Stephenson Family Ties The Barn Burnt Down
And Now I See The Moon
...imagine a standard dining room table covered in a black
tablecloth and someone throwing a handful of salt across
it.  The scattered grains can be thought of as a galaxy.  Now
imagine fifteen hundred more tables like the first one- enough
to fill a Walmart parking lot, say, or to make a single line two
miles long-each with a random array of salt across it.  Now 
add one grain of salt to any table and let Bob Evans walk
among them. At one glance he will spot it. That grain of salt is the supernova.
from: A Short History of Nearly Everything
by: Bill Bryson
Here's Bri, trying to find a flower bud..thats not too big or too small...just 2.3 mil. would be great!!!


the pro's! David and his professor, John!


This was such a cool way to spend a morning...helping David in the lab.  It was so cool, that we are going to go and do it again!! Its a brand new state of the art science lab...which has only been open for a few weeks...up on the campus of Utah State University.
I wish I could describe the wonder I felt as I learned to do what was needed here.  To take a flower bud..way smaller than a grain of rice...more like the the size of the stand of this 'T' like this.. and put it under a high power microscope, and take a fine pair of tweezers and a hair like hypodermic needle and to then ever so carefully pull the bud apart..removing the sepal, the stamens and the undeveloped petals and who knows what else, with painstaking care..and measuring the pistil  without damaging it in the process...was both stressful and wonderful!  This pistil we were searching for and separating from the rest of the bud are smaller than this "i" to the naked eye!!  It was crazy cool!!
Maybe I'll have David write us a 'guest post' about what it is they are doing ...without giving any secrets away..for they believe they are on the cusp of something BIG here!!!
We are going to bring the whole crew up tomorrow..so stay tuned for more pictures!! And more info...for Im positive I'll be learning more!!
This world is an amazing place..with so many wonders, and so much to learn...so vast and so minute.

Peace and Happy Growing Friends!!

.

No comments: