Natural Selections

You can get the sugar out of a lot of trees, but there's something special about the sugar maple. Its trunk is highly efficient at storing and moving sap. That's in part because the sap is stored throughout the trunk, rather then down in the roots, as with most trees in winter. Martha Foley and Curt Stager look at that other "sweet science," the one behind our favorite breakfast condiment.

(Mar 12, 2020) Our atmosphere is about 80 percent nitrogen. Martha Foley and Dr. Curt Stager explore the ways this common element and necessary component of all life forms interacts with the biosphere.

When you're relaxing on an Adirondack beach, you're sitting on the weathered and filtered bones of the mountains' granite. And when you're admiring a building made of Potsdam sandstone, you're looking at ancient beaches fused into bedrock.

Curt Stager has his students start the semester by picking out a "pet rock." At the end of term, they have to tell the story of that rock - what it is, what it's made of, and what happened to shape it it over the ages.

Animals that resemble each other may not be closely related. Sometimes the setting shapes their bodies more than their ancestry. Manatees may look like whales or walruses, but that is only because they adapted to the marine environment in a similar way. Martha Foley and Curt stager talk about convergent evolution.

The big marine herbivore, the manatee, is thought by some to be the origin of mermaid legends, but it's not closely related to humankind or even to whales and other marine mammals.

(Feb 6, 2020) Besides making our food taste better, sodium chloride (salt) is necessary for our bodies to function. Martha Foley and Dr. Curt Stager whet their appetites on the science of salt.

(Jan 30, 2020) It's a delicious flavor, for humans and deer alike, but it's also so much more.

There's just something special about salt, a naturally occurring mineral that humans and many animals crave. Found naturally in its crystalline solid form, sea water and rock deposits left behind by ancient oceans, this chemical compound is among those that many of our cells need to survive.

Conversation with Martha Foley and Curt Stager gets a little salty.

It's the reason opposites attract and doorknobs shock, why lightning strikes, and the way bumblebees find the sweet spot in flowers. Whenever an object has more or fewer electrons than its neighbor, there is the potential for static discharge.

Martha Foley and Dr. Curt Stager talk about the mysterious and hair-raising ways of static electricity.

(Jan 9, 2020) Martha Foley and Dr. Curt Stager talk more about three different types of moles that inhabit the region, and their habits. The Eastern American mole and the hairy-tailed mole prefer dryer soils and consume up to half their weight a day in worms and grubs. Their star-nosed cousin prefers a wetter environment.