A tower of 10 million atoms would only be as tall as a grain of sand.
Picture a walnut sitting in the palm of your hand – if the walnut was an atom then your hand would have to be the size of the Earth.
Seven octillion atoms [7,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000] make up your body.
Atoms are held together by electromagnetic forces and they are mostly empty inside. You are made of atoms, so you’re mostly empty space too. Atoms have smaller particles inside them. There’s a nucleus in the centre with a cloud of electrons around it. Deeper inside are even smaller particles named gluons, muons, strange quarks, and charm quarks. We live inside a vast universe, but there’s also universe inside us
Perhaps it is only in childhood that books have any deep influence on our lives. – Graham Greene
In a world that offers children so many digital delights, why bother with books?
1. Books help children understand the world
Books expose children to new ideas and help shape their world view – reading is a meeting of minds.
While reading, we can leave our own consciousness, and pass over into the consciousness of another person, another age, another culture – Maryanne Wolf
2. Books help children understand themselves
Stories give a frame of reference by which they can measure their experiences and feelings.
We read books to find out who we are. – Ursula K Le Guin
3. Books develop children’s imagination
Reading is imagination, and imagination enriches the real world.
Children do not despise real woods because they have read of enchanted woods; the reading makes all woods a little enchanted. – C.S. Lewis
Ultimately a child must want to read. The child who reads for pleasure is forming a wonderful habit – and there’s also pleasure for parents in reading aloud.
Tell all the truth but tell it slant – Emily Dickinson
Science can be difficult to describe: all the maths, jargon, and slippery quantum physics. That’s why analogies and metaphors are so useful in science. And so comforting:
We find it easier to reason by comparing unfamiliar with familiar, falling back on experience, looking for links between things, and seeking out pattern and meaning. – Joel Levy, A Bee in a Cathedral
Science abounds in comparisons: a greenhouse to explain global warming; a cat in a box to illustrate a paradox; and Kepler’s clockwork solar system. One of my favourites compares quantum physics to jazz and general relativety to a waltz:
General relativity is like Strauss — deep, dignified and graceful. Quantum theory, like jazz, is disconnected, syncopated, and dazzlingly modern. – Margaret Wertheim, Physics’s Pangolin
It’s the most important relationship on Earth – everything in Nature depends on pollinators and flowers getting together.
Pollination is ‘a love story that feeds the Earth.’ – Louie Schwartzberg.
For a flower to make seeds and fruit, its pollen (male) must move to an egg (female), usually in another flower – and bees do most of the pollen-moving. The result is a cornucopia of foods from cherries to cashews to coffee. Humans’ relationship with pollinators is also crucial, so let’s provide bees with a variety of flowers, clean water, and poison-free gardens.
Nearly all of the atoms in your body were once cooked in the nuclear furnace of an ancient supernova. – Frances Collins
The story of us began in the stars. The universe expanded after the Big Bang, forming atoms of hydrogen and helium. The atoms gathered in galaxies where they came in handy as fuel for stars. When stars died (supernova) new atoms were released – including carbon and oxygen, happily for us. By and by, over 8 billion years, planets were formed and Earth’s story began.
Photo (NASA Images): Star that exploded in a supernova leaving a ring that’s rich in oxygen.
A beautiful star-metaphor appeals to my sense that our cosmic journey has meaning:
The universe is made of stars, not atoms – Muriel Rukeyser
The /Xam San people of Southern Africa knew that humans were related to the stars in a mysterious way. The /Xan suffered a slow genocide in the 1800s but their words remain. Their stories tell us that the stars are closely connected to humans:
“The stars know the time at which we die.” –Díä!kwain, 1876
Tony Juniper’s book What Has Nature Ever Done For Us? brilliantly proves that money really does grow on trees. Nature is the basis of our economic lives and is worth $100 trillion/year to the global economy. But we use up our yearly budget of resources in about 8 months and after that we are destroying our natural capital. Juniper lists the huge benefits we get from healthy soil, plants, light, clean water, and animals, and shows it makes economic sense to care for them and respect them. Pollinators, for example, are vital for our food supply: of the 100 most important food crop plants, 71 are pollinated by bees. Juniper is hopeful we can protect the bees, for example, by planting ‘bee roads’ of flowering plants between our crops.
Everyone who has even a small garden can help with this.
