For gift-giving this year, we’re all about experiences that make memories for you and your loved ones! Read on for ALEX’s ideas on how to add a little sprinkle of science to your holiday gift-giving.

Go Behind the Science Scene…

Give the gift of a wildlife encounter! Zoo Atlanta has lots of experiences to choose from, including encounters with pandas, lemurs, and elephants. You can also purchase a general wildlife encounter gift certificate and let your giftee choose for themselves! Or take your encounter underwater with an aquatic creature encounter for the aquarium lover in your life. Georgia Aquarium has lots of experiences to choose from, including encounters with sea lions, dolphins, and beluga whales.

Gift a Membership…to Science!

Whether your giftee likes botany, birding or building, Atlanta’s got it! A membership to the Atlanta Botanical Garden is a great gift for your favorite plant-lover that includes a nice set of benefits, including free daytime admission and discounts on educational programs. Maybe you prefer birds to plants? Try out a membership to Birds Georgia (formerly Georgia Audubon). This membership comes with access to the brand new Morgens Environmental Education Gateway: a one-stop shop for educational content focused on birds. Purchase of a gift membership includes a welcome letter, the most recent copy of Audubon’s quarterly newsletter, Wingbars, and a Birds Georgia sticker. Or perhaps your giftee is more of a doer than a watcher. In that case, give a gift membership to the Decatur Makers space! You will be shipped a membership gift certificate for your recipient. Membership comes with a key fob with 24/7/365 maker space access, access to equipment and tools, free or discounted classes, workshops, and events. Members are also allowed to bring visitors to the space!

Get Your Science Outside…

How about a “Sustainability in Action” tour with Bike Tours of Atlanta? This tour is a great way to learn more about how Atlanta has embraced sustainable practices and innovations. This experience is presented in partnership with Root Local, a local nonprofit focused on supporting collective environmental impact within metro Atlanta. Or for the nature lover, give a Georgia State Parks gift card which can be used for camping, cottage or shelter reservations, historic site admission, greens or cart fees, and retail and recreation fees. Or you can even give the gift of a year’s worth of entry into affiliated parks! Extended passes include free nights of camping, discounted lodging, and discounts on picnic shelters.

At Science ATL, we also offer maps for purchase to go on your own family-friendly science discovery walk. We partnered with a local artist to develop these six beautiful maps for you to take a self-guided Discovery Walk, each with ten intriguing science stops. Take your family and friends on a science adventure through some of the coolest neighborhoods and parks in Atlanta, including Cascade Springs, Sweet Auburn, Emory University’s campus, the South Peachtree Creek Trail, Decatur, and the Beltline & Piedmont Park. While you are purchasing some of these maps, check out our collection of shirts and stickers!

Eat and Drink Your Science…

Remember that science is everywhere! For the grown-ups in your life, consider a class about food and drink and give them the chance to ask all their nerdy questions! Elemental Spirits offers custom experiences and tastings to let you learn all about wine and cocktails. Or send your giftee to a class on how to brew the perfect cup of coffee with Opo Coffee. Opo will be hosting special classes during the Science Festival in 2024, but you can sign up for classes like Coffee Roasting Basics or Home Espresso Making anytime! Prefer to eat your science? Dig into cheesemaking with classes from Capella Cheese. You can eat your way across Europe with a wide variety of courses from these master cheesemakers!

Read Your Science…

Immerse yourself in the world of science through reading. ALEX compiled a list of books written by Georgia authors (marked with 🍑), and tossed in a few from the finalist list for the 2024 American Association for Advancement in Science/Subaru Prize for Excellence in Science Books (marked with ⭐). If you are able, stay local with your purchases. Little Shop of Stories, A Capella Books, and Virginia Highland books are some of our favorites in the metro Atlanta area.

For Adults

Life Sculpted: Tales of the Animals, Plants, and Fungi That Drill, Break, and Scrape to Shape the Earth,  Anthony J. Martin 🍑(more from Tony here.)

