This is a neat little post about how retaining and applying random facts and knowledge makes you smart. Take the win! You are smart even if you learned it from a late-night YouTube binge or whatever else!
(via: r/tumblr)
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Another physics story. Lab partner and I were doing a very sensitive experiment in the basement of the physics building (undergrad physics, so working to prove things that have already been demonstrated many, many times). We kept getting this anomalous, period change to the data – it would increase over the course of a few minutes, then decrease over the same period, over and over. We were going crazy trying to figure out what we were doing wrong.
Then we connected the periodic anomaly to the increasing and decreasing of the volume of the lawnmower going back and forth across the quad in front of the building.
The CERN believed they had been parasited by an unknown force until they learnt of the Earth’s tidal forces.
The same happened to a SETI team who forgot to account for those same forces and beleived they had found an… impossibly Earth-like planet?
What is the temperature at which paper ignites?
Yes, we all know why we know that.
It’s actually Fahrenheit 482 (250c); the guy Bradbury reached out to made a mistake.
This is exactly how Sherlock Holmes solves a chunk of his cases in the books. Because he once saw or studied or heard a fact/detail and could apply it to the case at hand. Being able to apply esoterica in a relevant manner IS a sign of very high intelligence.