We specialize in hard to find items
All Categories
How the World Looks to a Bee: And Other Moments of Science
Share Tweet
*Price and Stocks may change without prior notice
*Packaging of actual item may differ from photo shown
- Electrical items MAY be 110 volts.
- 7 Day Return Policy
- All products are genuine and original
About How The World Looks To A Bee: And Other Moments Of
Product Description 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. About the Author Don Glass is Special Projects Director at public radio station WFIU-FM and the radio producer of A Moment of Science. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. 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. BibliographyKonnen, G. P. Polarized Light in Nature. New York: Cambridge University Press, 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 University Press, 1983.
