Mysteries Revealed

We're discussing NMR (nuclear magnetic resonance) in physical chemistry this week. It's a standard technique for determining molecular structure in organic chemistry. (The same quantum mechanics is the basis for MRI.) Bloch and Purcell won the Nobel prize in 1952 for their pioneering work in NMR. The opening to Purcell's Nobel lecture is almost poetic in its intensity:

Professor Bloch has told you how one can detect the precession of the magnetic nuclei in a drop of water. Commonplace as such experiments have become in our laboratories, I have not yet lost a feeling of wonder, and of delight, that this delicate motion should reside in all the ordinary things around us, revealing itself only to him who looks for it. I remember, in the winter of our first experiments, just seven years ago, looking on snow with new eyes. There the snow lay around my doorstep - great heaps of protons quietly precessing in the earth’s magnetic field. To see the world for a moment as something rich and strange is the private reward of many a discovery.

I wonder if I have a richer view of the world for knowing something of its underlying structure? And how often do I stop to think about it?