We all have plenty to be distracted by: unread texts, current events, childcare demands, overdue assignments鈥攏ot to mention an overflowing email inbox.
When all that gets to be too much, it鈥檚 good for your mind, body and soul to take a moment and find some perspective in the amazing things we take for granted.
We spoke with five 91制片厂 instructors about everyday phenomena from their fields that might be invisible or underappreciated to most people, yet humbling鈥攑otentially even awe-inspiring鈥攖o those who really pay attention.
Radiation
Deborah Damcott, PhD
Some people are afraid of the word radiation, but it鈥檚 naturally occurring. Did you know that you ingest radioactive material whenever you eat a banana? There鈥檚 a radioactive isotope called Potassium-40 in every banana you eat. So anytime you eat a banana, you get a little bit more radiation. The fact that you can鈥檛 see it or feel it or taste it but it鈥檚 always there is fascinating!
Blue Jeans
Karen Dailey, Professor of Chemistry
Chemists work with the molecular world to give us conveniences or perks that manifest macroscopically. An example would be blue jeans. Blue jeans come from the pigment indigo, and indigo comes from a plant. We can generate synthetic indigo easily, and it colors billions of pairs of jeans! So, generally speaking, if we understand the molecular level of things, we can control the macroscopic鈥攁nd that鈥檚 pretty amazing.
Lightning
Kevin Cole, Assistant Professor of Earth Science and Astronomy
A bolt of lightning is as hot as the surface of the sun. It only lasts for a fraction of a second, yet it has enough energy that if it hits a tree, it boils the water inside that tree and makes it explode! I don鈥檛 know about you, but to me that鈥檚 pretty awe-inspiring.
Infinity
Karega Cooper, Associate Professor of Mathematics
One of the things that wows me about abstract math is that there are different sizes of infinity. When people think about infinity, they think about it being the biggest thing you can imagine. One example is with counting numbers: one, two, three, four, five. There are an infinite number of those if you keep counting toward infinity. But it turns out there are an infinite number of numbers between zero and one. So that first size of infinity鈥攚e call it aleph-naught鈥攊s just counting numbers. But there鈥檚 another size of infinity that we call aleph-one, and that one is uncountably infinite. So much so that it鈥檚 not possible to count all the real numbers. Infinity is really big. Like it鈥檚 super, duper, duper big. Not even the fact that you can鈥檛 count it, but it鈥檚 just so beyond being that we can鈥檛 even make sense of it.
The Sun
Bhasker Moorthy, Professor of Astronomy
At midday, the sun is always in our southern sky. It鈥檚 high in the south during the summer and low in the south during the winter. Avante Center at Harper was designed to take advantage of this. The horizontal metal plates outside the building allow the low winter sun to shine through while blocking the high summer sun. This makes the Avante concourse warm and bright during the winter and cool and shady during the summer. Even if you don鈥檛 live near 91制片厂, there is so much you can discover by watching the sun鈥檚 changing path across the sky, including Earth鈥檚 around the sun.
We all have some version of a daily grind, which is necessary to take care of our needs and make the life we want. But don鈥檛 forget to take a little time to notice the small things and get curious about the hidden wonders around you.