BEAUTIFUL NEW FRUIT BUZZ, GLOW, & INSIDE STORIES

We found some super-cool scientific explorations of fruit that we just had to share. From stunningly beautiful fruit batteries, to MRIs, to microscopic investigations, these science experiments are also works of art.

FRUIT BATTERIES - CALEB CHARLAND

Remember making that cool potato battery in science class when you were a kid?

Natural acid serves as the electrolytic medium between a pair of terminals—but it's certainly a clever way to illustrate the basic principles of batteries and circuits.

Photographer Caleb Charland has taken this simple experiment and elevated it to a series of beautiful images, called Back to Light. It features daisy chains of fresh fruit set aglow in long-exposure photographs.

The apples and limes are brilliant. They are illuminated solely by their subject matter. The arrangements are either backlit or clustered around the bulb, creating almost ghostlike light sources.

The more fruit is strung along the conductive wire, the more powerful the light. Charland has created pieces that range from a circuit of orange slices to tree tops full of fruit.

“This work speaks to a common curiosity we all have for how the world works as well as a global concern for the future of earth's energy sources,” says Charland.

“My hope is that these photographs function as micro utopias by suggesting and illustrating the endless possibilities of alternative and sustainable energy production. The cycle that begins with the light of our closest star implanting organic materials with nutrients and energy, is re-routed in these images, Back to Light, illuminating earth once again.”

FRUIT MRIS - ANDY ELLISON

Why would you want an MRI of a fruit? Because it’s cool! And beautiful!

MRI technologist Andy Ellison captured cross-sections of various types of fruits just as he does with human brains.

He began by using an orange as a test subject to adjust the MRI machine's settings in advance of a human patient’s scan.

According to Ellison, he was “blown away by the incredible complexity that began to show itself so quickly as I went through the slices of the orange.”  

Ellison went on to launch his awesome blog, Inside Insides, and has since created a whole baskets of MRI fruit scans to behold.

Ellison works at Boston University Medical School, Center for Biomedical Imaging. He runs a research only Philips 3 Tesla MRI and has manually acquired all the images you see here and on this blog.

3D FRUIT STONE CELLS - BLUE RIDGE KITTIES

Blue Ridge Kitties went looking for fruit cells and found art. Check out the colors, shapes and glow.

These microscopic images, taken by Blue Ridge Kitties, reveal the beautiful intricacies found in the skins of pears. The cells clump together to form a glowing, stony material. This creates the gritty texture found in pears and can be seen without the help of a microscope.

“I used an image stack of three focal points and combined them using CombineZM which makes it look even weirder,” BRK explains.

“They're Pyrus stone cells (prepared slide from Carolina Biologicals) observed with the 20x objective on an Olympus IX81 microscope. The glowing stony material is secondary cell wall; the lines radiating from the center of the cells are plasmodesmata. You can't really see them very well on the single images, but they show up nicely after focus stacking.”

MICROSCOPE IMAGE - GUNNAR NEWQUIST

The latest jewel from the annual Olympus BioScapes Digital Imaging Competition is this extraordinary microscope image by Gunnar Newquist. It is one of the most ardent of fruit lovers, the fruit fly. The winning entries will be on display at the New York Hall of Science through August 31st.

Read more about Beautiful Fruits, as they relate to Arts/Design, Nature/Science, Food/Drink, Place/Time, Mind/Body, and Soul/Impact, including 10 Gorgeous New Books on Fruits.

Enter your own images and ideas about Beautiful Fruits in this week’s creative Photo Competition. Open for entries now until 11:59 p.m. PT on 07.20.14. If you are reading this after that date, check out the current BN Creative Competition, and enter!

PHOTO CREDITS:

1. Photo: by Caleb Charland. “Two Lamps, Hope, Maine.”
2. Photo: by Caleb Charland
3. Photo: by Caleb Charland. Potato battery.
4. Photo: by Caleb Charland. Apple battery.
5. Photo: by Caleb Charland. Orange battery.
6. Photo: by Caleb Charland. Fruit batteries.
7. Gif: Courtesy of Inside Insides. Banana MRI.
8. Gif: Courtesy of Inside Insides. Jack Fruit MRI.
9. Gif: Courtesy of Inside Insides. Dragonfruit MRI.
10. Gif: Courtesy of Inside Insides. Strawberries MRI.
11. Photo: by Blue Ridge Kitties. “Pyrus Fruit Stone Cells.”
12. Photo: by Blue Ridge Kitties. “3D Fruit Stone Cells.”
13. Photo: by Gunnar Newquist. “Drosophila melanogaster reproductive system.”
14. Photo: by Caleb Charland. Chemistry photography.