Bible and Science

The Value of Salt

There is something that is in the soil, rocks, butterflies, elephants, blood, muscles, and even in amniotic fluid. What is this? It is salt. Now it is easy to get salt thanks to the development of techniques which produce salt artificially. However, in the past, salt received special treatment, so there was even a saying in Korea, “A salt seller is better than a governor.” Salt has been with humans throughout history and playing an important role. Now, let’s learn about the value of salt. Salt and History In the primitive ages when humans lived by hunting, they were able to ingest salt by hunting and eating fish or birds. However, as they began to farm and grain became the…

Skin, the Perfect Clothes

In summer, Ms. Stevens goes to the beach. She is dazzled with sunlight and sweat rolls down her face, but the blue sea and the sandy beach in front of her eyes is so refreshing. She gets her feet wet in the waves and feels happy like a little child at the cool waves hitting her ankles. It hurts a little when she steps on a shell, but a little scratch doesn’t bother her. She can enjoy all these, thanks to skin’s various functions. Skin, the largest organ of the human body Skin is the largest and most visible organ in our body. When spread out, its width is about 1.5–2 m2 [16–21 ft2] and it weighs for about 8%…

Homing Instinct

Heungbu and Nolbu, an old Korean novel, contains scientific knowledge of migratory birds. This novel is about a kind man named Heungbu, who takes care of a baby swallow that had its leg broken by falling to the ground from its nest. The baby swallow leaves for a long journey in the autumn, and the next spring it comes back for Heungbu with a seed, which grows to be a gourd full of gemstones inside. Animals’ instinct to leave for far-off places from their habitats and come back to their original locations is called homing instinct. Just as it is shown in the novel, Heungbu and Nolbu, the swallow has an amazing homing instinct. A few years ago, a bird…

Symbiosis, Wisdom to Live Together

All living organisms are interacting with each other. As for relationships with other living organisms, there are some types of symbiosis: mutualism which is a relationship where two organisms of different species benefit each other, and parasitism which is a relationship where one organism benefits at the expense of the other. Not only humans but also animals and plants cannot live on their own; this is the principle of nature. Mutualism is a type of symbiotic relationship where two different organisms benefit from each other, while commensalism is a relationship where one obtains benefits from the other without harming or benefiting it. Mutualism benefits each other Mutualism is often found between animals that live together with other types of animals.…

Light and All Creation

Seeing is a process to perceive the shapes and colors of objects with the eyes. This has been a great curiosity for many people since ancient times. Empedocles, an ancient Greek philosopher, thought that we can see objects as beams are emitted by the eyes, and Aristotle thought that colors exist in objects. Descartes said that when light touches an object, it is transformed into color and enters our eyes. It wasn’t until the 16th century when people finally figured out that we recognize an object as the light reflected on the object comes into our eyes. Like this, light is absolute in perceiving objects. Without light, our eyes can perceive neither the shape of an object nor its color.…

Soil, the Earth’s Skin

On August 1, 2013, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration [NASA] released images from the Mars rover Curiosity. Mars has a more Earth-like environment than any other planet in our solar system, so it is dubbed the second Earth and is considered the best candidate for human settlement. However, the images of Mars just showed a barren wasteland covered with vast expanses of sand, dust and rock, unlike the blue planet Earth. Birth of living soil One of the reasons Earth can become a beautiful planet that has life is that soil covers most of its land surface. Topsoil is the upper, outermost layer of soil. It is usually the top 30 cm [12 in]. On Mars, however, there is…

Protein, Material of Life

You grope around to turn off the loud alarm, and drag your feet to the bathroom. You brush your teeth, wash up with soap contained in various containers, and dry your hair with a hair dryer. After a quick breakfast, you get dressed, and leave the house, carrying your purse and cell phone. When we take a look at the items that are used while getting ready to leave for work, most of them are made of plastic. Starting with watches, toothbrushes, detergent bottles, hair dryers, utensils, cooking utensils, functional fabrics, bags, and cell phone display stands—all these would not have been around us if we did not have plastic. The 21st century is worth being defined as the “age…

