Uniforms convey a sense of competency across professions ranging from delivery person and airline staff to chef and firefighter. The psychological implications may be even stronger when it comes to matters of health: According to one study published in the medical journal BMJ Open, doctors who don the traditional white coat are perceived as more trustworthy, knowledgeable, and approachable than those who administer to patients in scrubs or casual business wear.

Physicians at the acclaimed Mayo Clinic do not wear white coats.

fact

FIB

Ready to reveal?

Confirm your email to play the next question?

sign up!

Please enter valid email.

Sign up

Oops, incorrect!

It's a fact

The Mayo Clinic's founders felt that the white coat would create an unnecessary separation between doctor and patient, and thus established a tradition in which physicians wear business attire to demonstrate respect for the people they serve.

The 2015-16 study drew from a questionnaire presented to more than 4,000 patients across 10 U.S. academic medical centers. Asked to rate their impressions of doctors pictured in various modes of dress, participants delivered answers that varied depending on their age and the context of proposed medical care. For example, patients preferred their doctors to wear a white coat atop formal attire in a physician's office, but favored scrubs in an emergency or surgical setting. Additionally, younger respondents were generally more accepting of scrubs in a hospital environment. Regardless, the presence of the white coat rated highly across the board — seemingly a clear signal to medical professionals on how to inspire maximum comfort and confidence from their patients.

Yet the issue of appropriate dress for doctors isn't as cut and dry as it seems, as decades of research have shown that those empowering white coats are more likely to harbor microbes that could be problematic in a health care setting. In part that’s because the garments are long-sleeved, which offers more surface area for microbes to gather — a problem that’s compounded because the coats are generally washed less often than other types of clothing. Although no definitive link between the long-sleeved coats and actual higher rates of pathogen transmission has been established, some programs, including the VCU School of Medicine in Virginia, have embraced a bare-below-the-elbows (BBE) dress code to minimize such problems. Clothes may make the man (or woman), but when it comes to patient safety, the general public may want to reassess their idea of how our health care saviors should appear.

• Share to Facebook
• Share to Twitter
• Share to Email

For at least 180 years, an electric bell at Oxford University has been ringing continuously — and no one knows exactly how it works. The university has covered the bell with a double-paned glass dome (who could study with such noise?), but the mystery of its battery has gone unsilenced. Built by a London instrument manufacturing firm in 1825 and acquired by Oxford in 1840, the item consists of two brass bells set below two batteries that look a bit like big wax candles. Between these bells is a small lead sphere, or clapper, that shutters back and forth, creating a near-constant ring. Estimates suggest the bell has likely rung more than 10 billion times. 

Benjamin Franklin coined the term “battery.”

fact

FIB

Ready to reveal?

Confirm your email to play the next question?

sign up!

Please enter valid email.

Sign up

Oops, incorrect!

It's a fact

In the mid-1700s, Benjamin Franklin experimented with devices for storing static electricity known as Leyden jars. Franklin called groupings of these jars a “battery,” referencing a military term for artillery working in unison.

This strange bell is powered by what’s called dry pile batteries, which use an incredibly small amount of electrostatic energy to move the clapper back and forth — so small that the two batteries have yet to run out of charge. Although no one’s sure exactly what’s inside the batteries (dissecting them would disrupt the bell’s historic run), the best guess is that they’re full of several thousand quarter-sized discs, made with metal foil and paper that has zinc sulfate and manganese dioxide added to it, all coated in sulfur. Oxford believes the bell has another five to 10 years of life left, as the ringing has slowed considerably in the past 40 years. (These days, it’s inaudible.) That hasn’t kept the Oxford Electric Bell — also known as the Clarendon Dry Pile — from being recognized as the “world’s most durable battery” by the Guinness Book of World Records. After more than 180 years in service, it’s an accolade that’s well deserved.

• Share to Facebook
• Share to Twitter
• Share to Email

True ambidexterity is the ability to use one’s left and right hands equally well when it comes to tasks such as writing or throwing a ball. This rare trait naturally occurs in roughly 1% of the global population (around 82 million people). In a 2019 study, 1.7% of respondents said they could use both hands interchangeably, far fewer than the 89% who were right-handed and the 9.3% who were lefties. 

The study also found a higher predisposition for ambidexterity among males than females (2.1% and 1.4%, respectively), which some theorize may have to do with the effect higher testosterone levels have on brain development (though this has yet to be conclusively proved). This is just one of several studies on handedness — the tendency to use one hand over another — and while the exact percentages of right-handed, left-handed, and ambidextrous people vary, the results are largely consistent across the board.

Thomas Jefferson learned to write with his left hand at the age of 43.

fact

FIB

Ready to reveal?

Confirm your email to play the next question?

sign up!

Please enter valid email.

Sign up

Oops, incorrect!

It's a fact

Though he was a natural righty, Jefferson learned to write with his left hand after dislocating his right wrist in 1786. The founding father’s left-handed letters were surprisingly legible, though the handwriting slightly differed from those written with his right hand.

The root cause of ambidexterity — or any handedness, for that matter — remains tough to pin down. One 2009 study suggests it may be determined by a combination of genetics and environmental influences (for instance, being taught to write with a certain hand in school). It’s also believed that ambidextrous people possess atypical brain laterality compared to right-handed individuals, which forms during development.

This cerebral asymmetry is arguably why ambidextrous people have a higher propensity toward conditions including ADHD, and also why they generally are less proficient than right-handed people in topics such as arithmetic and logical reasoning. Ambidextrous people also possess a unique versatility when it comes to sports, playing music, or performing everyday physical activities.

• Share to Facebook
• Share to Twitter
• Share to Email