Videos
Podcasts
Blogs
Quizzes
GamesBrainStuff
Get inside the brain of the mastermind of HowStuffWorks.
Podcast Transcript | Listen to the Podcast Now
Comment Now
Recent Postings by Category
BrainStuff
- Thank You and Best Wishes to Marshall Brain
- Contest – Design a $300 house and win $25,000
- How the Philtrum works – the place under your nose where your face comes together
The Coolest Stuff on the Planet
- Sailing, Takes Me Away…To The Seychelles
- Cute Animal Tuesday: Black Vulture
- Traveling on the Orient Express
Keep Asking
- Why can a 5 foot 8 inch man dunk a basketball on a 10 foot rim while some people of taller stature can’t?
- What happens to our sun once it runs out of fuel?
- How do we know the age of the universe?
Stuff Mom Never Told You
- Who invented the Christmas card?
- How the Kinsey Report Fueled Whiskey Sales
- How to Get Your Wedding Announcement into The New York Times
Stuff to Blow Your Mind
- The Seven Deadlies: Pride Cometh Before the Brain
- Warhammer 40K: 25 Years of Orks in Space
- A Visit to the Tellus Science Museum
Stuff You Should Know
- The Southern Death Cult, the Maya and Georgia
- Deformed Baby Spider Brains
- Amazing Medical Conditions: Maple Syrup Urine Disorder
The Stuff of Genius
CarStuff
- Was Chrysler’s “It’s Halftime in America” Super Bowl commercial a little too political?
- Why is NASA studying car safety?
- Tips for in-car Navigation Systems
How-to Stuff
- How to Make the Most of a Gallery Crawl (When You’re on a Shoestring Budget)
- How to Swim with Dolphins (When Deep Water Terrifies You)
- How to Cure a Homemade Cookie Craving Without Turning on the Oven
PopStuff
- PopStuff Show Notes: Episode 43: Drag Queens: You Better Work!
- PopStuff Show Notes: Episode 42: Road Trip!
- PopStuff Show Notes: Episode 41: Celebrity Couples
Stuff They Don't Want You To Know
Stuff to Change the World
- Who will own the Arctic?
- Obesity: The New Global Crisis
- Bill Gates Makes For A Pretty Decent Cartoon
Stuff You Missed in History Class
- Butch Cassidy: Should we read between the lines?
- Are we rooting for D.B. Cooper?
- Party Time: A Look at Unconventional Politics
Announcer
Welcome to BrainStuff from HowStuffWorks.com, where smart happens.
Marshall Brain
Hi, I’m Marshall Brain with today’s question. How does hemp work? When most people think of fibers for cloth, what they think about is things like cotton or wool. With cotton and wool, you can comb them out, spin them and create thread very easily. This thread is great for making cloth that’s soft to the skin, but it’s not very strong. Hemp, on the other hand, is a lot like flax, and flax is where linen comes from. In both hemp and flax, the fibers are in the stalk of the plant. The fibers are something like the threads you see in a stalk of celery. They’re long, stringy and tough. To get at the fibers, you comb them out of the woody part of the dried stalk.
The fibers tend to be coarser than cotton or wool, but they are very strong. This strength makes hemp great for things like rope. The reason why hemp shows up in organic magazines and catalogs is because it’s very friendly to the environment. For example, environmentally conscious people like these aspects of hemp. First, cotton raised in the United States requires millions of pounds of pesticides and fertilizers. It’s a very intensive crop that takes a lot out of the land. Bugs like boll weevils love cotton, and they must be killed with insecticides. Hemp, on the other hand, is a weed. You can grow hemp using much less fertilizer and pesticide.
Second, hemp fibers can be used in many different ways. With hemp, you can make cloth, paper, cardboard, fiber board and lots of other stuff. By using hemp for paper and construction materials, pressure is removed from forests. Hemp also grows much faster and more densely than trees do. The problem with hemp is that the hemp plant is also known as the cannabis plant, which is also known as the marijuana plant. This connection to marijuana is what makes hemp such a hot issue in the United States. There are varieties of fiber hemp that eliminate the drug component of the plant to a large degree, but the concern is that it would be very easy to hide drug plants in a crop of fiber plants.
So, at the moment, hemp production in the United States is stalled, and it’s a source of continuous debate.
Do you have any ideas or suggestions for this podcast? If so, please send me an e-mail at podcast@HowStuffWorks.com.