Summary 1: Social Media is Making us Less Social
It seems counterintuitive that social media is making people less social. Even though many people might say that social media allows them to socialize more, technological devices have become huge obstacles when developing communication skills. Technology became the center of everything making people lose track of the real purposes of living.
Multiple studies have concluded that people are more attached to their phones than to their face-to-face relationships. Human beings became slaves of their smartphones. Look around and see how society is immersed in the world of technology and globalization. The real issue is that people are busy with their online lives even though they are aware of the wonderful experiences they’re missing. It seems like the entire purpose of living is the internet and the amount of likes one receives in a post.
Social life is senseless if people prefer to check social networks rather that engaging real life conversations. Human relationships are powerful, and people should start creating human bonds with those around them. Social interaction is necessary to improve multiple skills that will lead people to excel at work and in many other environments. The quality of the relationships one has with other reflects the kind of relationship one has with oneself.
Summary 2: Properties are Making us Poorer
It seems counterintuitive that properties are making people even poorer. For some reason, people are considered richer if their assets are more valuable. It makes sense, but one needs to take into account the sacrifice behind the main stage. Someone who owns a quarter-million-dollar house might be consider rich, but many times what really happens is that banks own those assets while the investor is consumed by the mortgage and taxes. On the other hand, renters are part of the chaos as well. The price of rents is directly proportional to the price of properties, which means that as long as the value of properties keep increasing rents rise with them.
High property prices also affect one’s psychological and social stability. The stress created by the worry of maintaining a good credit history, having a good job, and getting to the amount of money that debtors have to pay monthly, end in a feeling of enormous frustration. People may begin to feel a constant fatigue that result in poor social interaction such as the relationship with their families and coworkers. In addition to this, some people begin to feel that they no longer have enough energy to go out and even stop enjoying their jobs. Everything that one would like to do could be overshadowed by the responsibility of managing to liquidate debts, causing a feeling of anguish.
Summary 3: Why do objects look and feel solid?
It seems counterintuitive that solids are mostly empty space. The English chemist, John Dalton, formalized the atomic theory of atoms that gained universal acceptance centuries ago. Everything one feels, sees, breaths, and touches is made up of tiny, indestructible particles called atoms. In other words, life wouldn’t exist without them. About a century later, Ernest Rutherford discovered that atoms were composed of negatively charged particles called electrons. Different from what many people may consider to be truth, electrons do not travel around the nucleus in specific orbits, instead, these negatively charged particles travel randomly around the nucleus in something called the quantum-mechanical orbitals. These orbitals differ from orbits in that they represent possibilities of the electron’s trajectory.
Many people wonder why light does not pass through the gaps of solids. This has to do a lot with the behavior of electrons within atoms. Electrons absorb energy from light to enter a excited state, which means that they are promoted to a higher-energy orbital. After that, electrons relaxes to a lower-energy orbital in order to be stable. When electrons relaxes, they create a emission of a spectrum. This interaction between electrons and light creates a reflection that make people think that matter is solid.
Others ask why matter appears to be uniform and solid when in reality it is mostly empty space. People are not able to see atoms because they are part of the microscopic world. The difference in the mass to volume ratios of matter is also in a microscopic scale, which means that we cannot see this difference with our naked eyes and that is what makes matter appears so solid.
Counterintuitive 