Autumn Leaves: Your Questions Answered

Martin Schaefer, one of the scientists I wrote about in my recent post on autumn leaves, has joined the comment thread and kindly answered some questions about his work. Check it out.

Tags

More like this

A new autumn has brought another burst of red and yellow leaves. And it has also brought an interesting new idea about why trees put on this show every year. In recent years, scientists have been roughly divided into two camps when it comes to autumn leaves. One camp holds that autumn colors are…
As the autumn leaves turn handsomely, I've been wondering, why do trees bother? It's a question scientists have been asking for the past few years, and for the first time, they've carried out an experiment to find out. The color of an autumn leaf can actually take a lot of work. In the fall, the…
Every now and then you come across a scientific hypothesis that is so elegant and powerful in its ability to explain that it just feels right. Yet that doesn't automatically make it right. Even when an elegant hypothesis gets support from experiments, it's not time to declare victory. This is…
My friend Nicole sent me this WSJ article about a month ago - it's about the sad reality that artworks made with nonarchival materials often don't outlive the artist: Art is sold "as is" by galleries or directly from artists. (Can you imagine Consumer Reports reviewing art?) Still, dealers hope to…