[NEW] Garden Rant - A fantastic website all about gardening - for the rest of us. Click here for great tips on gardening, books, and identifying garden creatures (other than the plants).
Sci-Doku! - By now everyone has the regular number based Sudoku game figured out. You simply figure out the proper arrangement of the numbers 1 through 9 so that each row has the numbers 1 through 9 without any repeats. Well, if you’re looking for a challenge, wrap your mind around Scientific American’s Sci-Duko! You need to first figure out what the word is and then place the letters of the word in the correct arrangement. A new Sci-Duko is published each week.
Consumer Consequences - What would the world look like if everyone made the same lifestyle choices regarding the environment as you did? Find out by taking this quiz, brought to us by American Public Media.
How to make a Glowing Tomato - A little experiment that results in glowing tomatoes, with the help of matches, bleach and hydrogen peroxide. (I haven’t tried this, and the chemistry discussed could be a bit unsound…but fun to watch the video).
The phytochemical collection - Phytochemicals have long been touted as important for human health (lycopene in tomatoes, capsaicin in hot peppers). Florida State University microscopists put together a gallery of what these chemicals look like, up close and personal!
Floral Derangement - A discussion of a previously uncharacterized family of plants: Artificae Plantae. “A genuine scientific conundrum. Individuals appear to be virtually immortal, they easily form not just interspecies but intergeneric crosses, and they lack any genetic material.”
NYT Science question: Are certain trees more susceptible or more resistant to being toppled by high winds? - Check out this Q&A from the New York Times to find out if the trees on your property are likely to be felled by a hurricane!
Houseplants That Help Purify The Air - The results of a NASA study lists common houseplants that effectively clean the air in your house or office.
The Mathematical Lives of Plants - The spiral patterns formed by plant leaves, seeds, or other structures follow a precise and complex mathematical pattern. But how? Scientists have been working on this problem for hundreds of years. Research into plant biochemistry may be the key.
Top 10 Poisonous Plants - A list of the top 10 most poisonous plants. Many are probably very familiar!
Time-lapse plants - Color time-lapse images of flowers blooming and fruits ripening and rotting.
Herbal Gram - this page posts images from a book called Secretory Structures of Aromatic and Medicinal Plants by K.P. Svoboda and T.G. Svoboda. The scanning electron microscope images of pollen grains and petals are really stunning.
The Art of Science - each year, Princeton University has a competition of artistic images taken during the course of scientific research. The link is to the 2006 competition.
The Plant Cell quiz from About.com
What is your Ecological Footprint? Find out how much land and water resources your lifestyle requires. On a related note, an article speculating on what would happen to earth if humans became extinct. The article is summarized with this image.
Incredible timelapse movies of plant movements
Adventures of the Prymaats in Arabidopsis research - quite an amusing read
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