Photograph © Laura Maaske - Medimagery LLC Medical Illustration. Copyrighted Material Illustrated by Laura Maaske Medical Illustrator, Medical Animator, Biomedical Communicator, & biological artist. For permission information contact the artist

Sweet April Pond Songs

This is my favorite time of year, because of the frog chorus. I can walk out my back door and explore the ponds and woods with my daughters. The air is cool and full of new growth, and there isn’t the heaviness of mosquito clouds that will be surrounding us in another month or two.

Impurities in water bring a wrinkled texture to icicles

The Mystery of Wrinkled Icicles: Solved

It’s still cold here in the Midwest and not yet through our arctic winter, but with all the cold has come this beautiful array of icicles not yet melting. I have just learned that icicles are smooth if they are made from distilled water. And they are rippled if the water has minerals and salts. This rippling, in fact, occurs at the same wavelength, world over. Nobody claims to know why the wavelength is the same, or even how why the ripples form as a result of the impurities.