There is a kind of library in the cells of your body. Inside each cell are tiny molecules which are digesting, healing, sensing, supporting and energising you. Most of this is done by protein molecules – there are 60,000 different proteins in the body; such as enzymes (for chemical reactions) and hormones (to send messages). We make proteins when we need them (eg. we build antibodies when we’re attacked by viruses). In his wonderful book, Our Molecular Nature, David Goodsell writes about proteins:
We must be able to build each one exactly when and where it is needed, using only the materials available in the diet.
This process is accurate because each cell has a ‘library’ inside it (called DNA) which contains the instructions to build the molecules. This amazing library is used every second of your life. DNA has 6 billion bits of information – about the number of books in a big library.
Ultimately, a single cell, when paired with an appropriate mate, can build an entirely new human being, molecule by molecule.
Using this blueprint, proteins are built in chains from smaller molecules called amino acids. Like letters of an alphabet, there are only 20 amino acids arranged to create thousands of different proteins. Some proteins last a long time, others are disassembled after a few minutes. (This allows the body to respond rapidly). The illustration shows ubiquitin, a protein found throughout your body. Ubiquitin’s job is to mark proteins for destruction.
Older beekeepers often tell me that their honey bees recognise them – now there’s research to support this. Honey bees’ brains are the size of a sesame seed with only 1 million neurons (we have 100 billion!) but bees can learn patterns, navigate, communicate, count, tell time, measure, and memorize. They can also recognise human faces. Honey bees don’t have distinctive ‘faces’ so this ability is more about their pattern-recognition skills (I wonder if it’s also about their close relationship with humans). Here’s how I might look to a bee with it’s many-faceted compound eyes (squint to see my face!):
The life of the bee is like a magic well: the more we draw from it, the more there is to draw.’ — Karl von Frisch
Far from being a means to escape the social world, reading stories can actually improve your social skills by helping you better understand other human beings. – Keith Oatley (The Psychology of Fiction)
That master of imagination, J.R.R. Tolkien, said that fantasy “offers not an escape away from reality, but an escape to a heightened reality”. When we read any fiction we enter an imaginary world, but it’s the characters that we attach to most of all. When our emotions are triggered by the characters, that’s when we get an understanding of real life relationships. Children develop empathy for others from about 4 years old – and hearing and reading fiction enables them to walk in another’s shoes. Another great reason for reading to children!
While reading, we can leave our own consciousness, and pass over into the consciousness of another person, another age, another culture. – Maryanne Wolf
Picture from a book about feelings: Bravo by Philip Waechter
Insect reality is more outlandish than any fantasy:
The snowy tree cricket is also a thermometer. Its rate of chirping will tell you the air temperature: count the number of chirps in 7 seconds and add 4˚C.
The silk moth wraps itself in a single thread up to 2 kilometres long.
Cicada membranes produce sound louder than lawnmowers with their amplifying air sacs.
The wings of a biting midge beat at 1,046 strokes per second.
The tiny minim ants ride on top of leaves carried by their big sister leaf-cutter ants, protecting them from parasitic flies.
We fill our lives with honey and wax.. giving humans the two noblest things, which are sweetness and light. – Jonathan Swift (Gulliver’sTravels) 1773
Honey bees give us golden gifts as well as honey: wax, propolis, and pollen. Beeswax (made inside bees’ bodies) has oodles of uses, including in food-wrap (goodbye plastic!), polish, jelly beans, artists’ media, dental floss and cleaning up oil spills. It’s a best for candles because it gives a sweet scent and a lustrous, smokefree light. Propolis is the bee’s cleaning product – a sticky, germ-killing resin they collect from plants. It’s used to plug cracks and keep the hive healthy. Propolis fights infection in humans, especially in the mouth. Pollen is rich in protein and vitamins for the bees; but humans eat it too. The boxer, Muhammad Ali, ate pollen, which may explain his motto: ‘I float like a butterfly, sting like a bee’.
The second most complex language on the planet. – Professor James Gould
We communicate with the alphabet; honey bees are the only other creatures we know of that use symbols: their dance movements. When a bee finds a patch of flowers she goes home and dances for her sister bees. The dance shows the other bees both the direction and the distance to the flowers.
Direction: told by the angle of the dance. For example, if the bee dances straight up the honeycomb it means ‘fly straight towards the sun’.
