Episode Extra: A Flower’s Electric Field In the “Electric Buzzaloo” episode I did on YouTube, I showed you not only how bees find flowers using UV vision, but also mentioned that they can sense a flower’s electric field. What does that look like? This image captures the slightly negative electric charge that most flowers carry since they’re literally grounded. After being visited by one bee, it sheds some of that negative buzz to the positively-charged pollinator. If another bee comes along, it won’t be attracted to the less charged (and less nectar-filled) flower. This maximizes a bee’s chances of visiting fresh flowers and not wasting their time at an empty well. Read more at Nature News. Bee sure to check out the full episode on YouTube.
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Episode Extra: A Flower’s Electric Field

In the “Electric Buzzaloo” episode I did on YouTube, I showed you not only how bees find flowers using UV vision, but also mentioned that they can sense a flower’s electric field. What does that look like?

This image captures the slightly negative electric charge that most flowers carry since they’re literally grounded. After being visited by one bee, it sheds some of that negative buzz to the positively-charged pollinator. If another bee comes along, it won’t be attracted to the less charged (and less nectar-filled) flower.

This maximizes a bee’s chances of visiting fresh flowers and not wasting their time at an empty well. Read more at Nature News.

Bee sure to check out the full episode on YouTube.

This is what it looks like to shock flowers with 80,000 volts. In this odd but old photographic technique (called Kirlian photography), the object is placed over photographic film over a metal plate. When the extreme voltages are applied, the air surrounding the flower is ionized, leaving a ghostly electric image on the film. The remainder of the colorful image is hand-painted later. Check out Robert Buelteman’s gallery for more shockingly ethereal flowers. Bonus: Check out this gallery of plants imaged via electromagnetic photography at myampgoesto11. Gorgeous! (via DeMilked)
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This is what it looks like to shock flowers with 80,000 volts. In this odd but old photographic technique (called Kirlian photography), the object is placed over photographic film over a metal plate. When the extreme voltages are applied, the air surrounding the flower is ionized, leaving a ghostly electric image on the film. The remainder of the colorful image is hand-painted later.

Check out Robert Buelteman’s gallery for more shockingly ethereal flowers.

Bonus: Check out this gallery of plants imaged via electromagnetic photography at myampgoesto11. Gorgeous!

(via DeMilked)

Source: demilked.com

Fractal Flowers I know you love fractals, because we’re friends, and all my friends love fractals. We’ve seen them in nature, in the recursive spindles of branching rivers, but they’re more rare in living things (although our blood vessels follow a certain fractal-like pattern as they spread to capillaries). That’s why it makes me so happy to see fractals captured in an imaginative art/nature intersection. Silvia Cordedda uses fractal generation software to digitally draw fractal flowers. They are mystically unreal (unfortunately for us) but they remind me of several near-fractals in actual flowers. That’s right, fractals (or at least near-fractals, because they aren’t infinite) DO exist in nature, and you’ve probably seen them. My favorite flower fractal? Romanesco broccoli (yep, it’s a flower!): If you can’t choke that down, pour some Vi Hart cheese sauce all over it and check out this video of fractal fractions: (via My Modern Met)
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Fractal Flowers I know you love fractals, because we’re friends, and all my friends love fractals. We’ve seen them in nature, in the recursive spindles of branching rivers, but they’re more rare in living things (although our blood vessels follow a certain fractal-like pattern as they spread to capillaries). That’s why it makes me so happy to see fractals captured in an imaginative art/nature intersection. Silvia Cordedda uses fractal generation software to digitally draw fractal flowers. They are mystically unreal (unfortunately for us) but they remind me of several near-fractals in actual flowers. That’s right, fractals (or at least near-fractals, because they aren’t infinite) DO exist in nature, and you’ve probably seen them. My favorite flower fractal? Romanesco broccoli (yep, it’s a flower!): If you can’t choke that down, pour some Vi Hart cheese sauce all over it and check out this video of fractal fractions: (via My Modern Met)
Zoom Info
Fractal Flowers I know you love fractals, because we’re friends, and all my friends love fractals. We’ve seen them in nature, in the recursive spindles of branching rivers, but they’re more rare in living things (although our blood vessels follow a certain fractal-like pattern as they spread to capillaries). That’s why it makes me so happy to see fractals captured in an imaginative art/nature intersection. Silvia Cordedda uses fractal generation software to digitally draw fractal flowers. They are mystically unreal (unfortunately for us) but they remind me of several near-fractals in actual flowers. That’s right, fractals (or at least near-fractals, because they aren’t infinite) DO exist in nature, and you’ve probably seen them. My favorite flower fractal? Romanesco broccoli (yep, it’s a flower!): If you can’t choke that down, pour some Vi Hart cheese sauce all over it and check out this video of fractal fractions: (via My Modern Met)
Zoom Info

Fractal Flowers

I know you love fractals, because we’re friends, and all my friends love fractals. We’ve seen them in nature, in the recursive spindles of branching rivers, but they’re more rare in living things (although our blood vessels follow a certain fractal-like pattern as they spread to capillaries).

