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The human brian is amazing at times


Road Runner

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Even the old ones.  :)

I had read an obit yesterday of someone who had the same and rather unusual surname of someone I worked with many years ago.  But I couldn't remember his first name.  He was referred to by everyone by his surname and seldom was his first name ever mentioned.  This was about 40 years ago.  I racked my brain trying to come up with his first name for 24 hours or so with no luck.  Then, just a few minutes ago, it forcefully and clearly popped into my head.  "GORDON!", my brain said.  I hadn't thought much about him for 40 years and certainly hadn't thought at all about his first name, yet there it was, squirreled away somewhere in the deep, dark recesses of my now feeble mind.  :nodhead:

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52 minutes ago, Road Runner said:

Even the old ones.  :)

I had read an obit yesterday of someone who had the same and rather unusual surname of someone I worked with many years ago.  But I couldn't remember his first name.  He was referred to by everyone by his surname and seldom was his first name ever mentioned.  This was about 40 years ago.  I racked my brain trying to come up with his first name for 24 hours or so with no luck.  Then, just a few minutes ago, it forcefully and clearly popped into my head.  "GORDON!", my brain said.  I hadn't thought much about him for 40 years and certainly hadn't thought at all about his first name, yet there it was, squirreled away somewhere in the deep, dark recesses of my now feeble mind.  :nodhead:

Isn't that amazing!  I've had similar experiences: names, solutions to problems, etc. - even when I was younger.  One night in college, I couldn't figure out the solution to an organic chemistry class homework problem, went to sleep, then woke up in the middle of the night with the answer.

Then there was August Kekule.  He - and many other chemists - spent years in the mid-1800's trying to figure out the structure of benzene. They knew it had the formula C6H6 but couldn't figure out how the atoms were arranged because the numbers of bonds each element requires didn't match any known configuration.  It turns out benzene's six carbons form a six-member ring and no one had thought of carbon making ringed structures.

So Kekule fell asleep in front of a fireplace and dreamed snakes were jumping out of the flames and grabbing themselves by their own tails. Kekule woke up, realized that's what was happening with benzene, and solved the structure.  To this day, the "Kekule structure of benzene" is taught in college classes.

When Kekule received what was then the equivalent of the Nobel Prize, he concluded his acceptance speech with, "We must learn to dream Gentlemen, and then perhaps we shall learn the truth."

Every Carbon needs 4 bonds, every Hydrogen 1 bond:

image.png.59bcfa62592b8567bf192f83d26a97db.png

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5 minutes ago, MickinMD said:

Isn't that amazing! 

It makes you wonder how, in the brain's evolutionary process, that it was decided that remembering a totally insignificant and never revisited bit of data from 40 years ago was a somehow useful or important function for survival, which then needed to be incorporated into the modern human brain.  :unsure:

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I dunno.. It's what your brain wants to remember especially about someone, something you knew/was in contact often or something unusual worth remembering.

My career is very much dependent on what I remember which enables me to do/find things for other people. Now you could argue, it's remembering the techniques. Sure, it's 10 different software platforms, their content  per employer.  In fact, it's more of how to let go of certain details but just trim it down to essential principles. 

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14 hours ago, Road Runner said:

It makes you wonder how, in the brain's evolutionary process, that it was decided that remembering a totally insignificant and never revisited bit of data from 40 years ago was a somehow useful or important function for survival, which then needed to be incorporated into the modern human brain.  :unsure:

RR, let’s open up a think tank to ponder the intricacies of the human Brian. :)

 

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14 hours ago, MickinMD said:

Isn't that amazing!  I've had similar experiences: names, solutions to problems, etc. - even when I was younger.  One night in college, I couldn't figure out the solution to an organic chemistry class homework problem, went to sleep, then woke up in the middle of the night with the answer.

Then there was August Kekule.  He - and many other chemists - spent years in the mid-1800's trying to figure out the structure of benzene. They knew it had the formula C6H6 but couldn't figure out how the atoms were arranged because the numbers of bonds each element requires didn't match any known configuration.  It turns out benzene's six carbons form a six-member ring and no one had thought of carbon making ringed structures.

So Kekule fell asleep in front of a fireplace and dreamed snakes were jumping out of the flames and grabbing themselves by their own tails. Kekule woke up, realized that's what was happening with benzene, and solved the structure.  To this day, the "Kekule structure of benzene" is taught in college classes.

When Kekule received what was then the equivalent of the Nobel Prize, he concluded his acceptance speech with, "We must learn to dream Gentlemen, and then perhaps we shall learn the truth."

Every Carbon needs 4 bonds, every Hydrogen 1 bond:

image.png.59bcfa62592b8567bf192f83d26a97db.png

And a very similar story for Tesla and the electric motor!  And I think Mendelev with the periodic chart!  Cool stuffs!  We can only imagine the real story of the peanut butter cup. :D  Or how Tesla invented the electric car after being dead all those years!

 

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