Distance: told by waggling. Each waggle of the bee’s body means a set distance: eg. one waggle might mean 50 metres, so 10 waggles = 500 metres to fly. A faster waggle dance means the flowers have plenty of nectar.
Remember that bees dance in the dark! The audience gets the message through touch, sound, smell, and taste.
We can’t survive without bees and bees won’t survive unless we love them. It’s a unique partnership between ‘wild’ creatures and humans: honey bees give us fruit, vegetables, and pastures – we must make sure they have a variety of flowering plants and clean habitats (avoid pesticides, especially neonicotinoids).
Human beings have fabricated the illusion that they have the technological prowess to be independent of nature. Bees underline the reality that we are more, not less, dependent on nature’s services. – Achim Steiner
Trees are not only smart but are vital to the functioning of the planet’s natural cycles. Trees are also one of our few natural allies in the daunting fight against global warming.
A honeycomb is made from wax produced by bees, and shaped into near perfect hexagons. The comb is not only a pantry for storing honey, it’s also the bee’s kitchen, nursery, bedroom and dance floor. This photo shows cells in the comb used to store honey – the bees put a layer of white wax ‘capping’ over the honey to preserve it.
This next photo shows cells used to raise baby bees (the white larvae are visible in some cells). These larval cells are then capped so the bee can develop into an adult. Lovely photos by artist Claire Beynon (click to enlarge).
My new Nature Stroybook, Gecko, is about a day in the life of a gecko, as he hunts for food in the jungle and is himself hunted by deadly predators. With stunning illustrations by Brian Lovelock and published internationally by Walker Books. Learn more about Geckos.
Reading can be learned only because of the brain’s plastic design, and when reading takes place, that individual brain is forever changed. Maryanne Wolf
Readers mentally simulate each new situation encountered in a narrative… using brain regions that closely mirror those involved when people perform, imagine, or observe similar real-world activities. Washington University
We already knew that good stories can put you in someone else’s shoes in a figurative sense. Now we’re seeing that something may also be happening biologically. – Gregory Berns (Emory University)
Jane Goodall’s memoir, Reason For Hope, is certainly that – her life in an inspiration in difficult times. The book covers her childhood in WW2; her studies of chimpanzees which revolutionised biology; and her development work via the Goodall Institute. The writing is honest and poetic, and I like the way she integrates science with her beliefs (which embrace several traditions). Here’s a link to an interview with Jane Goodall; and quotes from the book:
Each one of us matters, has a role to play, and makes a difference.
We either agree with Macbeth that life is nothing more than a ‘tale told by an idiot’, a purposeless emergence of life-forms…or we believe that, as Teilhard de Chardin put it, ‘There is something afoot in the universe, something that looks like gestation and birth.’
Yes, my child, go out into the world; walk slow
And silent, comprehending all, and by and by
Your soul, the Universe, will know
Itself: the Eternal I.
Plants have between 15 and 20 senses, including smelling, tasting, and sensing light and sounds. The root tips are especially ‘intelligent’: sensing gravity, water, light, pressure, hardness, volume, nutrients, toxins, microbes, and messages from other plants. Here are some remarkable examples of plant behaviour:
Some corn plants emit a scent when caterpillars attack them, and the scent attracts parasitic wasps which then eat the caterpillars.
Many plants produce caffeine, a drug which encourages bees to remember the plants and return to pollinate them.
Forest trees use a ‘wood-wide-web’ of underground fungi through which they deliver food and water to other trees in need, and also signal others about insect attack.
Am I really made of stardust? Yes, many of my (and your) atoms were made in dying stars – when the stars exploded (‘supernova’) the atoms were flung into the universe and eventually became planets and plankton and people. The atoms themselves have not changed but were constantly recycled into different matter – those same atoms of stardust make up 93% of my body mass (some are hydrogen atoms which are actually Big Bang dust). That means I’m billions of years old… which is strange but oddly hopeful.
‘Our presence in the universe is deeply rooted in this cosmic history.’– Marco Bersanelli, physicist.
