you sleep, your family will weep”, are designed to stand out, ensuring drivers notice and, hopefully, heed their intended message.

Small Hole In Elevator Doors

Have you ever seen these small holes in elevator doors and wondered what they are? If you haven’t, you should because it just might save your life.

Over a million new elevators are installed around the world every year, and among the old and new, one in every 100,000 rides breaks down. Of those 100,000 breakdowns, 20% have people trapped inside. So how do we free those poor souls before they starve or succumb to elevator-music-induced cabin fever? Holes!

Always seen on the outside of elevators, these tiny openings are actually keyholes! The keys are super weird, with a drop-down end which folds over inside the shaft, where it is used to release the door mechanism. This opens the doors, making for a quick exit for those within if the elevator has broken down on the floor level.

Elevator Keys Elevator Access with Drop Key by AllHandsFire

However, if the elevator is stuck between floors, rescue teams can typically manually lower the elevator to the next floor down to open the doors. If that’s not possible, they’ll extract passengers via the emergency roof hatch, or possibly even use harnesses and ladders if no hatch is present, breaking their own way in.

Emergency services and caretakers will have sets of elevator keys to use in those mysterious-seeming holes, though some elevator companies claim the holes ruin elevator-aesthetic and refuse to install them. They say if there’s a real emergency, the first responders can just break the doors open. Which, admittedly, is much more bad-ass; so, fair enough!

Escalator Handrails Move At Different Speeds

Have you ever noticed how, when you step onto moving staircases, the handrail moves along faster than the steps? It’s a pretty minor inconvenience to have to adjust your hand so you’re not pulled forwards, but is this just an accidental design quirk? Well, no, actually.

When stepping on an escalator, your feet are suddenly pulled forward while your body’s centre of gravity stays in place, putting you a little off-balance. Slightly increasing the speed of the handrail negates this effect, as the handrail pulls your upper body into alignment with your feet. As a result, escalator handrails will typically move up to 2% faster than the steps!

So, essentially, no, they’re not just messing with you. Unless you step on one with a handrail that’s, like, 150% faster.

Escalator Grooves

There are more secrets baked into the design of escalators. These moving walkways debuted in 1896, as part of a fairground ride in Coney Island, leading up to a slide. Their design has evolved tons since then, and one of the most common design features of modern escalators are these grooves in the steps.

You probably never considered what the purpose of those metallic lines are, but they’re actually a super important safety feature. Aside from providing some additional grip for your shoes, the grooves are designed to stop a fate worse than an un-skippable 90-second ad: your feet getting devoured by the escalator!

The grooves ensure the smallest gap possible between the interlocking steps. This drastically reduces the possibility of getting shredded by an escalator as the steps fold in on each other toward the end of the ride! At the ends of the escalator, there are these comb shapes too, which interlock in a sloped pattern with the step grooves to prevent any material, debris, or shoes getting caught!

Brushes On Escalators

The brushes along the edges of the steps serve a similar function, preventing stuff getting caught along the edges, like shoelaces. Although it’s always slightly possible that strings or loosely dangling material can get sucked into the gaps, so always make sure your shoes are tied before riding!

Phone Tricks

Phones these days have more features than a Gorillaz album, many of which most folks don’t know about! For iPhone users, you might know that once you’ve scrolled down on a webpage, tapping the top of the screen instantly takes you to the top of the page.

What you might not know is that, while typing, if you hold and drag up from the 123 button, you can quickly choose numbers or symbols, and then it’ll automatically snap back to the normal keyboard letters.

Turn your iPhone around for a moment and take a look at its back. Do you see a teeny-weeny hole?

That’s a tiny microphone, designed to capture video audio, but also to analyze and remove background noise during phone calls, ensuring crystal clear call quality! Retuning to keyboards, did you know both Apple and Android devices let you hold the spacebar to move your text cursor easily and accurately? This is literally a game-changer when you realize.

iPhone Hacks brought to you by Walkntalk - Hold the space bar to make a trackpad while typing a text by Walkntalk

You probably didn’t know that iPhones are portable white-noise machines! By opening up Settings, tapping Accessibility, Accessibility Shortcut, and then Background Sounds, you can turn on a white noise maker.

This is the perfect hidden feature for parents of young babies or anyone who needs to calm down a little. Why not suggest it to your boss? No way that could go badly.

On another phone-related note, have you ever wondered what the original purpose of the hashtag is? The hash symbol, also known by its technical name, the octothorpe, was used back in the 19th century in handwritten bookkeeping to indicate a number. This was carried over to typewriters, and eventually to phones as a way to provide additional information to computer systems, such as indicating the end of a number input.

Here’s a hash-key tidbit though, if you accidentally mess up a voicemail, don’t hang up; press the hash instead and it’ll re-record the message. With that knowledge, drunk-dialing your ex is a better idea than ever!

