I’m always amazed on those really cold winter days when I think, “wow, six months ago, it was A HUNDRED DEGREES warmer than this - and my dog is still not complaining about walking barefoot in the yard.”
This may not exactly count as simple, but…particle physics. Of course, it’s a very complex subject, but if you focus on the types of particles themselves, it can be broken down into a few simple rules. Leptons do this, baryons do that, and so on.
But how in the world did they figure this stuff out? These things are so small they’re not really even things…they’re just bits of information that are billions of times smaller than anything we can touch or see. But somehow we know what happens when this particle collides with this, or that this particle decays into these particles because of this, and these particles have spin 1/2 while these have a spin of 1…so much information on stuff that we can’t even see or visualize at all. 50 years ago no one had any idea something like a quark existed, now we can tell you its spin, its mass, and how it interacts with other things. It boggles the mind.
Also fascinating: keys. When was the first key and lock system made? Are there really all these countless different ways to shape keys and locks that fit together and with no others? I mean really, all my keys on my key-chain look pretty similar, it seems like I should be able to stick any of them in the lock on my front door and open it, but nope, only one of them works. Magic.
Further to the general nitpick - there are pterosaurs - so that’s true flight at least four times, although one is extinct.
But does he wear shoes in the house?
I think it’s pretty amazing that rocks and minerals can be so distinct - I mean, I understand the sorts of processes that have caused them to differentiate, but part of me still thinks it really ought to be uniformly mixed up.
Lotsa good ones mentioned.
I’m pretty much amazed by most of modern technology, but I’m not sure that qualifies as “simple” stuff.
A few that regularly give me pause include:
-the great number of things that are constantly passing through my body, neutrinos, radio waves, etc.
-concerted schooling/flocking by fish and birds. It amazes me that they can react so quickly as to appear to move in unison?
-the staggering amount of trial and error - and communication of the results - that led primitive cultures to identify medicines in their surroundings. He has a headache - wonder what will happen if he sucks on this tree? Oops, it killed him, better try something else.
-that the perception of matter/substance is largely an attribute of electricity.
One of my best buddies is a chemist, doing RNA interference. Tho I am interested in and have done some small amount of reading in biology and physics, I know next to nothing about chemistry. The last few times we’ve gone golfing he has been trying to give me an elementary education on exactly what he does. It is astounding the degree to which he has to simplify the most basic concept for me to have any hope of understanding it, and even then more than a small helping makes my brain hurt.
Fire and water, as “tamed” by humans, to give me a lovely hot shower and hot meals.
The entire concept of domesticated animals, and pets in particular–we have animals live with us and trust us for their well-being, and in return give us what at least appears to be love and loyalty.
Along the lines of “how did they figure out this was edible?”: cassava or manioc. Check out the “processing and toxicity” section!
Written language. I can take the complex internal state of some portion of my mind, serialize it, and then encode that serialization in a medium so low-bandwidth it can be acceptably represented as a dashed and dotted line. Then someone can decode what I encoded and recreate enough of my internal state to feel the emotions that moved me to start writing in the first place. Most miraculously, the decoding can happen thousands of years after the encoding and the message is still intact, the emotions can still be felt through the void of time.
Eyes.
Seriously, think about it. You’ve got a couple blobs of jelly with a sphincter in the front and a sheet of photoreactive cells on the back, wired into a few pounds of grey meat that’s processing the signals. But from that you get perception of color, shape recognition, movement tracking, autofocus, and binocular vision.
This is a big one for me. As I watch my now-two year old daughter learn, I am utterly amazed at the transformation. I’d never really thought about it before, even though I’ve always been around babies and kids. Now that I watch her every single day, I guess it makes more of an impact. Learning language is the biggest part of it too. Watching and listening to her learn sounds, then words, then meanings of words, then to start stringing them together, and now to speak whole sentences. Just amazing!
I’m also with you guys on things like bread and cheese and all kinds of marvels of the food world.
I’m fascinated by how light falls onto objects. How it streams in and strikes an object. It’s fascinated me all my life.
I remember, as a kid, reading about a chicken who is pecking at a spot of light in the barn. The idea was how fruitless and absurd the chicken was, but I swear by God, I was envious! I loved pools and spots of light.
The first time I was in a Camera Obscura I nearly fell out of my chair! It was a large dark room in an industrial building at sunset. My friend said, “Watch this”, and he held up a large card in the open air of the darkened room. There, projected through a pinhole in the painted -over glass wall from the other side of the room, were the clouds in the sky, and if that wasn’t enough, A PLANE FLYING ACROSS THE CARD!! I was so shocked and grateful. in love.
I’m blessed to be a photographer who shoots commercial still life, and although I’ve probably shot everything I’m going to shoot for the rest of my life, over and over, it still amazes me. I was looking at one of my sets today, and just admiring how the light falls across the subject.
It’s amazing.
My husband found these little personal fans at Walgreens that allow you to program in messages, up to 4 per fan. Then when you turn on the fan it flashes that message and you can cycle through the different messages.
Technology like this used cost a bunch of money, and now you can buy it in a pharmacy! It’s wonderful, like buying pocket calculators or laser pointers at the dollar store, or mini-LED flashlights at the checkout counter.
I love this thread.
Oh and, glow sticks. I’m a glow stick fiend. I could never go to a rave because I’m way too old, fat and unhip, but I love the idea of them, partially because I do like that kind of music, but mainly to see all the glow sticks.
I was born too early.
OOh luciferase! Y’know, the first glow in the dark paint was discovered by an alchemist trying to turn lead into gold?
I love glowsticks!! We always take them camping so we can find our tent in the dark (even though it’s kinda hard to lose a 6 person tent in a small field).
I used to get proper grief off my mates when we went clubbing - I always took a whistle and glowsticks, even though they were “sooooooo 1990”.
In his book “On Writing” Stephen King states that writing is a form of mental telepathy.
I’m not sure if this really fits here, but it’s a weird thought that occurred to me one day.
Think of someone who has some incredible talent that just blows you away. You might say, “[] is the most talented and wonderful [_] in the whole world!” In fact, you can probably plug a lot of different people into that sentence.
Now, think about the people who lived a hundred years ago, or a thousand. They were never able to know the incredible talent of []. But here’s the kicker: They knew of someone else who was just as fabulous as [], and you will never experience the incredible talent of that person. They have been lost.
Other people’s gifts constantly amaze me. But the thought that there have always been these people, and I get to experience only the ones available to me during my particular span…it kind of blows my mind.
Heh. I always take them camping so YOU can find my tent in the dark - without tripping over it! I know where my tent is and where the guy lines are, but that doesn’t mean everyone else wandering through the field does. 
I prefer the glow stick “bracelets” - 3 for a buck and they wrap around the guy lines and hold themselves in place without me finding hanging spots. When you step away from the tent, you see glowing figure 8’s floating in midair. Enough to make even the drunk guy stop and think before walking ahead!
Stories (fictional). How we bring ourselves to believe in characters that never existed and events that never happened to the point that they’re as real as can be just blows me away.