Swirling green energy factories wash your cares away while using sunlight to enable life on earth. Cytoplasmic streaming inside plant cells is very efficient -- the slow turning of each round chloroplast means every square micron gets a chance to create energy and oxygen from sunlight. Here, we're able to see through the exceedingly thin leaf of a popular aquatic plant, Elodea, and observe microscopic cellular activities. Photosynthesis is similar in other primary producers like cyanobacteria and algae. Thanks to CalTech for the use of their beautiful microscope and motorized stage. Music by KRON.
Harvester ants search a lovely variety of flowers for nectar and water. Ants are attracted to sweet foods (as well as fatty), and these are on the lookout for flower nectar, along with hydration from giant water droplets. This program was made with the assistance of Les Greenberg and the Universi...
Ornithologist Richard Prum shares his knowledge of the natural math of feather patterning. Simple feather patterns can be predicted using mathematical models called Turing reaction-diffusion equations. As a feather grows, each new cell must decide whether it will receive pigment or not, depending...
Over a billion years ago, tiny jewel-like cyanobacteria oxygenated earth's atmosphere. These single-cell organisms are the reason we have air to breathe. Cyanobacteria are also believed to be the precursors responsible for photosynthesis and multicellularity as a whole. Cyanobacteria are found in...
