How micro SD cards can hold so much information. There’s one now with 512GB!
My mom, who was born in 1913, was telling a much younger woman that she remembered when radio was invented, and how wonderful it was to listen to music and hear the news. Other woman: “Why didn’t they just turn on the TV?”
By observing humans, ,who can tell time.
My sister’s dog would wait by the door for her daughters to come home from school, only a few minutes wait. They finally figured out how the dog knew. The dog had learned that they always come home from school a few minutes after the theme song of a certain soap opera on TV.
Some people know jackshit about their own jobs. My cousin was a design engineer for an company that makes fuel injectors for Detroit automakers, and he was nearing retirement. I asked him one day what does he do all day when he gets to the office. After a moment to collect his thoughts, he said “I don’t know, there’s a lot of meetings.”
It’s Dilberts, all the way down.
How the Universe couldn’t exist without gravity, it’s a ubiquitous force, and yet we still don’t really understand how it works.
Fish.
I think fish are freaking amazing, to be honest. I can’t wade across this shallow stream, without getting knocked to my feet by the force of the current. But an 8lb fish, without any appendages, too slippery to hold, can somehow glide against that current ( and WAY stronger!) with elegance and ease. For miles and miles. Up hill, over rapids, in freezing temperatures, dodging bears, to an exact spot, etc, etc.
Only to end up in my fry pan because I fooled it with a fake worm on a hook!
Heinrich Hertz discovered radio in his “spark gap” experiment in 1879. See Heinrich Hertz - Wikipedia for some details. From this to wireless telegraphy was engineering development. Marconi was certainly the most prominent in this, see Guglielmo Marconi - Wikipedia, but apparently resisted getting involved with continuous wave transmission (that is, voice and music). But like most technology, there is no one person. It does all go back to Maxwell’s equations of electromagnetism that predicted electromagnetic waves (which, are after all, just other kinds of light waves).
Humans amaze me. Sometimes with stupidity at how we’ve screwed up our planet, but mostly because of how well we function. That we came up with project management, that we discovered and improved upon cheese, learned to make better products beginning with living in caves to modern condos and treehouses. From figuring out math to computing, from cave drawings to designing intricate nano machines. From setting a bone fracture to replacing bones and even creating vision for some of our blind people. Just amazing.
I can’t say this is 100% true. I can say that many actresses dance hours and hours and hours a day, so their bones are used to it and can take it.
(Its like ballet, but with singing)
I will say that I once took my youngest to NY when he was little. It was just the two of us, walking hand in hand down Broadway when a beautiful actress, lying back perfectly balanced on a sidewalk scaffold horizontal support, started to sing to him (and Beautifully!).
She wasn’t completely swimming in her clothes, but she was in her mid twenties and wearing a young adolescent size 8/Small dress.
If she was even 80 lbs, she must have been holding a bottle of water when she was weighed. Weight becomes important if you are factoring whether or not a leg bone might break from a misstep while dancing.
It was one of those few days when I actually wished I was rich, because I would have loved to have been able to just hand her every bill in my money clip just for being so nice. But we would have had to have Metrocarded our way back home without lunch if we had.
Hummingbirds
Predatory flowers
Whale song
That humans know of distances that can be described as “light years” (NOT a measure of time)
The instinctual “engineering” by small critters:
Forget ants which form bridges over streams - there id a hornet in Japan which feeds on bee hives - and a single hornet can kill every bee in the hive. The bees kill the hornet by getting it inside the hive and buzz their wings to create heat. The bees can survive to 118. The hornet dies at 115.
How the f*ck did they work that out?
The fact that light can travel for vast numbers of years, unobstructed … until it hits the retina of someone’s eye.
The Shazaam app. I’m old enough to have used a phone attached to the wall by a curly cord … Now I can just hold my phone up to the radio* and it will nonchalantly inform me who performed that song I can’t identify, when it was released, what album it was on etc.
I understand how the app works, but the progression from dumbphone to smartphone just boggles my little mind.
- yeah, yeah.
I’m amazed that so may people are not only clueless about the most basic scientific principals but have not the slightest interest in learning; ie: pushing the thermostat all the way up does not make the house get warm faster.
I’m also amazed at the advances in my parents lifetime. They were born in 1924 and 26 and since then have gone from having ice delivered by a horse draw wagon to having a cell phone and flat screen tv.
In 1969, as a teenager of fourteen, I watched the moon landing with my grandparents. My grandfather had been born, just barely, in the nineteenth century, having been born in October of 1900. My grandmother was born Dec. 17, 1904, one year to the day after the Wright brothers flew at Kitty Hawk. They started in the horse and buggy era, with no inside bathrooms or running water. And there they were, watching Neil Armstrong walk on the moon. Such a short time to come so far.
This actually blows me away! :eek::eek:
Crystal fog. Erika was telling me her first experience – she was from, like, Bakersfield or somesuch and so had never seen it before. She got off work at around 3am, and being the first out to the parking lot, stood transfixed by the swarming of minute ice particles lit by the lot lights. Then everyone else came out and started their cars, which basically blew it all away – at least, enough to break her trance.
Coinstar. The idea is so simple that anyone could have come up with it. Yet the banks rejected the first one, and then ONE grocery bought and installed it, and found out people will pay to have their coins counted.
Animals can roughly sense time by light levels in their environment, but mainly they follow a series of events that routinely happen in their day. Especially when they live with someone (like me) who sticks to a regular routine. My dogs know that after they wake up, they go potty, after that they get breakfast, after that they get a walk, etc. When we vary the routine, they get a little confused. I’ve noticed that my cats tell time the way way, but are more accepting of variations.
I’m glad to see that I’m in good company of folks who are amazed by air flight. I understand the science behind how it works but something in my heart tells me it’s just fucking magic. A few years ago I was lucky enough to see the space shuttle (I forget now which one it was) arrive in Dulles Airport. It just should not be possible for that thing to get off the ground like that. But it did. And it did it well.
Voyager 1 and 2.
Okay, so launching them and getting the trajectories right was all grade A, genius level stuff.
What blows my mind is you have this electronic device that has been on for over 35 years.
That’s like turning on your TV and keeping it on for 35 freaking years!
Another vote for air travel. Something that weighs tons, is as big as an apartment building, but because it goes kinda fast, and is shaped in generally the right way, up it goes! Nah, can’t be right.
The other one for me is cinema - viewing visible light being reflected from a screen + a series of still pictures one after the other at the proper speed = emotion.