Dimensions

They say “Dimensions are different” when something goes beyond their expectancy or when something is not understandable. In such cases, a dimension means a particular aspect of something or a way of considering it. However, there is another definition of dimension. In the mathematical sense, it refers to spaces like a two-dimensional plane or a three-dimensional cube. Interestingly, however, in terms of recognizing dimensions, we can say that we are in a “low dimension.” Just as the beings in the two-dimensional world cannot know the three-dimensional world accurately, we cannot perceive the higher-dimensional worlds in the three-dimensional world that we see. Then how many dimensions are there in the universe? There can be a new dimension in the universe that…

Plants’ Active and Intelligent Pollination Strategy

Black locust which spreads fragrance along the spring wind, pink royal azalea all over the mountains, and a bunch of red roses . . . The charming and colorful flowers attract people’s attention, giving out the taste of late spring. Whom are these beautiful and fragrant flowers for? There are cryptogams which have no flowers like moss or bracken, but most plants bloom flowers, make seeds, and leave offspring in the world. In order for seeds to be made, pollen which is made in a stamen needs to be in contact with a stigma; this process is called pollination. Since plants cannot move by themselves, they receive help from other things like insects, birds, water, and wind. Colorful flowers and…

Laughter and Tears: Expressions of Joy, Anger, Sorrow, and Happiness

The movie Inside Out is an animation about an 11-year-old girl Riley’s five emotions that work in the emotion-controlling headquarters in her head; it’s about an adventure that her five emotions—Joy, Sadness, Anger, Disgust, and Fear—have to bring back happiness to Riley who’s having a hard time in a different environment. The film tells us that Sadness who cries about everything is as important as Joy who is always bright in life. Humans are animals of emotions that feel tens of different emotions. Human emotions cannot be categorized exactly like in the movie, but there is no objection that joy and sorrow are the keys that play pivotal roles. Laughter and tears are two ways that express the extreme feelings…

Amazing Animal Senses

How do animals see, hear, and feel the world? It is very difficult to imagine the world of animals on the basis of our senses. It is because various animals on the planet sense the world in different ways than humans do. For animals, their own unique world created by their special sensory organs spreads before them. Let’s take a trip to the wonderful world of animal senses. Sensory organs that feel the world more accurately: vision, hearing, smell Regarding sharp-sighted people, we say that they have eyes like a hawk. In fact, birds of prey such as hawks and eagles have extraordinary vision which enables them to see 4 to 8 times farther than the average human can. Hawks…

Mom’s Scent, the Most Comfortable Scent in the World

To newborns, their mom is everything. There is nowhere they feel safer than in the arms of their mom. It is said that “kangaroo care” was developed in a public maternity of Bogota, Colombia, to make up for the lack of incubators in 1978 when the mortality rate of premature infants was high. According to this method, a mother holds her baby naked against her bare skin to keep the baby’s body temperature warm. The wrapping of your infant into your chest looks very much like a mother kangaroo holding her baby in her pouch, which is where the name kangaroo care comes from. Kangaroo care is also called “the miracle of a mom’s chest.” That’s because just placing a…

The True Value of Sweat

There is something that always accompanies us when we run around with our friends, when we lie and feel guilty about it, when we take a bite out of a hot pepper, or when we have a bad cold with fever. It is sweat. We, humans, sweat in many different occasions throughout our lives. Particularly, we have big and small battles against sweat every day in hot summer. Many people regard sweat as something like an unwelcome guest that visits them in summer, or like some dirty and smelly waste. However, what will happen if we don’t sweat? We might have to walk around, panting with our tongues sticking out of our mouths like dogs under the scorching sun. Sweat…

Breast Milk, the Food of Life

The Morin khuur is a traditional Mongolian instrument. A mother camel goes through much suffering when it gives birth to a calf, and because of that, it sometimes refuses its young though the young is very little and barely walks. A calf has no way to survive without drinking its mother’s milk. Then the camel farmer plays plaintive melodies with the Morin Khuur to heal the mother camel’s stress. Then the mother camel sheds tears and breastfeeds its young. A mother goes through tremendous suffering until she gives birth to a baby. However, labor pains are not the end of suffering. Breastfeeding is also a tough job. A mother should become a picky eater of healthy food for the baby,…

