"Unexpected Flying Animals" or "Winged Convergent Evolution"

Flying fish become airborne by leaping from the water and spreading their enormous pectoral fins.  They typically fly from 100-200 feet, an adaptation that is thought to have evolved for predator-evasion.  Check it out!

Flying fish have to hold their breath (WTF)!!

Moving from fish to reptiles, the flying snake climbs up trees (not unusual for snakes) and then jumps (unusual for snakes) from tree to tree.  The snake flies (ok, glides) by distorting nearly its entire body into a concave wing-like shape and undulating through the air, in a process that is much more energy efficient and less prone to predation than slithering down to the ground and back up.

Why Animals Migrate

The humpback whale migrates up to 16,000 miles every year, from polar regions to tropical waters and back.

Humpback whale migration routes.

The arctic tern migrates over 44,000 miles every year, from the arctic to antarctic and back.

Bird migration routes. 1-Northern Wheatear, 2-Bluethroat, 3-Eastern Yellow Wagtail, 4-Dunlin, 5-Wandering Tattler, 6-Bartailed Godwit, 7-Arctic Tern, 8-Sandhill Crane, 9-Brant, 10-Smith's Longspur, 11-American Golden Plover, 12-Tundra Swan, 13-Semipalmated Sandpiper.

These are just two examples of the incredible migrations performed on earth every year.  What could possibly motivate these animals to do this?  Well, the exact reasons are slightly different for every migrating animal, but a unifying theme can be found in the video below.  This is a video of "Net Primary Production", which is essentially a measure of the growth of plants.

Why Fire is Cool - entry #4 - Ancient Energy Unleasher

When you heat a can of beans on a campfire, you are transforming the chemical energy contained in the firewood into thermal energy (heat).  As you are in your tent drifting off to sleep and the bean-induced-fart-chorus begins, you may ask yourself where the energy in that firewood came from.  As with most energy sources, the answer is that it came from the sun!  That firewood was once a tree that was merrily pursuing its life's purpose of fashioning itself a body out of carbon dioxide, water, and sunlight, in a process known as photosynthesis.

Photosynthesis requires an energy source (sunlight), therefore the products of photosynthesis (wood, etc) can be thought to contain that photosynthesized energy.  When you burn firewood, you are essentially running photosynthesis in reverse, releasing the energy from the sun that the tree went through so much trouble to absorb.

So, fire is cool because it allows us to unleash energy from the sun in small amounts, whenever we please, regardless of when that energy first arrived on earth.  In the case of firewood, that energy arrived anywhere from a few years to a few thousand years ago, depending on how long the tree had lived.

The Llangernyw Yew, a 4,000-5,000 year old tree.

This same concept applies to anything else we burn, even fossil fuels, which is where things get crazy.

Why Fire is Cool - entry #3 - Ash Ash Baby

When sitting around a campfire I almost always find myself silently staring, mesmerized by the smoldering ashes.  Once I snap out of it, instead of re-joining the conversation with my campfire pals  I often start taking pictures of the ashes.  Though it doesn't live up to the awesomeness of the moment, here is one (notice backlit marshmallow in foreground):

Before we discover the amazing things humans have done with ash, let's figure out what the hell ash is and why red-hot ashes look so awesome.  Once you burn away all of the combustible molecules in wood, the only things left behind (around 1% of the original unburned weight) are the non-combustible nutrients the tree used in order to stay alive.  Ash contains nutrients like calcium (~30% of the ash), potassium (~10% of the ash), and sodium ions (~1% of the ash) along with other metal and non-metal ions (reference).  It is partly these metal ions that make red-hot ashes look so awesome.  As you heat up metal ions in a fire, their electrons will gain energy then lose energy, in a process that results in the emission of light.  Each metal emits light of a specific wavelength, and if you take any substance containing metal ions and put it in a flame you will see this light (this is known as a flame test).

Why Fire is Cool - entry #2 - How Charcoal Changed the World

Entry #2 in my "why fire is cool" list starts with a brief introduction to charcoal and ends with humanity being changed forever.  It was around the time that I was waiting for the kebabs in the picture below to come off the grill that I learned what charcoal is, and that excited just about as many neurons in my brain as did eating the savory kebabs.

Why Fire is Cool - entry #1 - What are Flames Made Of?

If I were to start a "why fire is cool" list, it would probably reach a length to rival my "ultimate band name" list.  For the sake of brevity however, I will just share the 4 best entries on the fire list, beginning today with entry #1, a blazing introduction into the nature of fire.

Maybe you've had the experience of sitting around a campfire and being unable to peel your eyes away from the smoldering coals.  When this happens to me I have often found myself wondering what the hell IS fire?

Hot coals for staring at.

A question mark made of fire.

"Mythical Crysticals" or "Why Crystals are So Awesome"

This past summer, after finishing graduate school I went on a victory lap around the world and stopped by Berlin for some hot eats (döner kebab):

and cool treats (spaghetti eis):

I also stopped by the natural history museum (museum für naturkunde) to check out dinosaurs and stuff: