How the World Looks to a Bee: And Other Moments of Science

by Don Glass (Editor)

Overview

What can you learn about your world in just a moment? Have you ever wondered why the sky is blue? Or whether dogs can read our facial expressions? Don Glass and experts in their fields answer these questions and many more. Written for readers of all ages with no background in science required, How the World Looks to a Bee is the perfect armchair companion for curious people who want to know more about the science of everyday life but have only a moment to spare. With intriguing everyday phenomena as a starting point, this entertaining collection uses short tutorials and quick and simple experiments to invite readers to test the science for themselves. These fascinating and topical science stories are sure to delight the curious child in all of us.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780253046260
Publisher:	Indiana University Press
Publication date:	03/17/2020
Pages:	248
Sales rank:	1,134,487
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.80(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Don Glass is Special Projects Director at public radio station WFIU-FM and the radio producer of A Moment of Science.

Read an Excerpt

How Does the World Look to a Bee?
To describe light in a general way, you need to specify at least three qualities: its brightness or intensity, its color, and its polarization.
Polarization is a quality our eyes don't detect. We have no everyday words to describe polarization, so we have to resort to a more or less scientific description of it.
If we think of light as a wave traveling through space—something like a ripple crossing a pond—we can think of polarization as describing the direction in which the wave vibrates. The vibration in a light wave is always perpendicular to the direction the wave is traveling. But the vibration of light can be up and down, sideways, or any combination of the two.
If the vibrations are in random directions, the light is said to be unpolarized; if all the vibrations are in the same direction, it's completely polarized. Intermediate amounts of polarization are most common.
To our eyes, polarization makes no difference. But it has been known for decades now that insects in general, and bees in particular, can detect the direction a light wave is vibrating in. Bees navigate by referring to the direction of the sun. But they don't have to see the sun directly; all they need is a clear view of a small piece of the sky. The blue glow of the sky is polarized, and the direction and amount of polarization are different in every part of the sky depending on where the sun is. A bee can tell where the sun is by looking at the polarization of any small piece of the sky.
So bees have a dimension to their vision that we lack. In addition to color and brightness, bees see polarization. What does that sensation feel like? How does the world look to a bee? We can only wonder.

Bibliography
Konnen, G. P. Polarized Light in Nature. New York: Cambridge UniversityPress, 1985.
Minnaert, Marcel. The Nature of Light and Colour in the Open Air. New York: Dover, 1954.
Schmidt-Nielsen, Knut. Animal Physiology: Adaptation and Environment. 3rd ed. New York: Cambridge UniversityPress, 1983.

Table of Contents

1. Does Nutrisweet have calories?
2. A Water Magnifier
3. Conversation at a Crowded Party
4. Can a Theory Evolve into a Law?
5. A Cat "Flips out"
6. Winter Sounds
7. Rust
8. Hungry Lasagna
9. A Wet Paintbrush
10. The Glory
11. Horns vs. Antlers
12. Glacier "Sawdust": The Colorful Component of Mountain Lakes
13. Would You Drink This?
14. Tickling the Funny Bone
15. The Shape of Snow
16. Remembrance of Things Past for Babies
17. Ravens Avian Einsteins
18. Ant Antennae: Two Way Communication
19. The Echo of a Train
20. Old-fashioned Ice Cream Makers
21. Forry, Wrong Number
22. What Obesity and a Lack of Fatty Tissue Have in Common
23. Look Through Your Comb at the Mirror
24. Blow Out Candles with an Oatmeal Box
25. Wrong Name!
26. When Pop Bottles Don't Blow UpAnd When They Do
27. Common Birthdays, Classic of Probability
28. Take Bets on a Leaky Milk Carton
29. Smells and Memories
30. Big Shadows
31. Half Heads, Half Tails
32. Spiders Don't Get Caught in Their Own Webs
33. Bilingual Brain
34. The Shape of the Earth
35. It's Now What You Hear – It's When You Hear It
36. Weightless Water
37. The Force of a Tornado
38. The QWERTY Effect
39. The Spinning Earth and the Weather
40. The Floating Cork Trick
41. On a Clear Day, How Far Can You See?
42. Benjamin Franklin and the Swatches on the Snow
43. Dog Facial Expressions and Humans
44. Why is the Sky Blue?
45. Why One Rotten Apple Can Spoil the Barrel
46. Diamonds
47. Saccadic Suppression
48. Spoonerisms
49. Dimples in Golfballs
50. Why Do Cats' Eye Glow at Night?
51. The Shape of Lightning Bolts
52. Alcohol in Pie . . . and Fried Fish?
53. How Time Passes in Dreams
54. Why You Can Never Get to the End of the Rainbow
55. Do the Best Dogs Come from the Pound?
56. Cooking with Wine
57. Listening Underwater
58. Why Are Bells Made of Metal
59. An Inverted Image
60. The Elastic Ruler
61. The Sweet Spot on a Baseball Bat
62. Why Kids can Sleep through just about Anything
63. Cold Water at the Bottom of the Lake
64. Bad Grades and Biological Clocks
65. The Twin Within
66. Limeys
67. The Secret Life of Hiccups
68. How Does the World Look to a Bee?
69. Cottonmouth
70. Why Mowing the Lawn Doesn't Kill the Grass
71. The Consequences of Smallness
72. Antimatter
73. How Dogs Eat
74. The Secret of Clear Ice Cubes
75. Broken Cups and Atoms
76. One-way Glass
77. Late Night Radio
78. Why Honey Turns Hard
79. Adding and Subtracting Colors
80. Breaking a Coffee Cup
81. Déjà vu
82. A Rock in a Row Boat
83. When It Smells Like Rain
84. Mirages
85. Why Popcorn Pops
86. Make an Image Without a Lens
87. A Rising Fastball
88. Chimes For Your Ears Only
89. How Can You Tell If a Spider is Dead?
90. Why Fan Blades Stay Dirty
91. The Legacy of the Dodo
92. Get Your Bearings with Two Thumbtacks
93. More Than One Way to Make a Frog
94. A Dot, A Line, A Crease, A Beautiful Curve
95. The Shape of Sound
96. Blinking
97. Sorting Out Musical Pitches
98. Newton, Tennis, and the Nature of Light
99. Roll Over, George Washington
100. Don't Believe Your Fingers
101. Opera Singers Cut through the Orchestra
102. Curved Space in a Christmas Ornament
103. Coriolis Effect
104. Catch A Falling Dollar
105. Illusion in a Coffee Cup
106. Why Do We Put Cut Flowers in Water?
107. Knuckle Cracking
108. Life Without Zero
109. For This You Need a Doctor?
110. Two-Point Threshold
111. A Mirror Riddle
112. Sort Nuts By Shaking Can
113. Why A Rubber Band Snaps Back
114. Some Like It Hot
115. Breaking the Tension
116. Why 5,280 Feet?
117. Balance A Yardstick Without Looking
118. Heat Lightning