While plenty of phone features have little-known purposes, phone accessories have their fair share too. Unfortunately for iPhone users and a good number of Android-ers, they haven’t had headphone jacks for a while, but here’s something for those luck enough to still have access to these nifty, rare audio relics.

Little Rings On Heaphone Jacks

Have you ever noticed the little bands around headphone cable tips? Their purpose is pretty interesting. The number of rings represents the number of channels the headphones can process, and these rings are kept separate by little plastic bands.

One-band cables are the easiest and cheapest cables to make, but are limited to mono sound, meaning it’s the same in both earphones. Two-band cables are the most common, and offer stereo sound in separate left and right audio channels. Then the three-band cables have three separate channels, left, right, and microphone. So next time you’re looking for a pair of headphones, especially cheap ones, pay attention to the bands to ensure you get what you’re looking for.

Altering Speed Of Locomotion

On that note, another time it’s best to know what you’re looking for is when walking around grocery stores. Turns out, they’ve been expertly designed to make sure shoppers get distracted by the dazzling array of products, to buy more stuff than you came in for!

You might not believe it, but even the sizes of supermarket tiles have a hidden purpose. A study titled Altering Speed of Locomotion was published in the Journal of Consumer Research, detailing how different types of supermarket floors have different effects on customers.

The study found that if supermarkets put lines on the floor that are close together, customers slow down as it creates an illusion that the aisle is longer. While lines that are wider apart speed customers up, moving them through areas where the managers don’t want them to linger. So, by changing tile size or by painting on lines, store owners can play with your mind, encouraging you to slow down and notice certain types of products.

Tabs On The Ends Of Aluminum Foil Boxes

Products like aluminum foil, which also have a ton of hidden functionality. Like did you know what those tabs at the end of the aluminum foil boxes are? If, like most of us, you didn’t know, when you press them in, the foil locks in, stopping it rolling out when you pull at it.

Cupcake Case Ridges

More packaging secrets can be found in cupcake cases too: specifically their ridges. Those ridges aren’t just for decoration. They’re actually for stability and cooking. Not only are ridges sturdier than a flat surface, but the ridged paper also traps air, insulating the cupcakes from the metal baking pan, preventing crusts from forming.

Screwdriver And Wrench Work Together

Unless you work with tools, it can be difficult to know all their hidden purposes. As it turns out, many tools have been carefully designed to incorporate other tools. For starters, did you know some screwdriver handles have been shaped like that so they can fit nicely into a wrench? This leverage enables you to twist with a lot more force than if you just used your hand.

Stapler Tab

Staplers also feature extra functions to save your hands from doing the hard work. Ever noticed the little tab on the base? It's specifically designed to remove staples with ease. Not every stapler has one, but if you’re going to buy one it’s something to keep an eye out for.

Jerry Can Hack

Jerry cans are another item with some seriously clever features. Their handles are specially designed so two people can easily carry a single jerrycan at the same time, meaning half the workload. What’s also pretty nifty is that several varieties feature a vent just behind the handle. This vent allows airflow, which stops the gas from glugging and splashing as it’s poured out, making for a far smoother re-fuel.

Measuring Jug Hack

Measuring jugs have been designed to pour extremely well but not in the way you’d expect. Chances are that while you probably have one of these in your house you don’t know its handle can be used as a spout.

Shoutout to that-40-year-guy on TikTok, for this tip. While it’s not the most convenient spout in the world, it’s extremely handy for when you need to pour carefully, especially when pouring into bottles. Interestingly, it doesn’t seem like this is an intentional feature of the design, as manufacturers claim the semi-hollow handle shape is largely designed to prioritize the ability to stack these jugs. The rare accidental genius idea, the most delightful kind!

U-Bend Pipes Shape

Once you’ve poured your liquid down the sink, chances are it’ll go through your u-bend. And come to mention it, what’s with that curvy shape, anyhow? A lot of people think U-bend pipes are actually for catching rings, and other stuff that falls down, but instead, they’re primarily for catching gasses that rise up.

This section of plumbing is called the trap, and is designed to ensure there’s always a barrier of water separating the top of the plug from the sewer, which naturally blocks gases from travelling through. After all, if there’s one thing sewers are great at, it’s making gasses. The last thing you want is to be brushing your teeth and get hit in the face by a cloud of noxious gas.

Toothbrush Secrets

If you do experience noxious fume-induced dizziness while brushing your teeth, though, you can use your toothbrush bristles to help aim your toothpaste! The darker colored zone on your toothbrush bristles is typically a guide for how much toothpaste you need. If you always stick to putting a pea-sized amount of toothpaste right on the darker area, you’ll be practicing top dental hygiene.