The Plant Hunter: A Scientist’s Quest for Nature’s Next Medicines, Cassandra L. Quave🍑

Big Chicken Maryn McKenna 🍑(more from Maryn here)

Wild Spectacle, Janisse Ray 🍑

A Road Running Southward: Following John Muir’s Journey through an Endangered Land, Dan Chapman 🍑

Odyssey: Young Charles Darwin, The Beagle, and The Voyage that Changed the World, Tom Chaffin 🍑

For Young Adults (Grades 9–12)

The Milky Way: An Autobiography of Our Galaxy, Moiya McTier ⭐

The Sounds of Life: How Digital Technology Is Bringing Us Closer to the Worlds of Animals and Plants, Karen Bakker ⭐

Wilder: How Rewilding is Transforming Conservation and Changing the World, Millie Kerr  (preorder) ⭐

Wildscape: Trilling Chipmunks, Beckoning Blooms, Salty Butterflies, and Other Sensory Wonders of Nature, Nancy Lawson ⭐

For “Middle Grades” (Grades 5–8)

Good Food, Bad Waste: Let’s Eat for the Planet, Erin Silver ⭐

How Do Meerkats Order Pizza?: Wild Facts about Animals and the Scientists Who Study Them, Brooke Barker ⭐

The Planets Are Very, Very, Very Far Away: A Journey Through the Amazing Scale of the Solar System, Mike Vago ⭐

Superpower?: The Wearable-Tech Revolution, Elaine Kachala ⭐

For Younger Kids (K–4):

Before Colors: Where Pigments and Dyes Come From, Annette Bay Pimentel ⭐

Science of Baking (Ada Twist, Scientist: The Why Files #3), Andrea Beaty and Dr. Theanne Griffith ⭐

We Go Way Back: A Book About Life on Earth and How it All Began, Idan Ben-Barak ⭐

Whale Fall: Exploring an Ocean-floor Ecosystem, Melissa Stewart ⭐

And The Tide Comes In… Exploring a Coastal Salt Marsh, Merryl Alber 🍑

Bug Scouts #1: Out in the Wild!, Mike Lowery 🍑

Because of an Acorn, Lola M. Schaefer 🍑

Owly series, Andy Runton 🍑

“Hands On” Science Books (Grades K–8):

Human Body Learning Lab: Take an Inside Tour of How Your Anatomy Works, Dr. Betty Choi ⭐

Sheet Pan Science: 25 Fun, Simple Science Experiments for the Kitchen Table; Super-Easy Setup and Cleanup, Liz Lee Heinecke ⭐

Wild Child: Nature Adventures for Young Explorers—with Amazing Things to Make, Find, and Do, Dara McAnulty ⭐

The Kitchen Pantry Scientist Ecology for Kids: Science Experiments and Activities Inspired by Awesome Ecologists, Past and Present, Liz Lee Heinecke ⭐

Support Your Science…

If you love events like the Atlanta Science Festival and Science ATL LABS: Shark Dissection, please consider supporting the work we do with a donation in honor of your giftee. Your gift to Science ATL helps support our mission of cultivating an equitable community of lifelong learners across metro Atlanta connected and inspired by the wonder of science.

Each year on December 21, darkness envelops Earth’s Northern Hemisphere for a bit longer than normal. While what we now know to be the winter solstice has a straightforward astronomical explanation, early myths of why the solstice takes place also share insights into early civilizations’ steps into science.

So, what is a solstice?

There are two solstices that occur each year – the summer solstice and the winter solstice. Both are based on the tilt of the earth’s axis in relation to the sun. All of the planets in our solar system move in a heliocentric orbit, meaning they move in a pattern with the sun at the center. But in addition to moving around the sun, each planet also rotates on its own constantly shifting axis. Here on earth, that means that the north and south poles are not straight up and down as maps might have us believe. Summer occurs in a hemisphere when its nearest pole is tilting closer to the sun, while winter occurs when the hemisphere’s nearest pole is further away. 

Each year on December 21, the Northern Hemisphere is tilted the farthest away from the Sun, while the Southern Hemisphere is closer. While the overall tilt of earth’s axis during winter months can make days appear short and nights long, it is on December 21, when the winter solstice occurs and the winter season officially begins, that the Northern Hemisphere gets the least amount of daylight compared to any other day of the year.

