I don’t know what it is about them, exactly. But, here’s a perfect orderly little cube, and with a surprisingly small number of twists and turns, you can transform it into complete chaos. I could twist and turn that little bastard all day and never get bored.
I even went so far as to learn several algorithms for solving the thing. I can do it in about three minutes. I’ve also taken them apart and reassembled them several times. (Now that I know how to solve it, that is no longer necessary. But it’s worth doing just to examine the geometrical genius inside the thing.)
I have never tried the peel-the-stickers-off solution.
Days? DAYS? It takes far longer than days, my friend.
I’m amazed with our amazing human bodies, and the liquids they produce. The liquids are part of our autonomic nervous systems, and are largely out of our conscious control. And yet we can consciously summon them.
Look at a bright light, or sniff some pepper? Liquid comes out.
Drink liquids, then a little while later, relax the pelvis? Liquid comes out.
Rhythmically rub a certain body part while thinking of naked people? Liquid comes out.
Think about dead puppies or lost love? Liquid comes out.
All that has stemmed from it, such as cell phones, satnav, and all the modern complex stuff doesn’t amaze me. But the basic concept of radio still does.
Also records, the telegraph, etc. Anything with that “Mary had a little lamb” or “Mr Watson, can you hear me?” feel about it. Must have been awesome in its day.
Amazed that there aren’t more car accidents (even including minor carpark scrapes). Millions of bad drivers go out daily into heavy traffic and whizz past each other in steel machines that miss one another by inches, and most folks reach old age with between zero and half a dozen traffic mishaps, and most of those are in the order of a dent in one panel - maybe one more serious accident. That’s quite remarkable. I’d be expecting one a week - each.
The fact that bugs (and some lizards) can walk up the side of walls and on ceilings never ceases to amaze me. Whenever I see a bug, I devote at least 5 minutes of my time to watching it walk around. The way they move is fascinating. The fact that they can fall 20 feet and not be harmed is fascinating. Bugs are amazing.
The fact that there’s more empty space then “stuff” in everything that appears to be solid. This keyboard, the desk and my fingers are all more empty space on an atomic level than they are matter. Yet somehow the keyboard doesn’t fall through the desk, and my barely existent fingers can push the barely existent keys, and then, to top it all off, the magical tubes of teh internets display my empty headed thoughts to all of you, who mostly aren’t there either.
Oh, and vegetable peelers. How on earth did anyone work out the angles required for that to work?
Seconding bread. It’s hard enough with instructions, how did it happen the first time?
Amazed that someone tasted an olive from a tree and having spit it out in disgust went on to make the delicious thing we have now.
Running water. (That’s probably not really “simple” but the fact that we have it and nobody thinks two seconds about it is amazing.)
The car thing: that there aren’t hundreds of accidents each day.
The “how do we make food” thing: “hey, let’s pull these things out of the ground and put them in our mouths!” Who would think of doing this the first time?
That we live with animals in our homes, and love them to the depth of feeling that we do. (Obviously this is subjective and doesn’t apply to everyone.)
Who decided to milk the first cow? How did they know what to do? How did they even know it was possible? At what point in the evolution of both humans and animals did someone say, “Hey that large animal has these thingys hanging down - let’s go pull on them and see what happens.”
The internet. The idea that we can, within one minute, find out pretty much anything we’d ever want to know that isn’t classified/proprietary, blows my mind. Yesterday, I looked outside and saw that the weather looked threatening, so I went to the internet. Within a minute, I had the rain forecast, the radar feed, and severe storm warnings. I used to need to wait for the evening news!
I’d imagine someone saw a calf suckling it’s mother, glanced down at her own lady-bumps, and put 2 + 2 together.
I was freaked out as a youngster when I read that there were billions of neutrinos passing through my body at any given time. It still is a bit freaky today.
