Originally, this blog was going to be called, “On becoming less dumb”. The focus was going to be on how common knowledge is often wrong. Literally every single person I asked thought “On becoming less dumb” was condescending and advised me to not insult my reader

 “Scale and perception” ( www.scaleandperception.com), this blog, is focused on the idea that by looking more closely and or broadly at a topic, often brings clarity about the topic.  For this post my goal is to revert to the premise for “On becoming less dumb”.  

As a teen, I was obsessed with the following problem pointed out by a Junior High school science teacher.  The point known as “halfway there” is, or should be,  actually always relative to your frame of reference.  

Here was his example. Imagine a football field where the team on every play moves the ball halfway to the goal line. The first play brings them to the fifty-yard line.  Once at the fifty-yard line there is a new “halfway there” which is the other team’s twenty-five yard line.    

With each play the ball would be placed half the remaining distance. Six and a quarter yard line, three and an eighth yard line, one and nine sixteenth yard line, etc.  After hundreds of plays they would get extremely close, but the ball would never actually cross the goal line.  

The lesson of course: While one can be halfway between point A and point B, you can never be halfway between where you are and your destination.  You need to specify whether “halfway there” is from where you are or where you were.  

When I was in about second or third grade, some other kids and I were going to dig a hole through to the other side of the earth.  We thought we would dig into China.  We got about five feet deep when my dad told us to fill in the hole before someone got hurt. 

Only several years later did I understand that had we dug deep enough, we would have burned up from the molten iron and nickel which is under the earth’s crust.  In addition, had we actually been able to dig through the earth to the other side, we would have come out somewhere in the Indian Ocean—between Australia and Africa.  We would have drowned.

According to the internet the Kola Superdeep Borehole, is considered the deepest man made hole on Earth. It is 40,230ft-deep (12.2km).  It did not go all the way through the earth’s crust let alone go into the earth’s molten mantle.   

Probably somewhere around fifth grade, I started to comprehend that all matter is made up of atoms.  Probably around eighth grade I came to better understand that atoms consist of protons, neutrons and electrons.  

Since then I’ve come to understand that protons and neutrons are made of quarks. The current state of knowledge is quarks and electrons are fundamental particles, not built out of anything smaller.

What I find fascinating about atoms is that they are about 99.9999999999996% empty space.  Which is to say the electrons and quarks in an atom take up 0.0000000000004% of the atom. Everything is made of atoms.  So, quite literally, everything is almost completely nothing.   

So next time you’re asked what something is made of, it would be accurate to respond, “it’s almost completely made of nothing”.

Distance is an easy concept to understand, however, in our everyday reality, distance is relative to how long it takes you to get there.  

Walking to Chicago from St Paul is about 400 miles. Walking 20 miles a day, it would take you 20 days to walk there.  Doable but a long walk.  Chicago is a bit more than five hours to drive from here to there.   And by plane it takes an hour and forty minutes however you need to add the time to drive to and park at the airport, Also add the time you need to be check-in and going through security.  . 

The distance to the moon is 238,900 miles.  Driving to the moon at seventy miles an hour would take about 142 days if you could drive 24 hours a day every day.   The sun is 91,914,000 miles from earth.  Driving to the sun at seventy miles an hour would take 150 years.  

Humans can walk 20 to 30 miles in a day.  If they walked 30 miles a day, every day of the year.  It would take about 22 years to walk to the moon and over 8,000 years to walk to the sun. 

Time is an interesting concept.  Time is generally defined as the sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future.

The earth is thought to be about 4.543 billion years old.  Water is considered to be about the same age.  Life on earth, single cell organisms, is thought to be 3.7 billion years old.  Human-like creatures have been on earth for about 6 million years.  Which means humans have existed for only 0.001% of the life of the planet.  

From the perspective of the planet, humans as in the entire human race, existed for just a bit.  

In junior high I thought the following  was a hilarious joke: What is the seventh planet from the sun?  If they didn’t know I would say: “your annus” and laugh hysterically.  Sometimes I needed to explain that the seventh planet from the sun is actually “Uranus” which sounds exactly like “your annus” when it is spoken.  Even then I’d have to explain that annus is another word for butt hole.    

Looking back it is a wonder I didn’t get beat up more.  

The closer you look the more you will see