15 Ordinary Objects With Extraordinary Features

Some everyday things have hidden sides, or they look the way you wouldn’t expect. One Reddit user wanted to show the others the difference in their lens prescription as you look at it in the light. The left one looks kinda bumpy. Really cool!

Have you ever thought of what the inside of your debit card looks like? Here’s what one user showed. One of the comments noticed it well — “looks like a Star Wars prop”. The black square you can see on the left side is the chip.

One user explained in the comment section that there are usually gold contacts on top of it which are there for inserting into the reader. But the Redditor used some specific method to separate the layers of the card so it either dissolved them or pulled them off. The section you see in the upper right corner is probably for generating one-time PINs, a numeric display, or something like that.

You can explore the parts of your debit card yourself too. At some point, when it expires, your bank will probably send you a new one, perhaps a month before its expiry. You can destroy the old one which would be a good thing to do. You can tear it into small pieces to avoid anyone digging through garbage, finding your old card, and perhaps exploiting your information. Although to check the inside of your debit card like in this photo, you’d probably need to use some different method than just tearing it apart.

The inside of an escalator looks interesting too. One Redditor took this cool photo when there was some work going on. An escalator looked like some weird tilted ladder or some creepy machinery that could “wake up” and eat your shoes if you’re on it. When you don’t see their inside, ­escalators are one of the biggest and most expensive machines we all use. We use them at work, when we go to the mall, or somewhere else — and, at the same time, they’re also one of the simplest. At its basic level, this is a very simple variation of the conveyor belt.

So, there’s a pair of rotating chains — and that’s basically its core. This pair is looped around two pairs of gears. There’s also an electric motor that turns the drive gears at the top, and then it rotates the chain loops. This way, we get a series of stairs in a cons­tant cycle. Its speed is from 90 to 180 feet per minute. When an escalator is moving at the speed of 145 feet per minute it’s able to carry over 10,000 people an hour — which is, you must admit, way more people than a classical elevator.

One user decided to show what exactly sunscreen looks like through a UV camera. When you see it like this, you understand better why it’s such an important protective layer in the summer. It would be cool to be able to see yourself like this to check if you missed a spot before hitting the beach!

Water lilies give food to wildlife and fish in the temperate and tropical regions of the world. Sometimes they even cause issues with drainage because they grow so fast. And they can grow really big!

One Redditor decided to show what the underside of a giant lily pad looks like. It’s not something you’ll usually see because other types of water lilies are mostly smaller and have a smoother surface, even their underside.

Victoria boliviana is the largest water lily species in the world that we know about. It has leaves that grow to almost 10 feet wide in the wild. And the biggest one can be found in Bolivia [La Rinconada Gardens], with leaves that grow to be 10.5 feet wide.

If you’ve ever wondered what your hands would look like after, let’s say, two hours of working as a cashier, here’s a chance to see it! And you probably won’t like it. This is a good reminder to wash your hands after using money and buying groceries.

The printer ink can do some surprising things too. Like, when one Redditor took a picture of it in the shape of stalagmites at its workplace. Some users even assumed it was a special type of printer that uses wax to print. Considering the prices of supplies for printers in general, this must have been a very pricey sculpture!

Okay, this one got me — did you know seals have nails on their flippers? Sea lions have them too. We don’t call them toenails or fingernails, like in humans. They need their nails to reach their backs when they want to groom themselves.

They wouldn’t have to clip their nails since they never get too long anyway. The reason for that is probably because they groom so often. Fur seals, for example, groom their fur for a couple of hours every day. That’s how they maintain their coats. We’re talking about the second furriest animals on Earth, right after sea otters, and they need their dense coats in order to stay warm.

One user shared what the sawhorse in his workplace looks like after years of paint being built up. A truly unintentional masterpiece, don’t you think?

Another Redditor shared a photo of glue at the point when it completely dried before they even used any of it. They even had to cut it out of the bottle to check it out properly. This can happen if you leave the lid loose or off. The Redditor here left the glue lying down on its side so the dried glue remained in that shape too. Plus, this can happen when you leave a glue for a really, really long time, since they have an exposure date of about a year even when you keep them sealed properly.

You know how sometimes when you’re in the store, and you get your receipt and see a red line over it? It’s there, so the cashier knows that the receipt tape roll is nearly out, so it would be good to put in a new one as soon as they get the chance. But what does it mean when you see a blue stripe on one side of your pork rind? They were out of it?

One Reddit user took a picture of it and, I must admit, I’m not sure I would be brave enough to eat it. Do you have veneers? One Redditor found out hers don’t actually glow in blacklight.

Phosphor is a substance that emits visible light which is like a response to some kind of radiation. It transforms the energy in the UV radiation, so you get visible light from a black light. Artificial teeth, like veneers, porcelain crowns, or dentures don’t have any phosphors. This is why, in most cases, they won’t glow in blacklight. Instead, you can see they obtain a darker purple color.

I probably wouldn’t have noticed this in a million years, but the king of hearts is the only one that doesn’t have a mustache. It’s not that it has something to do with his personal hygiene. In the original scenario, he even had a mustache, but it got lost through time in the reproduction of the original design. There was a similar mistake that made his axe turn into a sword.

One Redditor took a close picture of train wheels, showing us a contact area of around one fingernail, as you can see. Users explained the taper profile is actually what keeps the wheels centered on the tracks. That’s why they can roll around without slipping, even with a solid axle. It helps in cornering without having to rely on that inner lip.

The size of power cables you have at home and generally see around probably ranges somewhere from 0.001 to 0.002 square inches. These measurements here represent the cross-sectional part of the individual cores. And one user posted a power cable from their university which seems to go way over that width, don’t you think?