What simple thing is kind of amazing when you think about it?

[TheePorts]

Pictures (and cameras)

Like the fact you can take a picture or video of a certain things in that moment and then look at it forever is amazing to me - I'm not smart enough to know all the science behind it and it might not be all that simple but it's simple to take a photo or video but its genuinely so cool you can keep a snapshot of time.

What other things are they that are "simple" but amazing?

I wonder if breastfeeding had something to do with that.

Well, it is amazing how it grows. And so perfectly too.

That by taking microscopic cells we can grow an entirely new human inside a woman’s body. It’s actually insane.

Touchscreens. I just don’t get it.

Sleep. Every night your body shuts down all but the essential functions and every morning starts up again and the clock is reset.

Why so bitchy? Every post in aibu that doesn't end with aibu gets at least one of these 🙄

To OP; the telephone - transmission in real time of voices across wires.

@Snippysocks I wasn't expecting William Paley on my timeline tonight

And if you think about the miniscule probability that any given photon that star emitted thousands/millions of years ago would arrive at earth, of all places in the universe, just in time for you to look up and it to pass through a tiny aperture in the front your eye, you realise just how much light a star chucks out.

When I'm sitting in traffic on the school run in the mornings, I often wonder at the fact that every person I can see - the ones in their cars, on the bus, walking on the pavements, all of them - will all have completed some variation of the same routine as me already today. They'll all mostly have had some breakfast, had a wash of some description, changed out of PJs and into daywear, locked their front door - and all before 8am! It makes me think of thousands of little worker ants, beavering away!

Glass.

To paraphrase Bill Bryson, you could stand me on a beach from now until the end of time and never would it occur to me to think: “You know, I bet if we took some of this sand and mixed it with a little potash and heated it, we could make a material that would be solid and yet transparent. We could call it glass.”

Growing a baby, childbirth, breastfeeding. The human body blows my mind. Then watching the baby grow. Astounding

Memory; that we can perfectly relive something - the sight, sounds, feelings that happened to us maybe decades ago. Just how does this happen- by something just sparking in our brain? How is it stored? How can we access it? How is something so distant and ephemeral able to be relived again?

It's incredible!

Turning on a tap and water coming out. Clean, drinkable water.

In large quantities and you can even choose hot or cold.

Having lived places without reliable water supplies, I never fail to be amazed and grateful for turning my kitchen tap and a crystal stream emerging.

Bread. How did we get to bread? Such a simple staple. But first you have to look at some wheat and think about grinding it. And then about mixing it with stuff. Yeast has to happen. Kneading, someone figured out kneading. Leaving it to rise. And maybe we'll stick it in that fire and see what happens?

Amazing.

Eggs. Who ever thought we could fry them, boil them, scramble them, make omelettes, cakes, pancakes, Yorkshire puddings… eggs are amazing.

Flight.

Bird migration.
A young osprey sets off from Scotland, never having caught its own fish, and flies to Africa.

A heartbeat. I was completely mind blown the first time I saw a heart beating inside a person (I work in surgery I'm not a psycho or anything). That thing beats 80 times a minute (give or take!), 60 minutes an hour, 24 hours a day for your whole life and never stops. And if it stops then you stop.

I love this thread.

Trees.

It isn't simple as such. But that we can 'walk' anywhere in the world via Google maps. Until your toilet breaks, you just take it for granted.

I know it's already been said, but I think aviation is fascinating. We have learned how to manipulate forces to make huge aircraft take flight and land again. It's not simple; I don't think I could ever pass a pilot's exam, but thousands of planes fly every day. Every time I feel the lurch on my stomach as the plane takes off or the pressure in my ears as it comes to land I think how amazing it is that we have cracked the mathematical and scientific secrets that allow it to happen.

I just read about a Meg tooth being around 23 million years old. I have one on my table and it wows me how old it is. However humans apparently only inhabited the planet as early as 200,000-250,000 years ago. That's such a massive difference. The age of the earth and size of the universe really astounds me. How most dinosaurs on Jurassic Park/world would never have met and been separated by millions of years.

How we are so insignificant in the universe. And we’re spinning round but gravity keeps everything grounded!!
just can’t get my head around that one - plus how humans have evolved so quickly (and are sadly now destroying the amazing planet).

Toilets and sanitation. Whenever I have diarrhoea I am so thankful that all I have to do is flush it away. It's a reminder of something we take for granted, yet is really amazing.

How bees know about hexagons 😂