What work of art, music, science, mathematics, or literature has surprised, unsettled, or challenged you, and in what way?
One work of science (work of science?) that surprised me was an article on the Smithsonian website about slime mold mapping to create efficient highway systems. Scientists take a map, say of the United States, and place rolled oats (how do I incorporate that rolled oats are the slime molds' food?) on major cities, with the amount representing the size of the city. Then they allow a simple slime mold to spread across the map, making different sized tubes connecting all the food sources. Since slime mold is so simple, its main purpose is to find the most efficient, direct, way to transfer nutrients. This is exactly what we want a highway system to do. When the slime mold paths are compared to actual highways, many of them match up. They are using this very basic, cheap science to map out the best routes for highways in countries that have not yet built a highway system. To me, this science is very surprising because it is so simple and yet so practical and helpful. It costs less than electric computing, anyone could do it, and it produces very accurate results that can be used in the world. Slime mold is one of the simplest organisms on the planet, but here it is being used to solve a very complex problem. Reading about this scientific work has made me take a different approach to new science. Instead of thinking that problems need complex, hard to understand answers, I now realize that sometimes the simplest organism, or the simplest solution, can be the most beneficial.
One work of science (work of science?) that surprised me was an article on the Smithsonian website about slime mold mapping to create efficient highway systems. Scientists take a map, say of the United States, and place rolled oats (how do I incorporate that rolled oats are the slime molds' food?) on major cities, with the amount representing the size of the city. Then they allow a simple slime mold to spread across the map, making different sized tubes connecting all the food sources. Since slime mold is so simple, its main purpose is to find the most efficient, direct, way to transfer nutrients. This is exactly what we want a highway system to do. When the slime mold paths are compared to actual highways, many of them match up. They are using this very basic, cheap science to map out the best routes for highways in countries that have not yet built a highway system. To me, this science is very surprising because it is so simple and yet so practical and helpful. It costs less than electric computing, anyone could do it, and it produces very accurate results that can be used in the world. Slime mold is one of the simplest organisms on the planet, but here it is being used to solve a very complex problem. Reading about this scientific work has made me take a different approach to new science. Instead of thinking that problems need complex, hard to understand answers, I now realize that sometimes the simplest organism, or the simplest solution, can be the most beneficial.