Imprinting & Raising: Birds’ Love Towards Their Young (Ⅱ)

Cheep, cheep! When you were children, you might see yellow chicks chirping at a pet store and end up buying one of those cute and lovely creatures after staring at them for a while. Excited, you would do your best to take good care of it, but unfortunately it would get ill and die a few days later. Why did they die despite your efforts? Chicks hatch at around 37–38℃ [98.6–100.4℉], the incubation temperature of the hen, and the body temperature of the hatchlings is more than 40℃ [104℉]. After hatching, the hen continues to brood its chicks, because they cannot control their body temperature by themselves. That’s why a chick without its mom would die easily. It isn’t too…

Egg Incubation: Birds’ Love Towards Their Young (І)

Thomas Edison, the king of invention, was curious since he was young. One day, Edison disappeared and his family got in commotion. It turned out that he fell asleep while curling up to brood goose eggs. Contrary to his expectation, however, no eggs hatched. Why did the goose eggs fail to hatch? Nest: home for the young Brooding and hatching are the most important part of avian reproduction. Making a nest is the first step to incubate eggs. Just as a man needs a shelter from rain and wind, a bird too needs a nest where it can protect its eggs from natural enemy and raises its soon-to-be-born baby birds. For this reason, birds put all their efforts into making…

Gravity, the Earth’s Safeguard

Mankind lives under the influence of gravity. Not only apples from the trees, but all objects fall down from above. We try to jump high up in the air, but we don’t stay there even for a few seconds; we fall right back down, far from reaching the sky. We don’t feel it because we always live under the influence of gravity, but we are always caught up by gravity. Even at this moment, gravity constantly works for the trees, chairs, air, etc. Mankind has not been sparing endless efforts to get away from gravity for a long time. In 1783, the Montgolfier brothers travelled in the sky in a hot-air balloon. About 100 years later, the first powered airplanes…

Animals That Overcome the Cold

Whenever winter comes, people hesitate to go outside because of the biting wind, and prepare winter items for the cold weather. It is easy to see people walk in a hurry, hunching their shoulders, in down jackets or fur coats. Then, how do animals, which have no houses to prevent the wind or thick clothes to wear, endure the severe cold? The coldest place on the earth is the Antarctic. Only 2% of the surface of the Antarctic exposes the soil, and the rest of it is covered with 2-kilometer [1.24-mile]-thick ice. The average temperature of the Antarctic in winter is -56.7℃ [-70.06℉] and it can go down to -91.2℃ [-132.16℉]. Sometimes, the wind of over 50 m/s [112 mph]…

Secrets Hidden in Eggs

Eggs are common food to us. However, since eggs are living cells, a chick gets born out of a fertile egg like magic when the hen sits on it for just three weeks. Out of an egg that showed no sign of life, a living creature gets born. This mystery of life in eggs moves us. An egg that has life also conceives a lot of secrets. First of all, let us take a look at the structure of the egg. At a glance, the inside of the egg looks very simple—yolk, egg white, and shell. In fact, however, the egg has quite a complicated structure embraced by several layers. The hard shell is mainly composed of calcium carbonate which…

Art of Disguise: Insect Camouflage & Mimicry

A giant hole at the center and a log bridge over it looks perilous. The scene that chills your blood is a painting—a work of trick art. Making use of optical illusion caused by reflection of light, trick art makes you mistake a planar work as a three-dimensional structure. A painting on a flat surface when seen in close-up can remind you of real situation in long-shot. Amazingly, just like this trick art, there are masters of disguise who are hidden around us, deceiving everyone’s eyes. They are insects. For defense and predation, animals blend in with their surroundings or mimic other species. This is called camouflage—the use of any coloration or conformation for the user not to be easily…