| Patterns in Nature
The natural world contains an infinite variety of patterns. Patterns
are found in plants and foliage and in animals. All living things create
patterns. Patterns are also constantly being created by simple physical
laws. There are patterns in the sand dunes created by blowing winds. There
is a pattern in the vortex of a whirlpool and in the formation of an ice
crystal.
Sample some of the following activities to learn more about natural patterns.
Places To Go | People To See | Things To Do | Teacher Resources | Bibliography
Places To Go
The following are places to go (some real and some virtual) to find out
about patterns in nature.
Enter
the Hive
Enter the hive. Learn about the daily life of a honey bee and its hive
on this cool animated site from the PBS Alien Empire series. Requires
Flash.
Anatomy
of the Hive
Check out NOVA's page on bee hives. Learn how hives are made, how bees
they communicate with each other, and much more.
Conservation
and the Water Cycle
Virtually visit the oceans of the world to learn that nature has an effective
and efficient pattern of recycling the water on the earth. Energy from
the sun evaporates water from the ocean which then falls as rain on land
and then runs into rivers and back to the oceans. This pattern has been
going on for as long as there's been an earth. Learn more about the water
cycle.
National
Geographic: Grand Canyon
There’s no better place
to see patterns in nature than the Grand Canyon . Over time, the flow of
the Colorado River has resulted in the “repeated
geological sequence of uplift, erosion (due to the river's constant wearing
force), submergence, and deposition of materials.”
Yellowstone
National Park : Wildland Fire
Visit Yellowstone National Park to
learn about nature’s pattern
of natural fires. According to this site, ecologists have long recognized
that fire is a necessary element of many ecosystems. Learn how this belief
was put to the test in the summer of 1988.
Spider
Silk
Webs and Cocoons
Termites
Tour termite mounds.
These insects form huge colonies and have a pattern of social structure
similar to bees and ants.
People To See
The Snowflake
Man
Wilson A. Bentley is known as the Snowflake Man because of his work with
snow crystals (commonly known as snowflakes). After years of trial and
error, in 1885 he became the first person to photograph a single snow
crystal. The book, Snowflake Bentley, by Judith Briggs Martin won the
1999 Caldecott Medal for best illustrations in a children's book.
The Brain
Eater
Meet mad cows. What is the pattern in nature by which infectious disease
is spread? Learn about this mysterious disease that is changing the way
that Europeans eat. What is the danger of this cattle-born illness spreading
across the ocean to America?
Lemmings Suicide Myth
Hinterland
Who’s Who
Meet millions of lemmings and find out
if it’s true that they
mass together and jump off cliffs when their population gets too high.
Population explosions of animals are likely linked to such patterns as
food availability, climate, and density of predators.
African Wildlife Foundation
Zebra
Kratts
Corner: Zebra
Get to know zebras and learn
how their pattern of stripes helps them survive.
Things To Do
USA
Today Weather : The Basic Shapes of Snow Crystals
Explore the patterns of snow crystals. As snow crystals form they take
on a six-sided, or hexagonal shape. The shape of a snow crystal is dependent
upon the temperature at which a crystal forms and the humidity of the
air. The many things that happen to snow crystals as they fall, such as
collisions, partial melting and colliding with water drops that freeze
to them, create even more shapes. This is why irregular crystals with
no easily identifiable form are the most common.
Create
Your Own Snowflakes
Here are some simple instructions for folding and then cutting snowflake-like
designs with two, four, six, and eight repeats.
Bees,
Microscopy & Mathematics
The comb of the honeybee is organized into regular hexagonal cells, showing
a repeating, symmetrical mathematical pattern. Why the hexagon?
Carbon
Nanotubes
Graphite is formed from carbon atoms arranged in a honeycomb pattern.
Discover why this form of carbon is used in pencils. Learn about the strongest
fibers known (tubes of graphite or carbon nanotubes) and their applications.
Patterns
in Nature Activities
These patterns in nature activities cover topics such as light, optics,
color, and rainbows.
Plentiful
Pentagons
Look for repeating shapes in nature. The pentagonal shape is one of the
primary geometric forms for organic shapes (living organisms). Many flowers
and starfish have pentagonal shapes.
Horology
Is time a pattern of nature? Anciently, time was based on observations
of seasonal cycles and of the motion of celestial bodies. Shorter amounts
of time were measured by observing the shadow cast by an upright object.