That’s why it makes me so happy to see fractals captured in an imaginative art/nature intersection. Silvia Cordedda uses fractal generation software to digitally draw fractal flowers. They are mystically unreal (unfortunately for us) but they remind me of several near-fractals in actual flowers.

That’s right, fractals (or at least near-fractals, because they aren’t infinite) DO exist in nature, and you’ve probably seen them. My favorite flower fractal? Romanesco broccoli (yep, it’s a flower!):

If you can’t choke that down, pour some Vi Hart cheese sauce all over it and check out this video of fractal fractions:

(via My Modern Met)

Wave Your Stamens in the Air Like Ya Just Don’t Care!

I feel like time travel, while perhaps scientifically infeasible, can be achieved technologically by manipulating the scale of time rather than our position along its arrow. This allows us to leave the present behind, and experience a sort of alternate reality.

Those alternate realties are places where flowers are not mere bee-buffets, decorative flourishes and aromatic embellishments. They are dynamic symbols of awakening, floral fireworks, like nature’s way of saying “Good morning! What do you have for me today!?”

I give you Flowers by Katka Pruskova, 730 hours of blooming buds condensed to mere minutes.

Wash it down with an animated version of Richard Feynman’s epic “Ode To A Flower”.

Source: vimeo.com

The Floral X-rays of Brendan Fitzpatrick are just breathtaking. Check out more at the link. Nature is full of numerical and geometric patterns, some we can see from the outside and some require that we take on a new perspective (just look at how those rose petals are stacked!!). Some of those patterns are probably coincidental, but some of them are likely a result of nature’s inner workings. Want to explore more? Take a ride with Vi Hart through the mathematical patterns of pinecones, pineapples and flowers. And then discover the multitudes of mathematical patterns in nature with Cristóbal Vila’s amazing video Nature by Numbers. What do you think? Are these patterns coincidental or are they proof of some inherent design rules in biology and nature?
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The Floral X-rays of Brendan Fitzpatrick are just breathtaking. Check out more at the link.

Nature is full of numerical and geometric patterns, some we can see from the outside and some require that we take on a new perspective (just look at how those rose petals are stacked!!). Some of those patterns are probably coincidental, but some of them are likely a result of nature’s inner workings.

Want to explore more? Take a ride with Vi Hart through the mathematical patterns of pinecones, pineapples and flowers. And then discover the multitudes of mathematical patterns in nature with Cristóbal Vila’s amazing video Nature by Numbers.

What do you think? Are these patterns coincidental or are they proof of some inherent design rules in biology and nature?

Source: brendanfitzpatrick.com

thekidshouldseethis:

Slow motion ladybugs unfolding their wings out from under their spotted Elytra (the colorful shell/hard case wings), recorded by Rainer Bergomaz of PCO Imaging.

From the archives: a ladybug swarm + more slow motion.

I’ve had the proverbial “lucky ladybug” land on me a number of times, always to fly off again within a few seconds. But I’ll admit, until now it never occurred to me how strange and intricate a process it is for them to unsheath their wings from beneath that spotted shell. 

It’s like a tiny, beautiful Transformer, designed by nature, rollin’ out. 

Van Gogh’s Sunflowers Were Genetic Mutants Sunflowers are a consistent theme in van Gogh’s body of work, some examples of which are today worth tens of millions of dollars. But the flowers he painted often differ from the common gold blooms we are used to seeing. Was this just impressionist license? A result of his dementia? University of Georgia researchers think they have tracked his “teddy-bear” blooms to a set of genetic mutations that are common in sunflowers. They weren’t able to cross-breed the green-centered, fluffy varieties of van Gogh’s paintings, but they think that all the mutations to do so are out there in the wild. Bonus: Today, March 30, is Vincent van Gogh’s birthday! He’d be 162. If he weren’t in space, cloned and held prisoner by NASA, animating ocean currents like they were in ”Starry Night”. (via Wired Science)
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Van Gogh’s Sunflowers Were Genetic Mutants

Sunflowers are a consistent theme in van Gogh’s body of work, some examples of which are today worth tens of millions of dollars. But the flowers he painted often differ from the common gold blooms we are used to seeing. Was this just impressionist license? A result of his dementia?

University of Georgia researchers think they have tracked his “teddy-bear” blooms to a set of genetic mutations that are common in sunflowers. They weren’t able to cross-breed the green-centered, fluffy varieties of van Gogh’s paintings, but they think that all the mutations to do so are out there in the wild.

Bonus: Today, March 30, is Vincent van Gogh’s birthday! He’d be 162. If he weren’t in space, cloned and held prisoner by NASA, animating ocean currents like they were in ”Starry Night”.

(via Wired Science)

Source: Wired