Life Lessons and Cool Facts I Learned in Science Class

Science.

I know I’ve lost your attention, but please hear me out. Science may be complicated but there are good things about it.

The information I want to share with you is not a bunch of boring academic concepts that will knock you out faster than 10 tablets of melatonin. Instead, these 4 segments include thought-provoking and intriguing concepts that I learned in a science class that changed my mind about the world (spoiler alert: the majority come from a biology class).

Seeing Weight Through the Lens of Science

Ah, high school. A 4-year transition point in our development. Where all we know is that we are growing and we hate it. The many changes that occur during this time can make us feel wrong or ugly. This is certainly evident in how we perceived weight. The many expectations centered around being a certain weight cause feelings of embarrassment and shame in so many young people, myself included. It was easy to feel as though your weight (and general appearance) decided your worth. That’s why hearing the scientific definition of weight baffled me at first.

My 9th-grade physics teacher described weight as: The amount of force gravity exerts on you, in order to keep you on Earth.

This definition held a special place in my mind after learning that. It baffled me yet was oddly comforting. This measurement that had dictated my self-worth for so long was really a measure of an invisible force? That actually doesn’t seem so bad.

Seeing weight as a measurement of the pull of gravity allowed me to break out of the trap of equating my weight to my worth.

Instead of seeing a verdict on the scale of my worth, I would simply see a measurement of gravity. Applying a bit of logic to a very emotion-driven concept helped clear the sea of shame and doubt, revealing a truth about weight: it has no say in your worth as a person.

I always doubted the effectiveness of this way of thinking about weight, I felt as though it was too obscure to truly help anyone struggling. So, I hope I explained it in a way that makes sense. And if it ends up helping, then that’s worth it.

The Trillions of Factories In You

This next idea I didn't specifically learn in a class, but enough engagement with the material led me to this train of thought. Every biology class, no matter what grade, always includes a thorough explanation of the cell. There should be no explanation needed but the cell is an extremely small piece that makes up all of you. Throughout your body, there are millions upon millions of cells, all alive and constantly performing their necessary functions.

In a biology class, you typically go into great detail about each piece of the cell. This includes parts like the nucleus (which contains DNA), and mitochondria (the powerhouse of the cell).

However, I feel it's easy to forget (and not much emphasized) just how impressive cells are. In each cell, there is an entire system constantly performing different processes that are needed for survival. While that is impressive on its own, take a moment to remember that you have millions of these.

A quick google search will estimate there are around 30 trillion cells in your body. That’s 30 trillion mini-factories all working at once every second of your life. All of these multi-step processes (like metabolism and replication) are occurring at lightning-like speeds while you go about your day.

When looking close up at a human cell, it's easy to forget just how small it is compared to the organism it came from. Every so often, I remember the true scale of all of this, and it impresses me every time.

The Invention of the Wheel (And How the Body Did it First)

Bad news, I’m still talking about cells in the body. However, I’m focusing on one specific piece. Contained within a cell, within the mitochondria, is a piece called ATP synthase. Buckle up, to understand this you’ll need a few definitions.

ATP: The energy currency of the body that is continuously generated and used to power processes in the body.

In order to generate this energy, your body performs processes that convert food (specifically, glucose) into ATP. This process takes multiple inputs (including the food you eat) and puts them through several different steps in order to generate an amount of ATP. Then this ATP is used where needed and they cycle continutes to make more.

If your eyes have glazed over after reading that, all you really need to know is that the body is constantly making and using energy.

Towards the end of the process of making a batch of ATP, a too-complicated-to-explain process is carried out. The final step involves the movement of ATP through ATP synthase (which literally makes ATP). While making ATP is cool on its own, there's another aspect of ATP synthase that I think is fascinating:

ATP synthase is one of the only wheel-like forms in the body.

In reality, there are not any true wheels in the body, not like how we picture wheels. However, there are multiple pieces that have wheel-like movements. ATP synthase is one of these. As the ATP travels along, ATP synthase spins like a wheel.

While on the surface, an almost-wheel in the human body isn’t exciting. Unless you are me in a college biology lecture.

Do you mean to tell me that the wheel is a true human invention? The invention of the wheel just occurred to humanity. When the wheel was invented, we didn’t even know what ATP synthase was. A wheel-like piece existed before the invention of the wheel but was discovered after the development of describing spinning things as ‘wheels’.

This makes me think, can humans even say they invented the wheel? Sure, ATP synthase is in human cells, but that does not mean it only appears in human cells. There could be a long-gone cell that doesn't know that they grew the first wheel.

Typical of humans to claim this invention for themselves.

Nothing Truly Disappears, It Just Changes

This last concept delves into the bittersweet territory of the first concept on this list. It follows a similar format as well, a concept I learned in a science class helped me process a complicated emotion or dilemma. However, it took more time for this concept to go from a definition I learned to a comforting way to think about the world.

I do not remember when I first learned this concept but it's another concept that you learn multiple times over, The Law of Conservation of Matter.

In essence, it says matter (anything that takes up space) cannot be created nor destroyed, it simply changes form. This means that every piece of everything in the universe has been here since the start and is still here. No new material was made, the old material was changed into something new.

As the study of life, biology does not concern itself with death. But I feel that this concept of conservation can be applied to how we deal with death.

Since no new material was ever created and no current material can ever be destroyed, a passed loved one is never fully gone.

When we lose a loved one, it is expected to feel as though we lost them completely. However, we never truly do. While we do have memories that help them live on, we also have the many molecules that make up their body still around us.

When you bury a loved one, they do not disappear completely, they simply change into a different form, one that remains still. While it may not be them anymore, those pieces were a part of them.

This concept helped me a lot when processing death. While I could not see them as they were, I can see them around me as they are now.

Find Lessons in Everything

Frankly, I think science is worthwhile. While it can be tedious and tiresome to learn, it allows you to see new things about the world around you. I hope these concepts taught you something, whether it’d be about science, yourself, or the world.