Today, official time is measured with atomic clocks. Today's time standard
is so accurate that it will take six million years to drift just one second.
What
Are the Parts of a Tree?
Learn how the pattern of tree rings really indicate the age of a tree.
The cambium is the growing part of the trunk of a tree. Each year the
cambium produces new phloem and sapwood. These cells grow more slowly
in cold winter or maybe in dry desert summer, and this slower growth produces
the tree's annual rings. These rings can also reflect the climatic and
environmental factors that influence growth rates. Dendrochronology is
the scientific study of annual tree rings.
About
Rainbows
Find out why the pattern of colors is always the same in rainbows--red,
orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet.
Cracking
the Code
Learn about the latest in ground-breaking biomedical treatments and research
that attempt to crack the genetic code with the goal of eliminating disease
and ensuring healthy old age for humans.
Bad
Meteorology: Raindrops Are Shaped Like Teardrops
Have students find out in what shapes raindrops naturally occur. According
to this site, raindrops do not form in teardrop shapes. The pattern of
the shape of raindrops is determined by the tug-of-war between two forces:
the surface tension of the water and the pressure of the air pushing up
against the bottom of the drop as it falls.
How
Females Choose Their Mates
Discover the patterns by which the females of many species carefully and
thoughtfully choose a mate.
Shuttle
Images of Cloud Patterns
View these images taken by the Space Shuttle of various cloud patterns.
Solve
the Puzzle of the Seashell Spiral
Learn more about how the Fibonacci series works.
Kids Planet
Click on Web of Life to learn about the patterns
of nature through the story of a common garden spider.
Designed
by Nature
Examine the natural
rules that shape the patterns in the world around us.
How
Stuff Works: How Animal Camouflage Works
Learn about the ways
in which animals protect themselves from predators---how the patterns on
their skin, fur, or scales can help them blend into their surroundings.
Carbon Counter
Calculate how much carbon dioxide you emit in
your everyday life. Carbon dioxide emissions contribute to the pattern
of global warming.
Forestry:
About.com
Check out the parts
of tree leaves. They have their own unique patterns. What are the petioles,
teeth, and lobes of a leaf?
Ladybug Lady
Get up close and personal with patterns of spots
on a ladybug’s
wings.
The Rhythms of Shifting Sands
National
Park Service: Geology of Sand Dunes
Explore the patterns of
sand dunes. Learn about the different kinds of dunes, how they form, how
they migrate, and their benefit to nature.
Beartracker’s
Animal Tracks Den
Examine the pattern of tracks left by mammals,
reptiles, amphibians, birds, insects, and humans.
Forces
of Nature
Explore the patterns of
tornadoes and learn why almost all tornadoes occur in the United States
.
BugBios
Learn about the beautiful patterns
on the wings of butterflies and moths and the possible adaptation benefits
they derive from these patterns.
Surfline:
Surf Cams
Check out worldwide
surf cams to experience the patterns of ocean waves.
Laboratory
of Tree Ring Research
Study the patterns of tree rings.
The study of tree rings is called dendrochronology.
Coral
Reef Adventure
Find out how large groups of fish all
swim together in a similar pattern—if
one fish turns, all the fish turn. “The secret is a collection
of tiny hair cells that are grouped along a line running across the body
of a fish (the lateral line). These special sensory hairs pick up the
same information from the water and each fish responds to it in exactly
the same way. The result is a perfectly timed underwater dance.”
DNA
Forensics
Become
a forensics detective and track down the pattern of DNA that helps scientists
solve crimes, match organ donors and recipients, identify catastrophe victims,
detect bacteria in water and food, determine pedigree for livestock, and
more.
Teacher Resources
Virtual Field Trips are teacher and student-created
tours of curricular topics. (You can learn how to use this UEN Virtual
Field Trip tool created by UEN for Utah educators).
Lesson Plans/Webquests
Bibliography
- Ball, Philip, The Self-made Tapestry. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
1999.
- Burton, Jane. The Nature and Science of Patterns. Milwaukee: Gareth
Stevens Publishing. 1998.
- The Guinness Book of Amazing Nature. [England] : Guinness
Pub., c1998.
- Lindecker, Jacques. Amazing Nature. Hauppauge, N.Y. : Barron's Educational
Series, 1998.
- Tucker, Priscilla. Basic Nature Projects : 101 Fun Explorations. Mechanicsburg,
PA : Stackpole Books, c1995.
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