Presentation Skills That Will Take You to the Top (Collection)

14. Getting to “Aha!”: The Magic Moment

Dr. John Kounios, a psychologist at Drexel University in Philadelphia, defined the “Aha!” Moment in a Wall Street Journal article as “any sudden comprehension that allows you to see something in a different light .... It could be the solution to a problem; it could be getting a joke; or suddenly recognizing a face.”^F14.1

The “Aha!” Moment

According to William Safire, the master etymologist of the New York Times, the first person to express the moment was Chaucer in a fox hunt in his Canterbury Tales.^F14.2 Archimedes undoubtedly experienced it when he noticed the displacement of water in his bath, as did Sir Isaac Newton when he saw an apple fall from a tree, and Alexander Graham Bell when he called to his ...