“The Day the Sun Stands Still”

Before the modern era of telescopes and space exploration, early civilizations looked to the skies for an understanding of time, seasons, and even human existence. Many ascribed meaning to the behavior of the skies based on existing folk tales and cultural perspectives, believing the winter solstice’s lack of sunlight was caused by monsters who stole the sun away. Some cultures also saw the solstice as an opportunity to create light, or goodness, in the face of darkness, or evil.

History indicates that humans may have been observing the solstice since the Neolithic period, around 10,200 BC. In the Stone Age, people held rituals at sacred sites like England’s Stonehenge, Ireland’s Newgrange, and Native American Woodhenge in what is now known as Illinois, in celebration of the changing seasonal cycle.

In Finnish folklore, the winter solstice was believed to be the work of Louhi, the “witch goddess of the North”, who kidnaps the sun and moon, while both Yupik and Greek early explanations thought the solstice afforded gnome-like creatures the opportunity to hunt.

But the solstice isn’t scary in all cultures. For many, the day is a chance to worship a number of religious deities, like Tonantzin in Mexico, Cailleach Bheru in Scotland, Horus in Egypt, and Spider Grandmother by the Hopi. The winter solstice is also frequently associated with earth’s rebirth, as it emerges from the long night to the light of day, as well as the continual cycle of life and death. The Scandinavian Goddess, Beiwe, for example, is associated with health and fertility and was believed to travel through the night sky in a sleigh-like structure of reindeer bones with her daughter, Beiwe-Neia, to bring back the greenery on which the reindeer fed. In Italian folklore, La Befana is a witch who spends the solstice night riding around the world on her broom, leaving candies and treats to well-behaved children.

Events like the Pagan Scandinavian Feast of Juul, Pakistani Festival of Chaomos, Chinese Dongzhi Festival, and Roman Pagan Saturnalia, to name a few, are all also associated with lighting up the darkness that occurs on and around winter solstice. These occasions, and the stories associated with them, were powerful tools intended to not only explain what people of the time believed to cause the winter solstice, but also to reassure that the darkness would pass, daylight would return, and joy, or light, would prevail.

Mythical Meaning as a Scientific Method

The word “solstice” is derived from the Latin words “sol”, meaning “sun”, and “sistere”, or “to stand”. Just as varying cultures use language as a tool for communication, societies of the past also used legends as a way to share understandings about natural phenomena. 

While we now know that it is planetary positioning that causes the winter solstice, it is still delightful to view this day of darkness as a chance to cozy up and look forward to the light in seasons to come.

By Christina Buffo

After Dr. Yomi Noibi wrote a newsletter article about toxic chemicals in waterways, the previous Executive Director of Environmental Community Action (ECO-Action) tore it up. Dr. Noibi had written the article following the usual practice taught by his extensive scientific training – a PhD in environmental science from the University of Iowa followed by teaching positions at the University of Wisconsin, the University of Lagos, and Clark University – and he had given equal weight to the communities affected and the companies producing toxic chemicals. And that’s where he had gone wrong. Most publications tended to center the companies and rarely the people affected. “We have to write our own story,” says Noibi, ECO-Action’s current Executive Director.

“Community” is central to the name for a reason: ECO-Action focuses on helping people living in disenfranchised areas across Georgia and changes priorities based on community needs. In Taylor County, they shifted from pollution-fighting to political organizing when residents told ECO-Action that there hadn’t been a local election for ten years. Many volunteers, including Noibi, worked with local organizers and outside legal experts to push for an election in a community- and Black-led initiative. This shift in goals required bringing in new expertise, ECO-Action’s specialty. According to Noibi, the key step in organizing is to “connect people to people that can bring about change.”

And bring about change they did. The combined efforts of Taylor County citizens, lawyers, and ECO-Action resulted in an election, and the voters elected the first few African Americans to the Taylor County Board of Commissioners, ensuring that the board demographics better reflected that of the county. The new board members could then act on environmental issues.

Learning Together

Organizing is always a learning process. No one person or field could have addressed all the problems in Taylor County, but a coalition of people with different backgrounds and skills had a major impact. ECO-Action does not market itself as the entire solution: it’s simply the catalyst that makes these connections, and then everything else, happen.

