Elin Kelsey is a Ph.D. in environmental science education and created this book as a jump-off point for teachers, providing lesson plans that integrate the common core standards of learning with activities centering on statements made in this book.

The artwork is NOT the typical illustrations you'd expect in a picture book. Rather, they are photographs of elaborate, multimedia dioramas that frankly blow this book far and away from others.

This book is an ode to how we are intricately connected to the fabric of the Earth. Through its framework we follow particles from the big bang through to the arrival of our existence on Earth, meandering along poetic stanzas that weave scientific facts into the explanation of the singularity of the our planet's ecosystem.

But the innovative beauty of the artwork makes this book special. I fervently wished they had published this book in pop-up form.

Thanks again for bearing with another diversion. I will be interjecting for another book review in the next week!

In the last post when I talked about exciting electrons to higher energy levels, it got me thinking about what a difficult topic that is, without first explaining where electrons are within an atom, and what influences its location. We were taught many years ago that electrons are the particles that carry a negative charge, and orbit the positively-charged particle (proton) because they are constantly being pulled toward that attractive force. This attractive force is also what keeps the electron from liberating itself entirely.

An infusion of energy–from sunlight for example–can allow the electron to temporarily overcome the attractive pull of that proton. The electron can now jump to an energy level of a higher-state, because it now possesses a higher level of energy.

Throughout the years, many atomic models have come and gone. The currently accepted model is the Schrodinger/Heisenberg, which dispels the idea that we can determine an electron’s discrete position. Rather, we can approximate the most likely region/s that an electron of a certain energy level can be found. This is called its probability distribution, and there are different probability distributions for different energy levels. So if an electron gets a boost of energy, and thereby enters a different energy level, it can go from one probability distribution to another, as dictated by that energy level.

Please folks, if anyone sees an error let me know!

OK, let's say yet another final word about leaves and their power of photosynthesis.

Now that we've talked about leaves and why they change color, let's look more closely at their all-important function, that of making food for the tree. How do they do it?

A plant’s objective is to make excess stored energy to nourish the tree through winter. Therefore, it makes energy in the stored version of glucose. The sunlight powers a chemical reaction within the chloroplasts to bottle up energy within the bonds of the very stable sugar molecule. The energy can then be used when the bond is broken.

A solar panel’s purpose is to convert sunlight energy into electricity. The panel is like a deck of cards (see picture), with each card made of a substance that promotes electrons to move in one direction, creating an electrical current. The middle yellow layer contains substances that either donate or accept freed electrons. So first, the electrons have to be freed, and then they are forced to flow in one direction.

When sunlight hits the panel, energy is imparted to certain electrons, exciting them to a higher energy level (level 2) that is enough to break away from its parent atom’s attractive hold upon it. Now that the electron is free, it is attracted toward positively-charged materials, since it itself is negatively charged. Sandwiching the yellow layer is one layer that is negative (anode) and one that is positive (cathode). So all the electrons move away from the anode and toward the cathode. The electric current is produced.

The last step is to convert this Alternating Current to a Direct Current to make usable electricity.

Solar panels are generally around 14% efficient, so, a lot of continuous sun is needed to produce a fraction of the energy used by a household. A battery is also needed to store the excess electricity. Still, the addition of electricity produced with NO waste product is a huge advance.

I wanted to wrap up a few questions about leaves that had been bugging me. The first is, what is behind the brown leaves? The build up of tannins as the walls of the veins build up and cut off nutrients causes the decay, which results in the brown coloration.

Then, I wanted to know what purpose do orange and yellow coloration serve? The best answer I could find was still a theory: these are accessory pigments that aid in gathering sunlight for the chlorophylls. The natural follow-up question is, do red and purple also help chlorophylls or help make food for the winter? The answer again, is yes, but in an indirect way.

The generally accepted theory is that as an anti-oxidant, anthocyanin staves off leaf death, allowing for the chlorophylls to produce as much sugar as possible before the leaf drops off. How the anthocyanins do this is still debatable. The 2 theories listed to the right of the red/purple leaf have been proposed, but not confirmed.

One last post about leaves will cover what causes them to separate from the tree.

Our last topic rounds out the cycle of a leaf's life.

Abscission is the process by which the leaf gets separated from the tree branch. As stated before, the tree cuts off vital nutrients to the leaves in order to conserve the nutrients for the core, or trunk, of the tree. Abscission is accomplished by specialized cells (denoted as dashed blue lines in image) that build up a barrier between the branch and the leaf's stem. Eventually, these cells wall off the branch from the stem, and as the leaf dies due to lack of nutrition, it falls off.

All you botanists and arborists, feel free to expand upon my oversimplified explanation!

https://vimeo.com/109124194

Here's our 2nd animation addressing why certain trees' leaves are more red or purple in color, as opposed to the orange and yellow leaves.
After watching this 1 minute animation, you might wonder, is there an advantage to a leaf turning red or purple?

https://vimeo.com/108495386

Now that it's getting cooler, our thoughts turn to the fall and the spectacular phenomenon of the turning colors of foliage!

There are so many things I have taken for granted for so many years, and why leaves turn colors is one of them. This animation is the first in a series about what happens to leaves in the Fall. Please indulge me and follow the link to an outside website where all my animation videos are stored. The video is only a minute or two long.