From owner-freebsd-stable Sat Apr 24 1:40:54 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Received: from inet.chip-web.com (c1003518-a.plstn1.sfba.home.com [24.1.82.47]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with SMTP id C5E6E14D30 for ; Sat, 24 Apr 1999 01:40:52 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from ludwigp@toy.chip-web.com) Received: (qmail 23165 invoked from network); 24 Apr 1999 08:40:51 -0000 Received: from speedy.chip-web.com (HELO speedy) (172.16.1.1) by inet.chip-web.com with SMTP; 24 Apr 1999 08:40:51 -0000 Message-Id: <4.1.19990424013153.00b6c660@mail-r> X-Sender: ludwigp@toy.chip-web.com (Unverified) X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 4.1 Date: Sat, 24 Apr 1999 01:37:54 -0700 To: Parag Patel From: Ludwig Pummer Subject: OT Re: plants and electricity [WAS: reboot by itself??!!] Cc: "'freebsd-stable@freebsd.org'" In-Reply-To: <53908.924908099@pinhead.parag.codegen.com> References: <4.1.19990423153204.00bf7e00@mail-r> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG At 03:54 PM 4/23/99 , Parag Patel wrote: >On Fri, 23 Apr 1999 15:37:20 PDT, Ludwig Pummer wrote: >>It's a known fact that trees near power lines grow faster than trees which >>aren't. > >It's also a known fact that trees, shrubbery, and undergrowth near >power-lines are regularly pruned and managed by the electric department >to keep the right-of-ways clear for maintainence and repair, and also to >keep it relatively safe from fire. This tends to promote plant growth >by wiping out the competition for resources (light, water, minerals). >Think of power-line areas as long skinny not-well-sculpted gardens. Didn't think of that... >>Also, winning Science Fair project in my area was an experiment with plants >>and electromagnetic fields. The plants were all kept in a green house under >>the same conditions. The experiment was conducted by some 4.0+ GPA A.P. >>Biology students. > >I'd like to see a proper double-blind replication of the experiment >before I'd trust the data. I suspect the 4.0+ GPA students didn't go >quite this far with their project. :-) Also, if the appartus wasn't >well grounded, it's possible that leaking current warmed the soil near >the plants slightly. Finally, they'd have to run their experiment over >many many generations to see a pattern of extra mutations. I didn't >think legumes grew that fast for a Science Fair project, but I suppose >it could have been a longer multi-year project. Still, I'd like to see >a pointer to the details of their experimental setup. I found the web page where he described the experiment (the A.P. Biology teacher tries to push his students into making web pages out of everything). http://www.angelfire.com/ca2/sciencefair/ Too bad that Biology teacher doesn't teach basic web page style...black and blue on lime green *shudder*. I was wrong about the 'legumes' I think. He used a fast-growing variety of mustard. I remember him talking about seed pods, so I had assumed they were legumes. And he apparently took the heating of the coils into account, as the control plants have coils around them too, but they're arranged so that there is no magnetic field even though current is going through them. --Ludwig Pummer ( ludwigp@bigfoot.com ) ICQ UIN: 692441 To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-stable" in the body of the message