The importance of learning from others applies beyond doctors, lawyers, and scientists. ECO-Action hosts discussion groups for different generations of Atlanta area residents to discuss local concerns together. Dr. Noibi says that these groups are founded with the idea that everyone, from a six-year-old to her grandparents, has an important perspective on their living environment and issues present in it, and that only through learning from each other can action occur. In Dr. Noibi’s words, “We have to work and learn together. First we have to learn together. Then we have to work together.”

ECO-Action Programming

Many participants in ECO-Action’s programs, such as the Intergenerational Learning Group and the Community Watershed Learning Group, mention their surprise that environmental concerns are only part of the program.  A training or discussion group isn’t solely about sewage leaks, or tire dumping, or floodwater management. “It’s about injustice,” says Noibi. “It’s about thinking outside the box, because you cannot address environmental problems with the current framework of thinking.”

Part of the shift outside of this current framework needs to be legal. In alleged water contamination, the people affected often are legally required to demonstrate the presence of pollutants. This, emphasizes Noibi, is unfair for many reasons. First, the people living in a contaminated area may not have access to pollutant testing or the money to pay for it. Second, some chemicals may be toxic in smaller amounts than current laws suggest, and the health consequences of other pollutants may not yet be clear. Lead from water pipes, for example, was considered safe at one time. Most importantly, the burden of proof falls unjustly on the people impacted, who already suffer health damage from pollution. The brutal reality is, says Noibi, that at the end of the day, “we’re the ones exposed, we’re the ones burying the body.”

The other important step towards a more just world lies in the perception of science. Scientific training emphasizes a “science as solution” mindset at the expense of considering how science results are used. A more just outlook, suggests Noibi, would involve thinking “that science is the answer, no. Science is a tool to help get the answer. The answer is in the people.”

By Misael Romero-Reyes

You are standing in the middle of a deep deep canyon. It has everything it needs to flourish: water, soil, sunlight, and air. There are wild boars at the water table, huge trees, even alligators! Can you believe this magical wonder would not have been possible without humans making reckless decisions while trying to survive?

A Trip to the 1830s

Let’s go back in time. Imagine yourself in the 1830s and what you see is just open land. Land that is ready to be farmed. There are a few trees, so you decide to cut them, you know, for more land to farm. Neighbors mostly grow cotton to support their families, so you decide to farm cotton too. Over time, you notice that cotton just doesn’t grow the same way it did years before, but you don’t worry too much, maybe the soil just has a short lifespan. You decide to go to another piece of land and cultivate cotton there. You move to a piece of land that is uphill because you have learned over the years that cultivating crops on a slope allows more water to get into the soil. 

What was happening to the soil wasn’t normal, and science explains why not. When you are farming (or in this case over-farming), you are removing the topsoil. The topsoil contains the most important nutrients for crops to grow: metals, microbes, and minerals. It also becomes “loose,” so it can be more easily carried away by wind or rain. When these get carried away, the crop won’t get the necessary nutrients and stops producing. 

Loose Soil Leads to Erosion

As the land becomes “ungrowable,” a second phenomenon occurs. Erosion is the geological process where inner earth materials are worn away by natural forces. In this case, rain and bad farming practices washed away bits and pieces of soil and sand. Little by little over the course of two centuries, the effects of this became visible in the development of a deep canyon appearing on the old farmland. 43 different colors of soil, layers, and layers going into the inner earth. So much soil was taken away that it cannot go any deeper, it ends at the water table.

The rainwater is removing soil at different rates depending on steepness. Remember when you were farming cotton on a steep slope? Well, it led to erosion happening from all sides, and if you look at the deeper and deeper parts of the earth you will see that there is one color in common: red-orange, and this indicates the presence of the metal iron (Fe) because it gets dissolved as water travels through the sediment, then it oxidizes (unites with oxygen), and it’s precipitated at different depths staining the soil in different colors. 

The History of Providence Canyon

Now flash forward to today. All of this happened in a small town in Georgia called Lumpkin. The farming was improperly managed during that time, and unfortunately, Providence Canyon formed in a few decades due to the erosion and the overcropping that happened. Thankfully, we are now aware of the damages we were doing to the environment. President Jimmy Carter bought the land in 1970 and established it as a 1,000-acre conservation area. A lot of trees were planted, and this land regained a little bit of its former lush beauty. Trees reduce the amount of storm runoff, which reduces erosion, and they also serve as food and shelter to many organisms. Through conservation, plants and animals began to thrive in Providence Canyon. 

