Does talking to a plant help it grow?

This is a subject that I found in my science book once and decided to do a little research on the subject.

On Yahoo it says it turns out there may be some truth that talking to plants help it grow.   They say that plants need carbon dioxide to grow and when you talk to a plant, you breathe on it, giving it extra infusion of CO2. However, for this to have any effect on your plant, you would have to spend hours every day at close quarters.   So, having this said, there is some truth to the statement but I will go into a little more detail from other sources.

Some research was done on this topic at Penn State and this is what they came up with.

In a 1986 interview, England's Prince Charles discussed his gardening habits, commenting, "I just come and talk to the plants, really.  Very important to talk to them; they respond."

The theory that plants benefit from human conversation dates to 1848, when German professor Gustav Fechner published the book Nanna (Soul-life of Plants).  The idea is a popular one, and has spawned several more books and even an album--recorded in 1970 by an enterprising dentist--titled "Music to Grow Plants By."  But will crooning compliments to your ficus reallly have effect on its growth?

"There isn't a lot of research in this area," says Rich Marini, head of Penn State's horticulture department, "but there is evidence that plants respond to sound."  In fact, plants react readily to a host of environmental stimuli, as the ability to respond to changing environments is vital to their survival.  Explans Marini, "Wind or vibration will induce changes in plant growth.  Since sound is essentially vibration, my guess is that vibration is causing a response."

Research supports Marini's guess.  A 2007 paper from scientists at south Korea's National Institute of Agricultural Biotechnology proposed that two genes involved in a plant's response to light--known as rbcs and Ald--are turned on by music played at 70 dicibels.  "This is about the level of a normal conversation," says Marini.  The Korean researchers found differing responses depending on the frequency of the sound.  The higher the frequency, the more active was the gene response.

But other studies suggest that conversation may not be enough, notes Marini.  A Canadian paper showed that seed germination is influenced by sound at 92 decibels--much louder than one would normally speak.

There was a post on eHow that was very interesting as well.   They proposed that women's voices produced more growth than men talking to a plant.  They said, "An experiment was conducted at FHS Garden Wisley in Surrey to determine if voices had any effect on plant growth.  A variety of male and female voices were chosen to plan through headphones to 10 tomato plants over the course of a month.  The results concluded that plants responded to female voices.  The plants stimulated by female voices grew an inch more than those stimulated by male voices which in some cases, grew less than a plant left completely alone."

So having all of that said, take what you want from it.   I found all of it very interesting!

Noah   

Ballpoint Pen

Here is a little bit of information that I bet you didn't know.



Laszlo Biro

The Ball-point Pen was invented in 1938 by Laszlo Biro, a Hungarian journalist. He came up with his idea of making a pen that would controllably release quick-drying ink when he saw magazine printers using the type of ink to print with.So the former painter and sculptor set out to make the world’s first quick–drying pen.

Unfortunately,there were three problem with his plans. The problems were the ever growing German army,a crazy dictator with a mustache and the almost inevitable Nazi invasion. So Biro packed his bags and headed south,to Argentina and waited in exile. While hanging out in the Patagonia Region, Laszlo and his brother, Georg (a chemist),continued to work on the pen.

Finally, after trial and error many times, Laszlo had constructed the first quick-drying pen, the Biro. (It was not called the ball-point pen commonly until later.)

The pen was a success, but Biro still had some slight problems with his design. There were a few glitches with ink flow. In the original pen, the ink was ejected using Capillary Action. But in order for the ink to come out, you had to hold it almost straight up at a 90°angle to the paper instead of the way you would normally hold a pen you were writing with. This was fixed by adding a manual piston at the top of the pen that you could pump while you were writing. This would pressurize the ink. This was soon replaced with an automatic piston which would keep pressure on the ink with out the writer doing any thing. Then this feature was replaced with a vacuum tube that the ink was kept in a pressurized, air tight,thin and long,clear cylinder. This technology is still used today.

The Biro brothers and a friend, Juan Jorge Meyne who had also fled from the Nazi tirade to Argentina,filed a patenton for their pen on the 10th of June, 1941. They then started the company “Biro Pens of Argentina” who sold the“Birome Quick-Drying Pen.” Once it reached the market shelves in England in late 1941 through early 1942, the ball-point pen was widely used in WWII by the RAF (Royal Air Force), the USAAF (US Army Air Force ), the Royal Marians and the USMC for its precision writing for navigation, ability to write up-side-down,they could write something without any blotting or smudging, the change in air pressure did not effect it and you could write perfectly with it under water. Also, in the case that the pen should snap, the ink would not splatter, but simply dry and the pen would still be usable.

Since the 1940's the ballpoint pen has become the second most commonly used writing tool next to the graphite pencil. And to think that it all started in a Hungarian print shop.

Isaac Newton and the 3rd Law of Motion

Isaac Newton was a great Christian, inventor and scientist. He messed around with light, sound, gravity and motion (and probably more than that). One of his most famous works was "Newton's Laws of Motion" which he tested and proved. The new laws of motion disproved Plato's laws of motion from way back during the time of the ancient Greeks. Plato said that "Things want to stay at rest." Plato was saying that the reason things stop moving is because  their natural instinct, I guess you could say, was to not move, but to stay where they are. Newton said that "Things in motion tend to stay in motion, and things at rest tend to stay at rest." much different from what Plato was saying. Newton's laws were proven with the discovery of two thing, gravity and friction. I will go into more discussion on this at another time, because in this post I'm supposed to be talking about Newtons 3rd law of motion.

Newton's 3rd law of motion states this: "For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction."
I'm sure that you have heard of this before. Have you ever taken time to stop and think about it though? What was Newton talking about?

A good example of the 3rd law is a bullet. First there is a reaction, then an action, then an other reaction.
The first reaction is when the hammer hits the back of the bullet, igniting the primer which ignites the gun-powder. When the gun powder burns, it expands, in the form of a gas, at a very fast rate. That is the reaction
Then the pressure in the brass chamber forces the lead out of the front of the cartridge, down the gun barrel and on to its target. That is the action.
The second reaction happens when the pressure from the gun powder forces the brass cartridge backwards. This is the reason for the kick when you shoot a gun.

Another good example is a rocket. A rocket engine forces pressure out of the back of the rocket, thus propelling the rocket forward.











Here is another one for you.
Here is a rock that weighs 2,000 lbs. you push on it with a force of 40 lbs. Since the rock weighs more than 40 lbs, it is able to push on you with the same amount of force that you push on it, which cancels out any force and the rock does not move.

    40
-2,000
-1,960 lbs

You still need 1,960 lbs of force to move the rock.














Now say that you are the Incredible Hulk and you push on the rock with a force of 3,000 pounds. since the rock is only 2,000 pounds, it can only exert 2,000 pound on you. So lets do some math.

 3,000
-2,000
 1,000 lbs.

So since the force of you pushing is greater than the weight of the rock, which can also be called the force that the rock is pushing on you, you are able to move the rock.



I hope this has helped you understand Newton's 3rd Law of Motion better. There are so many examples of this law out there, it's not even funny.

Matt