Why Potato Chips Have Ridges + 13 Random Obscure Facts

Have you ever wondered why potato chips have those yummy, crunchy waves... hmm... Imagine you are with friends watching a film and you are eating chips. Would you prefer to dip non-ruffled chips or a ruffled one?

Non-ruffled ones cannot handle the weight of the sauce and break down. Bamm! You have sauce all over your white t-shirt. So ruffled chips win! Ruffled chips also give you a better mouth feel.

Potato chips have a prominent oil taste which decreases the potato taste. And you might have fingers oil-covered. Where is the fun in that? So, what do you prefer? Ridges or regular potato chips?

Barcodes made our lives so much easier. But do you know how they work? Zebra lines are the keys here. Barcodes are read using a scanner. The scanner has a laser that detects the pattern. The laser reads the barcode. The barcode absorbs some light, and the rest is reflected.

The computer can make sense of those dots, lines, and numbers on a barcode. Imagine black and white lines as 0’s and 1’s. Black observes the light, and white reflects it. This rule applies here. The black parts of the 1s and the white parts that reflect the lights are 0s. The scanner sees the white sections, not the black parts.

Post-its are our friendly reminders to visit the dentist or a scheduled meeting. Be sure to hang them on the wall firmly. We have been using Post-It Notes wrong this whole time.

You are not supposed to peel it off from the bottom. Because this creates a crease in the paper. The note won’t hold on to the surface for long. Take it off from the side. It’ll stick more powerfully.

Cloud-like and sweet... The one and onlyyy cotton candy. It is irresistible, especially for young people. “Too much sugar is bad for the teeth,” everyone heard this phrase from their dentists. Surprise. The inventor of cotton candy is a dentist.

So, cotton candy was invented in 1895 by John C. Wharton, a candy maker, and William Morrison, a dentist. They named their product “fairy floss”. It is a cool name, by the way. They sold thousands of cotton candy at the St. Louis World’s Fair in 1904. Cotton candy is still with us, showing up in amusement parks, and dentists still care for people with tooth decay. Some things never change.

Do you love a lollipop? Why are there tiny holes in it? Those two holes in a lollipop stick may be used as a simple whistle. But they are there to hold the candy in place. The stick is dipped in the liquid syrup. It flows into the holes, solidifies, and surrounds the stick.

A life-changing invention is a refrigerator. But not everybody knows it has a dark story behind its door. The Refrigerator Safety Act was launched in August 1956 to prevent young people from being trapped inside a household refrigerator.

The refrigerators used to have an external latch that shut the refrigerator door when it was not in use. It can only be open from the outside. You can relax. After this regulation, household refrigerators were manufactured to be opened from the inside.

Moving on to the kitchen from the bathroom... Using the toilet while scrolling down the Instagram feed is taken for granted. Guess what? More people in the world have phones than toilets. According to a UN report, billions of people lack access to a toilet, especially in areas of South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. The number of mobile phone owners outnumbers those with proper plumbing and sanitized toilets.

Also, scientists have found that cell phones carry 10 times more bacteria than most toilet seats. So yeah, you might want to sanitize your phone after watching this video.

Do you use FaceTime or Skype to talk to each other worldwide? It could be for a chat, a meeting, or something else. The webcam technology was born with a very reasonable goal, though. In 1993, researchers at the computer science department at the University of Cambridge set up a system to see if the coffee pot was empty or not. Yes, you heard it right.

Researchers needed coffee to fuel their brains, as many of us do. They get up from their chairs, go to the coffee pot, and find it empty. Instead of making sure that someone makes fresh coffee, they wired up a system. The system would stream the images of the room where the coffee pot was kept.

At that time, it was 3 pictures taken per minute. It is more than enough to see if the pot has coffee in it or not. Thanks to the researchers for not getting up from their chairs. And for another tiny thing; coming up with this brilliant idea!

Do you buy white eggs or brown eggs? What is the difference besides the color? Since brown eggs tend to cost more, you might think that something in them makes the prices a bit higher. Nope.

The color of the eggshell doesn’t affect its nutrition or quality. Both eggs are healthy. Brown eggs cost more because the hens that lay them need more feed. It is more pricey to raise them than the white egg hens. The cost is reflected on to the consumer.

There is a hole in the handle of some kitchen pots and pans. We mostly use this hole to place the kitchen utility vertically on a cabinet door. They have a second way of use. Imagine you are cooking multiple dishes to make a feast for the family.

The kitchen counter is full of stuff. You have a hard time finding a place for the gravy sauce spoon. You can place the spoon in the hole at the edge of the saucepan handle. It will stay there safely until you decide to stir the sauce again. Not every spoon fits into the hole. It might easily slide to the floor. Better to have a test run when the spoon is clean.

Imagine you have a takeaway of a noodle with extra topping on your way home. You recently moved, and all plates are in the boxes. You struggle with this noodle box. The toppings are stuck at the bottom. The sauce didn’t mix evenly either.

We have missed out on an easier way to eat from the take-out boxes. They can be flat and serve as plates. You take the edges of the paper out and open it up. There you go. Now you have a plate. The best part is you don’t have to clean it up afterward.

Do you know that a tomato is not a veggie but a fruit? So is avocado. Watermelon is actually a berry. There is more to that! Peanuts are not in the nuts family. They are different from almonds and cashews. Peanut pods grow under the soil. They are harvested like potatoes.

Their upper parts are like bushes. These tasty siders are not classified as nuts since they grow under the ground, not on a tree. They pulled up from the soil like carrots. Next time you eat peanuts in a friend circle, you can mention this new fact you heard! Or it can be an icebreaker when you see someone eating peanuts. Classifying food as fruit or vegetable is a tricky business.

Do you know who invented T-shirts? In 1904, the Cooper Underwear Company prepared an ad and introduced its new product with “before” and “after” photos. It was referred to as an “undershirt”. The slogan was “No safety pins — no buttons — no needle — no thread”. As the name revealed, they were worn under the clothes.

One day it was announced that sailors should wear undershirts with no buttons under their uniforms. T-shirt love spread like pollen at a park on a spring day. Soon thousands of men started wearing them. Though t-shirts go back to the 19th century, now we have all adjusted to the comfort of our cozy t-shirts. Do you also wear T-shirts like the sailors?