In this series of The Extra in the Ordinary, I will explore exciting and strange facts and fiction around everyday things I see on my daily walks, wherever they may take me.
Dandelions to Drones
What? That’s a strange jump in thinking! Dandelions to Drones? I know, but I will reveal everything in a jiff.
Firstly, what are Dandelions, and why are they the most fantastic flower blooming in early Spring?
I love dandelions and can’t wait to see them appearing every year. They are the first sign of Spring and brighter days as we leave the sometimes very long winter behind.
But to answer my question, dandelions are flowers that appear in March and continue through to October. They are highly prolific, which is good because they are one of the first food sources for bees and insects. Here in Ireland, where I live, dandelions are everywhere.
Unfortunately, most gardeners still think of them as a weed and would prefer never to see their little heads appear. This is changing with a new understanding of biodiversity and the development of the All Ireland Pollinator Plan. These mighty flowers are growing in abundance.
Before I get to the Drones, I want to share some interesting facts about Dandelions.
- The name Dandelion comes from the French (Dent-de-Lion) Lion’s tooth inspired by the shape of the leaf.
- All parts of the Dandelion are edible and are full of nutritional goodies, calcium, iron, folate, potassium, Vit. A & C. They can be infused into tea or added to salads.
- Dandelions’ nickname is piss-the-bed, which comes from their mildly diuretic qualities due to potassium levels. So, maybe just one cup of tea!
- As a food source, they have been connected with lowering blood sugar, inflammation & cholesterol.
- Dandelion flowers open at sunrise and close at sunset. The flowering cycle is representative of the celestial bodies during its lifecycle, the flower – the sun. The puffball before it goes to seed – the moon. Finally, the seeds resemble the stars.
- They are also a Ruderal species meaning that they are the first plant to colonize an area of disturbed ground, be that from a wildfire, human construction or agriculture.
- My favourite from childhood is being told and believing one could tell the time by blowing on the downy-covered head after the flowering. I called them the O’clocks. One puff was one-o-clock and so on, depending on how many breaths it took to disperse the seeds
- Final fun fact and the connecting point to Drones – Dandelion seeds can travel up to one kilometre.
Research
Researchers from the University of Edinburgh studied why Dandelion seeds flew so well and discovered a natural form of flight previously unknown.
The Dandelion seeds, even though they look like parachutes with many gaps in them, can carry the seeds for incredible distances on wind power alone. When the researchers conducted experiments on how this can happen, they found that an air bubble formed as air moved through the bristles, creating what they termed the separated vortex ring. The vortex is detached from the bristles and controlled by the airflow, enabling the seed’s steady flight and, according to research, is four times more efficient than the present parachute design.
Researchers have suggested that this form of flight, inspired by the dandelion seed, may inspire the development of small-scale drones that require little to no power consumption.
Link to the research:
At this point, I’m thinking of small Drones. Then I stumble across researchers at the University of Washington who have a prototype in development for a battery-free tiny solar wireless sensor that is carried on the wind like a Dandelion seed and can record and monitor changes in environmental conditions such as temperature, humidity, air pressure and light, and send the data back to a central computer.
Smart Dust
This then led me to Smart Dust, not precisely where I expected to end up.
Smart Dust is a sensor the size of a grain of sand that records and senses data in its environment and wirelessly transmits it to a larger computer system. Not the Drone I was expecting to find.
I have linked two sources below for further reading on Smart Dust and its applications. I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.
Links
https://futurside.com/how-smart-dust-sensor-will-revolutionize-data-collection/#Future_of_smart_dust
From the humble Dandelion I meet on my walks to Smart Dust is quite a jump in the imagination. Definitely extraordinary.
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