joram

Give peas a chance

When the sun comes out, Germans and Australians have something in common: we light a fire and start cooking food outdoors. The usual barbecued suspects are sausages of questionable origin, something sitting in a red marinade, and charred but somehow-still-raw chicken breast. While this does sound mouthwatering, a new trend might bring a fresh player to the barbecues and kitchens around the world – plant based protein products.

Let’s have a look at what makes plant protein special.… Read more

Superpowers and lion’s teeth

Last weekend, the Fast Forward Science competition held its Super Fast challenge – 24 hours to tell a story about science on Instagram… this year, with the topic of “Hero”. I didn’t have to look far in my neighbourhood to find a true hero of the plant world: dandelion.… Read more

Wir waren beim PTDW

Hello to our English-speaking readers. This post is in German, you can find an English version here.

Hallo alle zusammen, heute gibt es mal etwas anderes.

Letztes Wochenende waren Joram und ich beim Potsdamer Tag der Wissenschaften, um Plants and Pipettes vorzustellen. Während wir normalerweise hier auf Englisch schreiben und sprechen, haben wir uns dieses mal auf Deutsch unterhalten, was mich ein kleines bisschen gestresst hat (Abb. 1). Dennoch hatten wir viel Spaß dabei, mit dem Publikum zu reden, Sonnenblumensamen zu verteilen und Fragen einzusammeln.… Read more

PnP goes PTDW

If you’re in the Potsdam/Berlin area this Saturday, May 11th, you’re in for a treat! You can meet the heads behind Plants and Pipettes (That’s us!) at the Potsdam Day of Science.

Eine deutsche Version des Artikels gibt es hier.

You can find all information on the official website, our little event is described here. You will find Plants and Pipettes in the foyer of the central building.

Come and say hi, bring your favourite questions about plant science and follow the hashtag #ptdw.… Read more

Simple Things* #11

Some tiny parts are special: when you look at them in a blue light, they don’t look blue but instead green or red. They take the heat that is in the blue light, keep some for themselves and then send turn the rest of the heat into green or red light. They do that always in the same way and people who figure things out can use this in many different ways. … Read more

Plants give us power

Here at Plants and Pipettes, we love anything that generates power from energy sources. We love our fossil fuels just as much as we love our nuclear energy and even the regenerative biomass has a place in our hearts. Today marks the first day of our mini-series on the greatest plants in the world.… Read more

Cats and Naked Ladies

If you have furry friends, you probably know about the things that hurt them. And because we here at Plants and Pipettes are ‘Team Cat’, we’re talking today about a certain plant that can be deadly to them. And also naked ladies. ‘Let’s not get too clickbaity’, I thought. Followed immediately by ‘I should write about cats and naked ladies, the two things that the internet loves best’.… Read more

Simple Things* #10

The sun throws light from the sky while the ground gives food to all green things. But how do they know to put their long and thin feet into the ground and their green hands in the air? Green living things have a sense to know what is up and what is down. In one kind of special tiny water bag they make tiny stones – these stones are made from the stuff we use for food made in a hot box that we eat in the morning.… Read more

Simple Things* #9

Green living things can’t move to one another like animals do to make more of themselves. So, they use smaller animals to help them. Green living things have cups at the end of their stick-like bodies, and these cups have colors and smells that make small animals want to come to them. A green living thing puts some special stuff that sticks to things at the end of long tiny sticks in the middle of the cups. This special stuff is important to make more of the green living thing.… Read more

Simple Things* #8

If you want to study a certain bit of parents’ information you often first have to make more of that parents’ information – from one or several pieces, to several tens of hundreds or hundreds of hundreds of hundreds of pieces. The information is stored on two long pieces that are sticking together.

In order to make more, the parents’ information is first made hot, to force the two sides to not be together anymore.

Then, you choose two very small parts of broken up parents’ information that fit to the ends of a piece of information that you are interested in.… Read more