The other colored bristles are also there as indicators, with some letting you know when to change your toothbrush. Oral B heads, for example, have their blue color fade as an indicator of when it’s time for a replacement.

The average American only changes their toothbrush twice a year, though Dentists recommend copping some new bristles four times a year.

Color Psychology

Colors are a key part of daily human life, and while they can be a great source of joy and wonder, they can also be far more manipulative. In the worlds of marketing and infrastructure, experts are continually dreaming up new ways to use color psychology to control you!

Color psychology is the study of how colors affect perceptions and behavior and is used heavily in marketing to make you associate certain feelings and ideas with brands. Since we’ve already mentioned blue, that’s a good place to start.

In marketing, blue’s purpose is to promote calmness, trust, and loyalty; it reportedly implies depth and authenticity, largely due to long-established cultural norms around the color. It’s also thought that our brains have evolved associate blue with clear skies and calm waters, which can give blue a serene, yet wakeful feeling when applied to branding.

Separate from marketing, blue light at night has some pretty unique purposes. In Scotland back in 2000, Glasgow installed a whole load of blue street lights in their city center. Afterwards, they noticed crime in those areas significantly declined. The same effect was recorded in Nara, Japan, after they did the same thing in 2005.

Embed for https://x.com/SeriousStrange/status/603272745057656835 could not be displayed

Similarly, Keihin Electric Express Railway Company, also in Japan, was experiencing a rising number of injuries and destructive behaviors in and around their stations. So, in 2008, they also installed blue lights and, since, the incidents have dropped massively.

While official, broad conclusions about this blue-light phenomenon are yet to be drawn, the effect is there to see. What we do know is that blue light disrupts our circadian rhythm, tricking our brains into thinking it’s daytime and therefore making us feel alert, and possibly discouraging certain undesirable behaviors that the darkness of night draws out in some people. This attention-grabbing aspect of blue light also makes it an effective choice of lighting for emergency vehicles in many parts of the world.

Other colors have some pretty radical purposes too. In the late 1970s, Alexander Schauss had been researching the connection between prison cell color and aggression for a Naval correctional institute in Seattle. The idea was to test the impact of pink prison cells on prisoners, an idea which resulted in Baker-Miller Pink.

Named for the institute’s directors, Baker and Miller, the color was officiated after Schauss tested 153 men’s strength after having them stare at a piece of blue or pink cardboard for one minute. The results showed that after staring at this shade of pink, the men lost up to 26% of their strength.

It lowered their heart rate and breathing, effectively calming the men down. Schauss concluded that even if someone wants to be aggressive when they’re around Baker-Miller Pink, they’ll either be less likely to act, or will be less dangerous if they do act.

While the exact figures of Schauss’ Pink experiment haven’t been consistently replicated since, other paint colors have been used for behavioral influence. A shade of green called Go Away Green or No-See-Um-Green, was developed by the imagineers of Disney World.

Most private areas as well as stuff they don’t want guests to look at, like trashcans, street lamps, construction works, and the buildings round the back of rides and attractions are all painted in this intentionally-inoffensive, non-eye-catching shade of Go Away Green.

Disney's Go Away Green Camouflage Paint by TruePrepper

It’s basically Disney-fied camouflage. And indeed, militaries have been using vaguely similar hues of green, such as “olive drab,” since the 19th century for uniforms and buildings, as the neutral colors blend into background foliage and grass.

Traffic lights are another great example of colors chosen for ingenious reason. Thanks to red light’s wavelength being longer than yellow and green, when it travels through air it loses less of its hue to its surroundings than the other two colors. This makes red the ideal color for the most important light, the stop light, because red can be seen clearly from furthest away, particularly in daytime.

Yellow provides a transitionary color on the way to green, while being distinct enough to not be mistaken for the other two. And green is highly contrasted against red, being opposites on the color wheel, so there’s no chance of mistaking the two, unless you’re red-green color-blind, of course.

Here's a little tidbit though: back in the 1900s, yellow was used for stop signs as red was just too difficult to see in the dark. It wasn’t until highly-reflective red materials were developed in the 1950s that red became standard for stop-signs.

The coloration of stop signs and traffic lights are all well and good: but what if pedestrians can’t see the traffic lights because they’re blind? Well, over in England, traffic lights have little cones installed underneath them. When the traffic lights turn green the cone starts spinning, alerting anyone holding it that it’s safe to cross. Simple, yet ingenious!

How to Use Traffic Lights Safely | Blind Hacks by Guide Dogs

Secrets Behind Common Traditions

If we’re talking about clever reasons behind everyday stuff, what’s more everyday than the things we do ourselves as people? As surprising as it seems, a lot of our common behaviors have some pretty fascinating origins. Humans love a bit of superstition when it comes to luck. From blowing out birthday candles, to crossing your fingers, good-fortune-bringing rituals are everywhere, yet very few people know their true purpose.

