Random memory: cause and effect

[afuna]

(Triggered, tangentially, by IRC conversation)

When I was seven or eight, during my first trip to the US, which was also the first trip overseas that I can remember, I took a cold can of rootbeer from the back of the van. It was spring. The rootbeer had been warm when we put it in, but was cold now, and I remember standing there, stunned, and thinking, "wow, the air is cold enough to chill drinks".

See, here temperatures usually hover around 25-32 degrees Celsius, which is enough to make hot things lukewarm, and make cold things lukewarm, but not enough to make hot things cold or cold things hot. So the fact that the temperature could affect things physically was new and very exciting.

Whenever I go back to that memory, I still feel that rush of discovery: "The x is y enough to do z". The x can do y to z, I didn't realize that was possible. And then I have to grin a bit at my naivete.

But you know, even now when I stumble across some new idea, I still feel that rush.

Magic.

Comments

[yvi]

Science is awesome, isn't it?

I love those moments.

The moments where the two facts "copper turns green when it rusts" and "churches have green roofs" combine to "they must have been copper before". Which is such a trivial example, but was a rush for me, because I figured it out by myself.

Kids need to have thos moments (although that particular example? I was a bit older at that *coughs*)

[lacey]

I still do that too :)

[afuna]

Hey, adults need those moments, too *grin*

[jeshyr]

I remember the first time I spent a significant period of the wet season in Darwin being absolutely amazed that I couldn't cool off with a cold shower because the cold water was the same temperature as the air and there was 100% humidity ... here in Melbourne we have very hot days (over 40C in summer on the hottest days) but there are always cool nights and the hot days are interspersed with less-hot days, so the ground is always fairly cool (except perhaps the top inch or so) and hence the cold water is always cold! It had never occured to me before that cold water was actually not cold but the temperature of the ground!

The other thing that amazed me was their public (unheated) swimming pool was almost bathwater warm and most of it was covered in shadecloth. Down here, even in summer an outdoor pool needs to be heated to be a swimmable temperature.

r

[afuna]

*whistles* 100% humidity sounds horrible!! I don't know what we have over here, but I'm pretty we never reach anything even close. I... I'm not sure I can wrap my mind around a place that humid. Does that mean that the air is so waterlogged, it's difficult for additional water to evaporate? I'm assuming it's not impossible, but then I'm learning a lot about assumptions these days.

eureka

[homeworldfan829.livejournal.com]

well i think it's just that sometimes, we have to unlearn somethings we've learned :) cheers.