Can you light a bulb with a battery and a wire?

Really? How?

It's amazing how little attention we pay to things that are part of our day to day experience. We often focus on the task at hand and pay little attention to the peripherals in our world.

For example, let's take this question: "If you wanted to see more of yourself in a mirror, do you move backwards of forward?"

Go ahead, think, I'll be here.

You thought it through? You sure? What's the answer?

Nope. It's not "you have to move back."

The fact is no matter how far back you move, you still see the same amount of yourself in the mirror. Trust me, you can test it out.

Isn't it amazing that we use mirrors every single day, but we never really notice that? When we look in the mirror, we're busy concentrating on our task: brushing our teeth, combing our hair, etc. But we don't wonder much about how the mirror works.

Mostly because we don't have to. If it's not broke, don't fix it, right?

I think we could all benefit from looking harder at the world around us. Maybe I feel that way cause I'm surprised when a basic assumption I make turns out to be wrong. At the age of twenty-six, I believe I should know about fundamentals of how the world works or at least how things I interact with on a daily basis work. I don't mean that you should know how each chip of a computer works, but how does electricity work, or mirrors, or cameras. Those are pretty fundamental.

Here's another question for you: if by some way we were able to create a room that was completely dark, could you see an apple that was in that room? What about after ten minutes?

Let me know what you think, you might be amazed at the answer.

Most of us take these fundamentals for granted. Most of us are never taught these core functions well. Most of us never had to light a bulb with a battery and wire or sit in a completely dark room. Most of us never cared to look at a mirror just to see how the reflection is affected by the change in the distance of the source. Most of us either don't care or work off of some, and often incorrect, assumptions.

Buy maybe you're much more observant than I am and have learned all the basics. In that case I look up to you and think you're amazing.

Because you've conquered the ideal of looking beyond the obvious.

Previously? Categorical Imperative.