Escape The Science Lab

Electric Bees I heard something amazing today. Bees, have a positive static charge. They get this because they rub against the air particles as they fly, losing electrons along the way. You probably know that flowers tempt the bee to land by making a sticky, sugary liquid called nectar, but that's not all. Flowers also use fragrance to attract insects, and they respond to the charges from the bees that land on them by producing more fragrance. This in turn attracts more bees to increase the chances of the flowers being pollinated. Once bee lands on the flower, its positive charge attracts the pollen, which is negatively charged. This makes sure that as much pollen as possible is taken away when the bee leaves. Smart Flowers The flowers don't have this all their own way. Flowers have a negative charge, and guess what, bees can detect this. You can detect static electricity too, when your hair moves when it comes near to something that is charged. Try rubbing a balloon on a jumpe...

  Ever wondered how a rainbow forms? Raindrops act like a prism and split the light into the colours of the visible spectrum. The splitting is called dispersion. The splitting is caused by refraction. That's not the whole story though. After entering the raindrop, the light is reflected off the back surface. It then travels out of the front of the drop, refracting again at the boundary. If, when this light leaves the raindrop, it happens to travel to your eyes, you see the familiar bow in the sky. What this means is that nobody sees the same rainbow as you. A friend stood next to you sees the light that has been refracted in their direction. Ever heard of the famous double rainbow? They are formed when the light reflects twice inside the raindrop. Have you ever noticed that the colours in the second rainbow are reversed? The diagram above shows why. Other affects you may notice when you see a good rainbow are supernumerary bows (green and magenta bows underneath the other bows. The...

  The splitting of light when it travels into a prism is called dispersion. The splitting is caused by refraction. Refraction occurs when light moves from one material to another. Each wavelength of light is refracted through a different angle, so the colours separate. One of the most famous effects of dispersion is the rainbow. These are always good to see, but there are many more atmospheric light effects to look out for. In this image, you can see a halo around the sun, two sundogs (parhelia) on the left and right of the halo, an upper tangent arc (on top of the halo), a parhelic arc (going through the two sundogs) and infralateral arcs (far left and right of the image). These are all caused by ice crystals refracting light. Look  here  for some other light effects you may see in the atmosphere. I would really like to see the spooky Brocken Spectre. The light really is fantastic. Take up my escape challenge by clicking on the image below.