One of Georgia’s Natural Wonders

Providence Canyon is one of the “natural” wonders of Georgia. It has much resemblance to the Grand Canyon out west. If you haven’t had a chance to visit, you should! And remember that those red colors and imperfect surfaces happened because of the damage many human practices do to the earth. Despite its beauty, the history of Providence Canyon is also a reminder that if we remove vital elements of earth, we must also take steps to protect it from future damage.

By Veronica Montgomery

Two people meet on the dance floor and form an elegant silhouette. A sparkly dress flares during a double spin. Everyone catches their breath during a lift, only to grin in excitement and relief once both feet are on the ground. Whether watching it on screen or doing it yourself, it is hard to deny that sense of glamor that comes with a well-executed partner dance. 

Shows like Dancing with the Stars and So You Think You Can Dance have brought social dancing to the limelight. Besides looking cool, dancing is fun, is a great workout, and may actually make people happier according to several research studies. However, many people feel excluded from this world of dance because they are intimidated by the fear of not knowing what to do. 

Physics is the Language of Social Dancing

The good news is that while dancing looks super intimidating, it is very learnable because a lot of it is based on physics! Social dancing is all about force – a push or a pull that changes an object’s motion. In dancing, the direction and strength of forces are used to tell dancers how to move. Forces come from all over, including contact between the lead and follow, the muscles and joints within each dancer’s body, and gravity.

“A lot of the more intricate parts [of social dancing] are not something you can see… somebody needs to explain the inner workings and the mechanics of it,” says Ashwin Raju, who co-owns Aatma Dance Studio with his wife, Kristen Anne. Ashwin and Kristen have each been dancing for over a decade and teach salsa and bachata at their Atlanta-based studio from beginner level to performance-ready.

“In salsa or any partner dance, there is a lead and a follow. Whatever is in the lead’s head needs to be communicated to the follow, and the only way the follower can listen to the lead is through the body,” Ashwin explains. Forces are the words in the language of social dancing. When a lead wants the follow to move in a certain way, he applies a specific force to communicate what to do. 

The concepts of frame and connection allow the follow to interpret this force and translate it into a movement. In dance, frame refers to how you hold your upper body. Good posture as well as engaged back, core, and arm muscles are key to a good frame. When these muscles are engaged, the forces within the body make the entire torso move as a single unit, allowing subtle cues from the lead to be translated into big movements from the follow.     

Connection describes the interaction between the lead and follow’s bodies. With proper connection, the lead and follow are applying the same amount of force to each other, so that the follow has some resistance to any forces coming from the lead. “We make the leads and follows get into a palm-to-palm connection and lean into each other. Like planking against each other. We ask the ladies to close their eyes and we ask the leads to walk around the floor backward and forward without letting the follows know where they are going,” says Ashwin.

In physics, resistance is an opposition to the flow of energy. We hear a lot about resistance in circuits, but it is also important for dancing. Resistance lets us convert energy into a practical form, like a light in a circuit. A lead uses energy to apply force to the follow. A follow with “noodle arms” has little or no resistance to this energy, so her arms flail in the direction of the force without engaging the rest of the body. A follow with too much resistance applies so much counterforce that the lead is unable to move her. The right balance is learned through training and practice. 

Torque is a twisting force that can cause an object to rotate. When a lead signals for a follow to turn, he guides her arm in the direction of the turn. Because the follow is dancing with a strong frame, her entire torso follows this cue, which creates a tension (torque!) between her upper and lower body. Ashwin compares the changes in the follow’s body to that of a car going into sports mode, “once you start turning, everything kind of tightens up. All the joints are like springs and all the springs sort of tighten up. That means when one side moves, everything else reacts. Head to toe everything is connected.” The internal forces that connect the follow’s torso to her lower body cause the rest of her body to follow through with the turn. If the lead turns the follow too aggressively and she loses balance, they are reminded of another force always at work – gravity. 

