One of the cool things about learning is that you can do it without even realizing it. You don't have to have your nose pressed into a book, studying intently and filling out work sheets to do it, even though school has kind of conditioned us to think so.
No, learning can happen completely accidentally, as amateur and professional scientists and artists alike share on social media all the time. Just check out some of the weird and interesting things people have noticed out in the world.
"This was the torch used in the 2018 South Korean Olympic Games, my uncle was the person who got to use it so we just have it here," the uploader of this pic explained.
I guess sometimes torch runners just kind of get to have the torch and keep it?
If you've heard that you should try putting out a tub of beer to deal with a garden slug problem, you heard correctly.
Someone decided to give it a try and, well, the evidence pretty much speaks for itself.
This is the Wellness Skull, a work of contemporary art in Rotterdam by artist Atelier van Lieshout.
Apparently, it contains a bath in the neck and a sauna in the cranium, and when someone is using the sauna, those holes in the eyes let the steam out. Must be quite the sight!
Artist James Cook creates his work in a rather unusual way: by typewriter. His pieces sort of hearken back to the days of creating images on old school computers with ASCII symbols and patterns, only Cook's goes even more old school.
And it's pretty impressive stuff!
It makes some sense that where the cattle herd goes, the cattle dogs would go as well.
It's just that, like me, if you've never noticed them hanging below the cattle while in transport, it comes as a bit of a shock to see them there.
And it leaves me with so many questions: do you have to pick it off the cob as you eat it? Do you just heat it up in an oven or can it go in the microwave?
Do you need to butter it first, or after it's already popped?
As Dr. Justine Dees explained on Twitter, that shiny, rainbow-like sheen on water isn't always from oil.
Sometimes it comes from bacteria and she shows you a cool way to tell one from the other.
Just in case anybody wasn't clear, if you see a blue cactus, it's probably not naturally blue and so it won't stay blue forever.
It's going to grow eventually and the natural green will come through, as it did here.
Apparently, this "Norwegian Salmon ATM" isn't even in Norway but Singapore.
The fact that they call it a "salmon ATM" begs the question: can you make a salmon deposit, or is it a withdrawal-only salmon ATM? Either way, salmon must be big in Singapore.
But apparently, it's not just squirrels that will store away acorns by the dozen for the colder months.
These were jammed into a tree trunk by a woodpecker, the very appropriately named acorn woodpecker.
Yes, that's music written across a butt; it appears in the classical artwork "The Garden of Earthly Delights" by Hieronymous Bosch.
So naturally, someone examined the notes written on the butt, transcribed and extrapolated from it, and recorded what they thought that music sounded like. You can listen to it through the attached link.
Apparently, trees can host other plants as this one is now home to a thriving tomato plant.
Pretty sure those tomatoes won't last too long there, either. They look nice and ripe for the picking.
Hard boiling an egg does not ensure that the egg will stay inside the shell.
It's just a little more odd in this one how the yolk leaked out through a crack, cooked, and left the rest of the shell intact.
We all know that skin leaves imprints behind on surfaces like glasses because of the oils in our skin. That's why and how police can find fingerprints at crime scenes.
Turns out, your eyeball can leave an imprint behind as well, as someone — unfortunately — discovered the hard way.
"If you drill into Steel with a low speed at a constant pace, these will come out instead of dust," the uploader of this pic explained.
Hey, if you would rather end up with these twisty deals than a pile of metal dust, now you know how to manage them.
"I poured hot grease in this red solo cup and it didn’t leak, just shrank," the uploader of this pic wrote.
Even though the concept has clearly been proven, if I were to try to replicate the results like a true scientist, you better believe I'd prepare for a mess of hot grease to happen.
"Here's what 7 year old balloon looks like," the uploader of this pic wrote. Honestly, I would have expected a balloon full of air for seven years to look much worse, and probably to have popped long ago.
So I guess kudos to it for surviving?
Auto repair shops can use infrared imaging to create a heatmap that will show just how seriously a car has been damaged.
In this case, the driver unfortunately hit a deer. The red areas on the heatmap show the deepest damage to the car from the impact.
"A bug ate this leaf in quadrilaterals," the uploader of this pic suggested. I wouldn't be too surprised if that was the case, but some in the comments section believed the regular shapes in the leaf were made by someone stepping on it. I'm not convinced, though.
Would a shoe leave behind the outline of some shapes, or the shapes themselves as holes? I don't know, but it's a thing to ponder.
This photo shows the effects of bone cancer on the skeleton of a snake. Seeing the actual physical damage bone cancer can cause really explains a lot of the pain that comes with it.
On every hinge in this user's grandmother's house are these gorgeous door hinges. Such a small thing so many people wouldn't even notice, but still made with such beauty!
This poster uploaded this photo and explained that they have hyperhidrosis, meaning their hands and feet sweat a lot. This is what their hand normally looks like.
This is yooperlite! It's a form of syanite rock that's rich in fluorescent sodalite and these stones appear to glow when hit with light.
They can mostly be found on Lake Superior, in case you feel like owning a mini volcanic eruption.
Housed in a fancy metal box are these 20-year-old silver-tipped matches. The silver tips don't actually serve a purpose — probably just made to match the box — but they look pretty dang cool!
A good boy with an important job. Donned in a beekeeper's outfit, he sniffs out a bee disease called American foulbrood that can destroy hives if not identified quickly.
This vacuum states that it will release bees when in danger, which is a pretty good method of defense if you ask me.
Though this looks like it's made out of yarn or lace, this is a real spiderweb that's been frozen over. Not nearly as cozy.
For a fitting name, this phenomenon is known as ice eggs. They're created by ice being rolled over by wind and water, whittling the ice down to these round, pebble-like shapes.
Well, more specifically, on a bet. America engineers who designed the Skorsky S-70 helicopter pictured above made a bet with some Turkish pilots over whether or not they could fly it in a loop.
Obviously, they could!
Called a rotary snowplow train, this beast of a machine used to plow train tracks in Alaska after heavy snowfall.
That ground-level rainbow doesn't have the most fun explanation behind it, as pretty as it is.
Really, it's only there because water is being held in place by a bountiful covering of cobwebs. So uh...yeah.
Yes, you're looking at a half-pipe ping pong table. What purpose does it serve? Don't know, don't care, all I know is that I want to play it.
In place of washers, this handyman drilled through some pennies. Here, a free life hack for you.
Spotted in Qatar, this devil horn effect was caused by a partial eclipse at sunrise.
I think if I woke up and saw this, I'd go right back to bed. Not taking any chances on what that day would bring.
