Amazing Plants

Take a gummy bear and a carnivorous plant and soon the poor gummy bear is done for. It is digested, softened, and dissolved, skin and all. Within a few days, you can watch the digestive juices of sundew or Venus flytrap at work—creepy! Snap shut—gummy bear mush. The lotus effect of kohlrabi leaves is more civilized. Honey finds no hold on the leaf surface and ink is absorbed as soon as a drop of water comes into play. Graphite powder can “stick” to any surface—but not to the kohlrabi leaf. In this chapter, you can also watch amazing videos about the lotus effect. Nature offers with autumn leaves and sulfur lichens further masters of the lotus effect that want to be discovered. Rainy weather? Ideal! For indoors, you can prepare a pH indicator from radish peels—color change games included. All experiments are easy to replicate.