When using the right technique, communicating during a dance becomes almost effortless. As Kristen explains, when connection and frame are in place “you really don’t have to think what direction you’re going in because it just feels so natural.” 

Teaching Robots the Language of Dance

Professor Madeleine Hackney at Emory University echoes this sentiment, “if you’re dancing with a skilled leader…you don’t even need to think about it at all, it just happens.” The underlying concepts of physics that dictate many aspects of partner dance mean that two complete strangers can dance without a glitch, as long as they both know the rules.  Taking advantage of this established “language”, Professors Madeleine Hackney and Lena Ting at Emory University are designing robots for partner dance in order to provide physical therapy for Parkinson’s patients. “We liked partner dance because there was already a codified sort of structure and language,” Lena explains. 

Parkinson’s Disease is a disease of the nervous system that causes tremors, muscle stiffness, slowed movement, and balance problems. Madeleine was a professional dancer before becoming a neuroscience professor, and she has used her background to adapt Argentine Tango as a rehabilitation treatment program for Parkinson’s patients: “the knowledge base that I developed as a partner dancer is super important for this because I have taught countless individuals how to move in conjunction with another person… I know the rules of partner dance — be it tango, or salsa, or swing, or any of these — and how we communicate motor goals in very, very subtle ways.” 

Tango therapy has been surprisingly effective. Madeleine has found that her tango classes can improve balance and gait in her patients. When Lena learned about Madeleine’s work, she wanted to contribute her expertise in robotics to bring this therapy to people on a larger scale. By designing robots that can lead and follow, Madeleine and Lena believe they can make tango therapy more accessible. “The idea with rehabilitation robots in general [is] you want to emulate what the therapist is doing and basically allow people to have therapy more often… and maybe in a place where they can’t normally get it,” Lena explains.  

The problem is that robots need to be programmed to give and respond to the forces we use to communicate in dance, and it is hard to define exactly what ‘natural’ feels like. “One of the problems in robotics is we don’t know how to get a robot to really touch and interact with a human being in a caring, gentle way” explains Madeleine. “That’s why it was so cool to meet with Lena because she’s got all the skills with engineering, so then by partnering with her we’ve been able to answer some of these questions.” 

Analyzing Physical Communication in Dance

As research partners, they are studying the physical interactions between people in order to better understand the communication that happens in dance. “We started on a set of studies looking at two people interacting in a stepping paradigm to understand principles of the force communications,” says Lena. They have studied expert dancers as well as complete beginners, and in doing so, they have begun to be able to define what qualities make for a good dancer. 

They take many measurements analyzing the distance, time, and forces associated with dancing. For example, they measure the distance between two people’s chests, the lag time between when the lead moves and when the follow moves, or the force a lead uses to signal to a follow. “You start to realize how powerful this communication, physical communication, is because you ask people to close their eyes and they do better,” Lena explains.

“We were surprised that experts were using greater forces than novices… but in general what’s surprising is the forces are really low… so they’re definitely not pushing people.” She goes on to say, “We think about frame, and I think that is really important, the stiffer you are… means you can have more resistive force. With the experts, I think they do that so that for a smaller movement, you get a higher force, so the signal is much higher. I think that’s what frame does; it really increases the speed of transmission of the signal.” Lena and Madeleine are working to quantify what makes a good frame, so that they can program their robots to automatically dance with the technique that might take a human dancer years to perfect. 

Social dancing with a partner is like a language with its own set of rules for communication. Learning how to maintain a frame and how to correctly apply and respond to forces allows us to understand dance cues quickly. Much like verbal communication, once you internalize the basic rules, you can communicate in dance almost without thinking. If you are interested in joining the conversation, consider taking salsa or bachata lessons with Ashwin and Kristen at Aatma Dance Studio, and come try it yourself at one of their socials! Also, if you or someone you know has Parkinson’s Disease or mild cognitive impairment and would be interested in participating in one of Lena and Madeleine’s ongoing studies, please reach out to Madeleine at [email protected].

Thank you to Ashwin and Kristen Anne at Aatma Dance Studio, as well as Professors Lena Ting and Madeleine Hackney! For more Awesome Science of Everyday Life features and other science updates, follow Science ATL on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram!