Three Shocking Facts That Will Blow Your Socks Off

Let’s face it—life is boring, and nothing interesting ever happens. As you know, this is always completely true. However, you can read this article to finally learn something interesting for once. Join me as I guide you on a journey where we’ll discover a few things that I find interesting.

Shocking Fact #1

Quantum tunneling helps enzymes speed up life's chemistry.

Enzymes in your body speed up chemical reactions not just through traditional means, like stabilizing transition states, but also via quantum tunneling—a phenomenon where particles like protons or electrons "tunnel" through energy barriers they shouldn’t be able to pass over based on classical physics.

Instead of going over the barrier like a hill, these subatomic particles can borrow energy from the uncertainty principle and appear on the other side of the reaction barrier, instantly triggering the next step in a biochemical chain reaction.

A diagram of sorts

While this is interesting to learn about, if I use Google to research all of these fun facts, it will take far too long to write this. So, the rest of these facts will just be off the top of my head.

Shocking Fact #2

Fire needs oxygen to continue to burn.

Nobody has figured out why this happens, but it seems that without oxygen, fire cannot survive. This is why starting a fire in a vacuum is extremely difficult. It’s also the reason you can put out a candle by placing the lid back on it.

Confusingly, when you blow on a fire, it either gets hotter or goes out. It makes no sense at all. For example, if you blow hard enough on a candle, you can extinguish the flame. Conversely, you can also blow on the embers of a campfire to produce a more powerful blaze. I wonder if scientists will ever solve this curious paradox.

Fire need oxygen

Shocking Fact #3

George Washington was the first president of the United States.

Many people know that the U.S. was founded quite a while ago—around 1789, I believe. However, not many people know who became president right away. George Washington became famous for being a general in the Revolutionary War. He, along with Paul Revere and others, defeated the British to gain American independence.

George Washington

Shocking Fact #4

We still don't know how the internet works.

Is the internet a huge cloud that has always been on Earth? If so, we just recently figured out how to use it. How did we harness this "internet" and shove it into our cables and computers? Apparently, the internet is in all of our cords and wires and such—but how did we get it in there? I’m sure there was a very wise person who figured it out, but I wish they had told us how they did it.

The internet is all around us—in our Wi-Fi boxes, our phones, and the air that we breathe. One of the great mysteries of our generation, the internet is responsible for things like Clash of Clans, pictures of birds, and fantasy football. The internet is a fascinating subject, and I hope we can understand it one day.

Internet coming out of the Pacific ocean

A Breadth of Knowledge

I hope you all enjoyed these fun facts. We covered topics of science, U.S. history, and modern mysteries. As you already know, you should completely trust me and take everything I say at face value. So go forth and spread what you learned here today!