Sat 14 May 2005
Joan Edwards of Williams College discusses in the recent issue of Nature how Canada’s bunchberry dogwood is the fastest plant on the planet. From Discovery Channel Online, Edwards is quoted:
“Our high-speed video observations show that the flower opens in less than 0.5 milliseconds, to our knowledge the fastest movement so far recorded in a plant.”
…
“Bunchberry stamens are designed like miniature medieval trebuchets — specialized catapults that maximize throwing distance by having the payload attached to the throwing arm by a hinge or flexible strap.”
(via BoingBoing)
May 14th, 2005 at 5:40 pm
Prof. Dwight Whitaker, my QM prof who worked on this project, asked me for the sources of the trebuchet projections that I used in my trebuchet 99 winter study in ‘02, as they were very physics-heavy, and used some pretty interesting equations to describe the behavior of a trebuchet.
So, I feel like I contributed the smallest possible inkling to this project :-D.
May 14th, 2005 at 5:40 pm
Sorry, that was me. I just updated FireFox versions, and apparently the cookies didn’t carry over.