Rocks.
They’re fascinating. They can be bent and folded to an amazing degree with enough time and pressure. Little crystals grow like … like something interesting.
Sedimentary rocks may be a few million years old but made of little bits and pieces that are a hundred (or thousand) times older.
And the effect water has on them. Wild!
See, I didn’t even think of the baby cows thing, which itself is amazing. I mean, DUH!
What’s even more mind-blowing is that, according to classical physics (i.e., the way everything we see on a day-to-day basis behaves), the transistor is impossible. You need quantum weirdness for it to work.
Back to food, I’m amazed that anyone ever thought to consume a lobster. Don’t get me wrong, I love lobster. But just look at one. They are the cockroaches of the sea! Who in the hell looked at one of those mothers and said “Hey, if we cook that, it might taste okay”??
Another food one - kiwi fruit. Let’s see, this thing is brown and fuzzy and when I smash it open it is green inside. I know - I think I’ll eat it! WTF? I owe a debt of gratitute to that brave soul cause I loves me some kiwi fruit.
Flush toilets.
And cats.
Ah. Another multitasking housekeeper! Link.
Don’t forget one of the earliest, and most basic, applications of radio…television.
Like you, I’m nonplussed by its latterday, mostly incremental, evolutions. HD? Impressive, not exciting. Digital cable? Meh. But the idea that a radio, a neon lamp, an electric motor, and a disc with holes in it could *pluck live moving pictures from the air…in the 1920s…*now that was a little miracle.
A compass. Take a sliver of a certain mineral, suspend it somehow, and it always aligns itself north/south.
A crystal radio. It pulls invisible waves out of the air that you can listen to without any other source of energy.
Mandarin oranges in the can or jar. They peel the rind, take them apart into the little wedges, and then they somehow peel the skins off the little wedges so you only have the delicate little cell things full of juice. I don’t know how they do that, whether there’s some clever machine, or just thousands of third-world laborers picking away at the oranges with their fingernails, which are hopefully (but probably not) clean.
Add pineapple to that list. It’s one mean looking fruit.
Glow-in-the-dark material. As a kid I was a nut for anything that glow after the lights had been turned out and I’m still fascinated by it.
I was once in a Toys R Us during a power outage. The image of all of the glow in the dark stuff glowing at once was impressive to say the least.
Birds. How they fly though the trees without hitting a branch and falling to the ground is amazing.
I agree with the nomination of bread. I also include beer with that. Who figured out the magic that yeast does (or how many unfortunate cooks died getting it wrong)?
Although it’s not simple, I continue to be amazed at the web. I clearly recall the first time I used a browser, after having used computers for 20 years. Wow.
Speed governors. The guy who came up with that idea was a genius.
Ratchet screwdrivers. They just make so much sense but I never saw one before a few months ago. My dad was always stingy about buying new tools.
For me it’s cell phones… I know it’s not “simple” technology, but the fact that I can carry a device smaller than a pack of cigarettes that allows me to talk to someone on another continent in real time while wandering around the shops is just mad.
And another vote for the internet and iPods - that much knowledge in one place, so easily accessible. And a device that allows you to carry literally an entire library’s worth of books in your pocket… just amazing.
birds= dinosaurs
I loved dinosaurs all my life. Then one day I realied wait a minute if birds came from dinosaurs then they’re really a type of dinosaur!!
Now I can’t help but watch my cockatiels leap and fly around their cage without total amazement.
Lightning bugs. We don’t get them down here in Florida, but when I was in vacation in Tennessee and in Virginia I loved twilight, when all of a sudden the woods would start blinking.
Babies. Think about it…in the span of a short 12 months, they go from a crying, eating, pooping blob to a little creature who can walk and pick up things and giggle and start to talk. I don’t think there’s any other time frame in a human’s existence where they learn so much so fast.
Engineering marvels…we can watch the space shuttle go up in my back yard, and I must admit to a shiver of pride…humans thought of that, and (most times) make it work!
Growing things in the dirt. I never fail to be amazed that you can stick a bulb or a seed or a seedling or a cutting in the ground, give it water and fertilize it (or just as often not), and it will grow and flower and fruit and reproduce without further ado.
Wasn’t lobster only eaten by poor fisherman until the past few decades? I imagine it was more of a case of eating whatever was cheap and edible instead of a matter of taste.
And durian. It looks like a medieval war weapon.