Hello folks who wonder if Sodium is still salty against Sulphur for taking away the charismatic "S" symbol in the periodic table,
Who doesn't like to spend time with people who are just like them?
- Love eating red velvet cake for breakfast? ✓
- Love to camp outside Apple stores for 56 hours for the new Apple watch? ✓
- Love to snapchat your coffee being brewed everyday? ✓
- Love travelling and exploring unknown places around the world but get frustrated when google maps takes the longer route to the nearest Starbucks? ✓
No matter what you like to do, you can almost always find a group of like-minded individuals that have similar interests. The problem arises when your priorities in life change and you can no longer associate with this specific group. So you now start looking for a way out. You can simply walk up to them and tell them "This has been an amazing ride but I am out". But...but what if that hurts someone's feelings. What if people will brand you as a "traitor", "difficult" or just a plain ol' "bitch" when you leave the group. Surely, your own comforts cannot take precedence over the group's comfort. So you stay mum, and let your wine glass be your therapist.
Springtails are amazing insects. Argh..let's start over.
Springtails are fascinating arthropods (Wait, why aren't they insects? Click here) that are found everywhere on earth except the ocean and deep waters. Think about this for a second, the deepest terrestrial animal ever found was a springtail. Now that you have new found respect for these creatures that you previously never gave a second glance, let's proceed.
Below is one doing what it does best: springing to escape my wrath.
But I digress. One fine day, I saw a bunch of springtails all huddled together on the water surface of a bowl that was lying on the ground.
My first reaction was "good for you springtails, you found your tribe". But on closer inspection, I saw that many were not happy to be in this union and were desperately looking for a way out. Maybe they were just too afraid to speak their mind perhaps.
Knowing that the Avengers were busy helping catch offenders who weren't wearing their masks in public, I knew I had to jump in and save the day for these poor souls. So I violently shake the water bowl and break this unholy gathering.
First, let's go through some housekeeping items. You see, Springtails are pretty light in weight and do not exert enough force to break the surface tension of the water, hence they float on water. On a side note, one day I was having dinner with a springtail and told it how some humans believe in a god that can walk on water. "Wait, I don't get it, what is so special in that?" it replied. Below is one springtail I dunk in water and bring back to the surface and it floats away unfazed.
So we already know that they can easily float on water. In addition, they can jump on water as well by releasing their furcula (WTH is a furcula? Read here)
But after a couple of minutes of breaking that group, they all form the same groups as before.
Turns out, as a bunch of springtails would run into each other, there would be more weight collectively in that spot than other spots where individual springtails were. This created a depression on the water surface, thus causing any springtail just floating to slide towards the group. So even though none of them wanted to be in this group, they had no choice. I would have saved them the 2nd time around but Instagram does not reward saving springtails like it does for saving kittens, so what's in it for me.
To try this phenomenon yourself, put your pet cat on one side of the seesaw and you sit on the other side. See what happens. Ideal result is shown below:
*The author is not responsible for any cats flung 10 feet in the air. Well, at least they land on their feet, so that's nice.
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