Blowing out candles traces its roots back to Ancient Greece. Greeks would bake moon cakes as offerings to the moon goddess, Artemis. They added candles to replicate the moon’s glow, and it was said that the smoke would carry their wish to the heavens.

For another example, have you ever touched wood for good luck? The act of touching or knocking on wood possibly dates back to ancient pagan cultures across the world. They commonly believed that spirits and gods lived in trees, so by knocking on wood you could awaken good spirits and scare away bad spirits.

Another theory dates back to 19th-century playgrounds. Kids would play a game called Tiggy Touchwood. It was very similar to tag, but if someone touched wood they couldn’t be caught. Those kids possibly then grew up, and kept touching wood as a form of good luck.

How about crossing your fingers for luck? Well, this one similarly may date back to early European pagans. These folks believed that good spirits were found at crossings. So originally, two people would cross their fingers together, index finger over index finger, summoning a good spirit and anchoring the wish on the cross.

Another theory says that early Christians, trying to escape Roman persecution, would cross their fingers to secretly identify other Christians or as a sort of prayer. However, research into this popular theory from the folks at Oxford University Press found a lack of substantial evidence to support this, suggesting our old Pagan friends might be the more likely originators of finger-crossing for luck.

Helicopter Domes

Have you ever seen a helicopter flying by, and spotted one of these domes above their rotors? What are those even for?

Those domes, commonly seen on Apache helicopters, contain a type of radar technology called the Longbow Fire Control System. This tech scans the environment, allowing the pilot to identify an enemy, broadcast the target data amongst a squad, lock on, and then attack.

What’s even cooler, its placement makes it possible for the helicopter to hide behind cover, like trees or a hill, with just the dome pointing out, scanning the environment. Then, using fire-and-forget automatic missiles, the squad can open fire at their pre-selected targets, blowing everything to kingdom come without ever having to reveal themselves.

Tabs On Rearview Mirrors

Have you ever noticed the tab at the bottom of your car’s rearview mirror?

You may already know that pushing it forward shifts the mirror into anti-dazzle mode, shielding your eyes from any excessively bright headlights behind you. But the way it works is extremely clever. A standard mirror has a reflective, polished silver or aluminum back-plate protected by a sheet of glass. Normally, the metal and glass materials lie flat on each other in parallel. But in anti-dazzle mirrors, they’re wedged together at an angle.

In the regular, daytime-driving mode, the reflective metal mirror aligns with the rear window, giving the driver perfect rearview reflections, while the outer glass layer is angled downward. At night though, pulling the tab angles the reflective metal upwards, reflecting the dark ceiling of the car.

The outer pane of glass, meanwhile, is at that point angled to reflect the rear window, but is considerably less reflective than the metallic layer. As a result, the driver sees a much dimmer hybrid image.

General Motors invited this deceptively simple, yet ingenious device way back in the 1950s, but newer inventions serving different purposes, like those fins you see on top of cars, are a lot more technologically complex.

These shark fins are actually antennae and are often used to channel radio signals for AM, FM, and satellite radio, as well as governing Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, and more. They tend to be a little less effective at getting good radio reception than your classic rod antenna, but they’re good enough that most folks are happy to trade some stability for style.

Breaking Windows With Vehicle Headrests

While high tech vehicle radio gadgets are great, most of them can’t help you pull a car back out of a lake, if you hypothetically found yourself in that unlucky position. What can help, however, is something super low-tech that almost every car comes with: detachable headrests.

How to remove headrests on 2019 Skoda kodiaq by Ahmed Hoosen

Yes, these things aren’t just for supporting necks; they’re also great for busting windows! The metal bars connecting a headrest to a seat can be leveraged against a window to break it if you find yourself trapped, either by water preventing you from opening the doors, or otherwise.

A Japanese game show demonstrated it amazingly. The gameshow’s method was to put the headrest bar down between the window and the door. Then by pulling on it, the leverage breaks the window.

Headrest to Break Car Window by goinggood

If you’re less patient, you can also just swing that thing full-force to shatter the window. Thanks to YouTuber Mike Stanek for the mighty demonstration there!

Breaking out of a car with the headrest by Mike Stanek

Interestingly, it doesn’t seem like this useful application was ever part of the plan for car manufacturers. When car companies were asked about this nifty double-feature of car headrests, Nissan stated that their headsets were removable purely to make installing the seats easier at the factory. Honda, meanwhile, insisted their removable headrests have more to do with seat flexibility than window breakability.

So, while manufacturers have a lot of different ideas about the headrest debate, only one thing is certain: their window-breaking ability is pretty smashing.

If you were amazed at these things you don't know the purpose of, you might want to read about secrets hidden in everyday things. Thanks for reading!