My Mum and Dad? The remnants of two ancient supernova explosions, Puppis and Vela. Image courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA
Honey bees are the glue that holds our agricultural system together…Hannah Nordhaus
One cause of the current honey bee decline is monocultural farming: bees are starving because of a lack of flower diversity. You can help by planting bee-friendly fruit trees, bushes, herbs and wild flowers, such as:
Nectar-rich flowers: clovers and mimosa; rosemary, thyme and sage; koromiko and veronicas; brassicas; dandelion, sunflower, dahlias, cosmos, and zinnia
Bluish-purple flowers such as Californian lilac, erica, and lavender
There are few butterflies in New Zealand but there are over 1,650 species of moth (most are found only here) which are important pollinators. The largest is the beautiful puriri, which can be up to 15 cm across its velvety wings. It spends four years as a caterpillar eating rotten wood, then changes into a moth that lives for only a few days.
The bee is the only creature on the planet that is a true creative artisan. It gathers materials and transforms them to make not only architecture but food.– Claire Preston
In the late 18th century, this slang term for something stylish and excellent actually referred to something small, weak or insignificant, such as the joint in a bee’s little leg.– Time
Reading and brain development are linked almost from birth. A baby’s brain grows quickly (tripling in size in the preschool years) as the brain cells make connections with each other. What creates those connections? Reading and singing to a baby; playing with a baby; touch and eye contact. By six years old, a child has the most brain connections he or she will ever have. A baby who’s been introduced to books will start school with many literacy skills in place.
The amount of time the child spends listening to parents and other loved ones read continues to be one of the best predictors of later reading.– Maryanne Wolf
Reading and thinking can enhance each other. It’s our brain’s ‘plasticity’ that enables us to learn to read – reading creates brand new neural pathways and these then become the basis for new thinking. (More reading quotes here).
In late autumn most of the male bees (drones) are pushed outside the hive to die – the female worker bees can’t afford the honey to feed them all. In winter, the large bee family huddles together in a tight ball which traps the heat of their bodies. It’s amazing that even when it’s way below zero outside, bees can keep the cluster at around 95˚F (35˚C). To adjust their temperature, bees vibrate their wing muscles and constantly change places with each other within the huddle. This close cooperation means bees can control the temperature and survive in almost any climate. Bees eat their honey in winter and on the odd fine day they fly outside to poo, as is their hygienic habit.
We should not write them off as superstitious primitives.– James Hannam
It’s a myth (turned cliche) that science and faith have always been at odds. The book, God’s Philosophers: How the Medieval World Laid the Foundations of Modern Science by James Hannam, shows how the church supported the genesis of science. Medieval universities were church-sponsored and ‘natural philosophy’ (as science was called back then) was a core subject. European thinkers drew on ancient Greek and Islamic texts to develop scientific principles that we still use today. Hannam debunks the myth of the ‘Dark Ages’: for example, people knew the Earth was round; the Christian church did not routinely persecute scientists; there were many inventions, from clocks to spectacles; and early Islamic scientists discovered how the eye functions and invented surgical instruments. (Essay on Science and Soul).
At last, a big picture is emerging in science as links have been found between the small and the large, between quantum physics and biology. The poster child of ‘quantum biology’ is the European robin. The bird uses the Earth’s magnetic field to navigate vast distances – but the field is 100 times weaker than a fridge magnet, so how does the robin detect it? It uses an very finely balanced system that reaches from the sub-atomic level to the biological. Here’s how it seems to work: a photon (‘particle’) of light enters the bird’s eye as it’s flying; the photon is absorbed by a protein molecule in the eye where it causes electrons to become ‘entangled’ (an electron state that’s sensitive to magnetic fields); this creates a chemical change in the protein molecule which sends a signal to the bird’s brain telling it which way to fly. This ‘magneto-reception’ occurs in many bird species (including chickens!), honey bees, dolphins, butterflies, sharks, lobsters and stingrays. This fascinating book tells the full story:
It’s a myth (turned cliche) that science and faith have always been at odds. The book, God’s Philosophers: How the Medieval World Laid the Foundations of Modern Science by James Hannam, shows how the church supported the genesis of science. Medieval universities were church-sponsored and ‘natural philosophy’ (as science was called back then) was a core subject. European thinkers drew on ancient Greek and Islamic texts to develop scientific principles that we still use today. Hannam debunks the myth of the ‘Dark Ages’: for example, people knew the Earth was round; the Christian church did not routinely persecute scientists; there were many inventions, from clocks to spectacles; and early Islamic scientists discovered how the eye functions and invented surgical instruments. (