You know in kids cartoons when detectives are shown as these tall, dark, mysterious figures that sneak around with their fedoras and magnifying glasses? Somthing tells me that wasn't an accurate description.
Detective work happens every day online, with help from lots of non-fedora-wearing people. This list below is just a few examples of sleuthing abilities in all of us, courtesy of Reddit's r/whatisthisthing community!
'Miracle Eye', as someone figured out, is a type of sensor. If there is no light (and the 'eye' is on), the clock won't make any chimes or alarms as not to wake people up!
If you're like me and thought this looked like a retro-future ray gun, you're kind of right! It's a Buck Rogers Disintegrator Pistol, a toy from 1935!
One reason he might not have any recollection isn't due to his mental state, but due to the fact that it's a fake. It's a replica French key fob that's made to look like it's from a French hotel. A cool keychain, nothing more.
This is a form of anti-theft tag remover. One being in a Goodwill might mean that someone left behind a life of theft and crime (good for them) only to let someone else discover it (bad for them).
The fruit-looking plant is actually an Oak Apple Wasp Gall. A gall is a type of growth on trees and other plants, and these ones specifically are created by the gall wasp.
A neat research tool, this is an XBT core. XBT stands for Expendable Bathythermograph, and a bathythermograph is used to measure the temperature of different levels of the ocean.
More of a partial object, someone said it looks like the top of a silicon boule. The same person said it was likely a failed boule that broke before it finished, which would explain the size and cracked look at the top.
A little more complicated than that. It's an electromagnetic security tag that allows you to just take the book without needing to check it out!
This is a shrimp cocktail icer! It's commonly used for different types of seafood, though. Ice goes in the bottom part, which keeps whatever is in the top part cold!
This mystery had an interesting end to it. Someone informed the uploader that not only is Golden Teacher, or GT, a popular strain of psychedelics, but this is also how mushroom spores are packaged and shipped.
The uploader then told a story, "We used to have a dumbass ex-friend that was caught ordering drugs online to other friends' houses and then making up weak excuses about why it went to the 'wrong address'." It had also arrived empty, meaning it'd likely been broken along the way.
A mystical alien tracking device it is not. It's actually a type of fishing rod that glows for night time and low-light fishing.
A cool piece of furniture, it seems to be a smoker's table with an extra feature. The copper-lined section was used as an ashtray, while the concave center could fit bottles.
Someone not only identified it as a fish 'premaxilla' (small bones at the tip of the upper jaw), but specifically that of a type of wrasse (a family of amrine fish).
Though it looks like sand, this is actually an old type of insulator called zonolite. In a perhaps concerning piece of trivia for the uploader, zonolite does contain asbestos!
These are the eggs of the sea hare, a species of large sea slug! These guys are weirdly cute, and their eggs are weirdly pretty. Overall just weird.
Huh, today I learned that crabs can make pearls! Yep, this is probably a crab pearl, which can be formed under a crab's shell when a piece of sand gets stuck in there!
Monopoly has more ties with McDonald's than just the annual game, this is a piece from one of the 'Monopoly Here & Now' games.
A simple answer with a complicated transportation method, this is a distillation column for refining crude oil (or anything else that needs refining).
We all know how important night time visibility is while driving, which this helps with! It tests the effectiveness of the lines painted on the roads, making sure they're still easy to see in the dark.
No, it's not an impending alien invasion, though I'd love to announce that through a pictures list like this. It's a smoke ring from a blown transformer.
