ordinary

Jacqueline Rifkin, University of Missouri-Kansas City Years ago, I bought a blouse at Target. That same day, I considered putting it on, but for no particular reason decided not to. That weekend, I again considered wearing the blouse, but the occasion didn’t seem good enough, so again, I passed. A week later, I considered the blouse for a date, but again, the event didn’t seem special enough. Fast forward to today. I have never worn my Target blouse. What had started out as ordinary now holds a special place in my closet, and no occasion feels quite worthy of my wearing it. What happened here? Why do people own so many unused possessions, treating them as though they are too special to use? I’m an assistant professor of marketing, and these are the questions that inspired my latest res...

The big idea In my synthetic chemistry lab, we have worked out how to convert the red pigment in common bricks into a plastic that conducts electricity, and this process enabled us to turn bricks into electricity storage devices. These brick supercapacitors could be connected to solar panels to store rechargeable energy. Supercapacitors store electric charge, in contrast to batteries, which store chemical energy. Brick’s porous structure is ideal for storing energy because pores give brick more surface area than solid materials have, and the greater the surface area the more electricity a supercapacitor material can hold. Bricks are red because the clay they’re made from contains iron oxide, better known as rust, which is also important in our process. We fill the pores in bricks with an...

Tag: ordinary

How Clutter Accumulates – Psychological ‘Specialness Spirals’ Can Make Ordinary Items Feel Like Treasures

Clever chemistry turns ordinary bricks into electricity storage devices