Sometimes it takes more than a sentence or two for a message or a lesson to hit home. A particularly illuminating image can really do the trick, though.
Here are a bunch that really shed a surprising amount of light on some fascinating things.
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What a bag of potato chips looks like before it becomes a bag of potato chips.
This bag, at least, isn’t even a full potato. Mind you, I know which version of it I’d rather chow down on.
Those aren’t reflections on the surface of those water drops.
That’s pollen, and it has gathered in the exact center of each drop. Who knew pollen acted like that?
Where trees can’t get enough nutrients when they grow deep roots, they’ll grow these roots.
It’s especially true in the tropics, where these buttress roots both help them gather more nutrients in the upper layers of the soil and help the trees stay upright.
The Taj Mahal isn’t lit at night.
Think about it: pics of the Taj Mahal are all taken in the middle of the day, aren’t they? It’s because the monument remains in its original state without any new electric lights added to it.
Believe it or not, these are the same boots.
Well, the same size, make, and model, at least. What separates them is that one pair is brand new, while the other has been worn at work in a mine for a year. Yeah, just one year.
This took a bit more time.
This cutting board at a restaurant has been fending off knives for a good five years now, and it’s probably due for retirement.
Well, that kind of undoes the magic.
TV’s Hollywood Squares sure looks different from the rear angle, but then, I guess it never really took itself very seriously anyway.
Marty McFly’s futuristic self-adjusting clothing wasn’t exactly self-adjusting.
Of course, we didn’t have the technology yet in the ’80s, when Back to the Future II was made, but now…well, not so much either. One day!
This is just in case you thought the whole thing about CRT screens getting images burned into them was an urban myth.
Somebody played enough Pac-Man on this old thing that they burned the map into the screen for all time.
How tall is the world’s tallest building?
Well, it sure puts the Burj Khalifa’s enormity into perspective when you see it cutting a cloud apart.
Dress shoes just have a way of making your feet look bigger than they are.
This guy is sporting size 18s on his feet, and they look downright fake. But they’re not.
Light literally being shed.
When the sunlight hits it just right, the apple on the back of a MacBook will show through on the screen.
How often do you see the forest like this?
This is a remarkably clear illustration of crown shyness, the phenomenon in which trees refuse to get in each other’s way in pursuit of sunlight.
Ants are hardy little things.
If you expected a flood to wipe out an ant colony, that’s not always the case. These ants have clustered around some grass to survive.
Another surprising insect trait: ticks can get ticks.
Yep, a smaller tick has latched onto a larger tick for a feast, which is such a tick thing to do.
What a difference a shave makes.
Usually it’s a face, but in this case, a couch, which has had the pilling on a cushion razored off.
Orange juice freezes like this.
I had definitely never noticed how it freezes in long lines like this, rather than how water freezes wholly.
Some mushrooms aren’t fully…solid.
These are inky cap mushrooms, and it’s pretty clear how they got their name, as their tops appear to drip with inky blackness.
I’m sorry, what can they do?
I’ll be honest, I genuinely thought owls simply perched on tree branches or flew around. I did not think they could sit cross-legged like a kindergartner on a rug during reading time.
Marie Curie’s tomb is actually super lethal.
Located in the Panthéon in Paris, the legendary scientist’s tomb is actually lined with an inch of lead to protect visitors from the radiation in her body.
86 years later and her remains are still radioactive.
Birds-eye view of a thunderstorm.
Although this does look terrifying, it is also sort of beautiful in a way, like a natural explosion in the sky.
This self-healing tomato.
As the story goes, this plump fruit was cut while it was still growing, so naturally it mended itself , resulting in these little self-inflicted stitches you see on its body.
Shall we call it Frankenmato or Frankento? You decide.
No, these aren’t Mini Eggs… although yeah, they sort of all.
While not candy, these are in deed very small eggs that belong to a hummingbird. They’re about the size of a jelly bean, and they’re also pretty gosh-darn cute, if I do say so myself.
Age will do that to ya.
This handsome doggo has been losing his distinctive dark eye spots as he gets older. But that beautiful smile has thankfully stayed exactly the same.
This road is trying to go off-roading.
As this Reddit user explained, a recent storm was strong enough to quite literally gave this chunk of pavement and rip it from the ground.
Or, another popular theory in the comments points a finger at Wile. E. Coyote, which definitely seems possible.
Am I seeing double?
Apparently New Zealand and Canada share some very similar-looking $20 bills.
But I bet only one smells like maple syrup.
This is what happens when an eggplant falls in love with a pepper.
Or, more correctly, this is simply a purple bell pepper which I am only just now learning is a real vegetable.
It’s all part of the color transformation that bell peppers go through before achieving their red, yellow, or orange hues. So in other words, it’s just a phase, mom! .
If I didn’t know any better, I’d say this was a beautiful land tidal wave.
But as this Reddit user explained, what we’re actually looking at her is a giant, 13′ tall mountain of broken glass that’s been collected outside of a glass manufacturer.
Very beautiful, but also very sharp.
Sometimes soft-serve ice cream comes pre-served.
You might even called this treat preserved pre-served soft serve. If you want to get technical about it, of course.
IKEA goes to great lengths to prevent.. mishaps in their stores.
If you take a look at that toilet, you’ll notice the lid is literally bolted to the seat so no one can mistake it for a real toilet (or, you know, try to be funny) and actually use the facilities.
“UPS making a delivery to FedEx Ship Center.”
Yep, UPS delivers to FedEx, and most likely, it happens the other way as well. Strange but true!
The mark left by trying times.
Back in WWII, copper had to be rationed, so pennies were made with an increasing amount of steel in the alloy instead. That’s why they’re so much lighter in color.
