Why Chocolate Bars Have Lines + 16 Other Simple Why-s

There are two types of people: those who love olives and those who absolutely don’t. So, olive fans, have you noticed that all olives are canned, and you can’t seem to buy fresh ones anywhere?

Well, the reason for it is simple: fresh olives have such a disgusting taste that no grocery wants to sell them. Yes, for real. All these cans and oils and chemicals serve to make them edible. Still doesn’t work well enough for anti-olive people.

Have you noticed that grocery stores don’t have windows? There are several reasons for that. First, they want you to spend more time inside and buy more stuff. For this purpose, they create a different atmosphere, cutting you off from the outside world.

For example, you can’t see it getting dark or raining outside. And so, you lose track of time. Kind of like in a casino. But there are other reasons, too. For example, having windows would decrease available space for shelves with products. Also, direct sunshine can cause products to go bad faster and make labels fade away.

Do you know that “H&M,” the name of the clothing store, is short for Hennes & Mauritz? It’s a Swedish company that originally was only selling women’s clothes. And so, it was called “Hennes,” which means “hers” in Swedish.

Mauritz Widforss owned a hunting apparel retailer, which was then acquired by Hennes’ owner. The store started to sell men’s clothes too, and the name of the store changed to Hennes & Mauritz — or, as we know it, H&M.

More about marketing. I bet that whenever and wherever you buy your oranges, they’re always in a red mesh bag. You’ll rarely see them lying around without a bag. It’s all for a reason, and the color of the bag was chosen carefully.

When packed in a red mesh bag, oranges appear more orange, and they seem fresher and more appealing to you. So, you’re more likely to buy them. Lemons are usually sold in green mesh bags for a similar reason. If you pack them in red, they’ll look more orange. And green goes better with yellow, making lemons stand out.

There are so many things I don’t understand about the world, and one of them is this: why do chocolate bars, like Mars or Snickers, have those zigzag waves on the bottom? Turns out — well, not surprisingly — that they appear during the manufacturing process.

When a chocolate bar is produced, it lies on a patterned belt of an enrober. This machine coats the bar with melted chocolate and then keeps it at a particular temperature to make it freeze. The reason the belt is patterned and not smooth is to recover excess chocolate. When the bar freezes, the prints stay.

You’ve probably noticed that old chocolate can turn whitish on the surface. This happens because with time, liquid fats contained in the chocolate bar — for example, cocoa butter — start to travel up through the chocolate, crystallizing on top. That’s the white powder, also known as fat bloom. It’s completely harmless, so don’t worry about it. And, if you really hate it, well just ship that chocolate over to me, and I’ll dispose of it... orally.

Lollipop sticks have those squared holes on their ends for a reason. When candy is put on a stick, some of it goes into the hole, fixating the sweet part. This way, the candy ball — or whatever shape it is — is less likely to fall off the stick.

Egg yolks can be different colors — starting with pale yellow and ending with deep orange. What does it depend on? No, not the chicken breed. Those only affect the color of the shell. The color of the yolk depends on a chicken’s diet. If its food has more yellow and orange pigments, the yolks will be darker. And yeah, yolks of any color are equally nutritional, so no worries.

Since we’re talking about farms. Look at these barns — what do they have in common? Yeah, the color red. And it seems like a trend. There were times before a wide variety of paints became available when people had to make their own paint for their barns.

Years ago, farmers were sealing barns with linseed oil, which is orange in color. To that oil, they also added milk, lime, and rust. Rust was available and handy, AND it had the power to get rid of moss and fungi. Together, these ingredients turned the mixture red, and that was used as paint. Nowadays, it’s just a tradition many still follow.

You’ve probably noticed those little rubber hairs on car or bike tires. Any special purpose? Well, no. They appear during the tire manufacturing process. Rubber is mixed with carbon black and put onto a tire mold. Then, it gets spread all over the mold under high air pressure. To make a good tire, the rubber should cover all the surface evenly.

But there is a problem: air bubbles can form between the mold and the rubber. To make sure it doesn’t happen and help extra air escape, tire molds have little holes all over them. Some rubber gets there. And once the tire is ready, it turns into those little hairs. No one cares enough to remove them because that would be useless work, and those hairs don’t harm anyone.

Those little black dots on car windows are called frits. Nothing to frit about. They’re supposed to make the surface of the glass rougher so that the adhesive can stick and glue the glass to the car frame better. The black enamel also blocks UV light that can melt the adhesive underneath the bands around the window. The black bands heat up faster than the transparent glass. Luckily, the little dots are there to help distribute the temperature evenly.

Buses have such huge steering wheels for a reason. Buses are bigger than cars and are also way heavier. So, it’s harder to turn a bus around, and you need way more strength to do so than when you drive a car. A bigger steering wheel, which has a bigger radius, allows the vehicle to turn more easily. And it requires less force than you’d need should the wheel be smaller. Trucks have big steering wheels for the same reason.

Many backpacks have a diamond patch with two parallel cut-out slits on the front. It’s made for your convenience. You can attach something like a water bottle or a pair of shoes to this slit. It comes in especially handy when you go hiking. Imagine not having to hold all these things in your hands! Cause you’re going to need your hands to fight off the bears. Hey just kidding.

Also, buses usually have those bright patterns on their seats. The reason is pretty disgusting — these patterns are supposed to hide stains on the seats. The brighter the seat is and the more patterns it has, the harder it is for a passenger to notice stains. Even better, the patterns are usually so bright that no person wants to look at them for long enough to spot any stains.

So yeah, the patterns are literally there to make you look away. And if you still do look — to make dirt less noticeable. Can I please hear “ewww!”? And that’s the exact reason why hospitals and hotels use white sheets — to show how clean they are and how high their standards are.

We all know there’s light in refrigerators. I bet you’ve tried to peek inside to catch it turning off at least once! But the freezer, on the other hand, doesn’t have any light inside. So, why is that, I have to ask? Well, the main reason is that installing an additional light in the freezer costs the manufacturer money. It might not seem like much, but keep in mind that it’s not just a matter of one light but also the wiring, the fixture, the switch, and so on.

And manufacturers want to save as much money as possible. Besides, no one really needs a light in the freezer — it’s not like you browse your freezer as often as the main part of the refrigerator. Also, in older freezers, ice crystallizes in the compartment, meaning that the light would get covered with ice anyways. Maybe that’s why there was no light initially, and then it just stuck. Or froze.