Case Study

Imagine for a moment, that everything is fascinating. For some of you it won't be so hard. All around you is a world of wonders, everything having an origin and a secret we may never totally understand. As an example, consider the humble orange. It's a delicious fruit, sweet and refreshing, but how exactly did it ever come to be? A toughened waterproof epidermis covering a segmented core full of pulp and juice? How could it ever have grown? Isn't it amazing and beautiful that it has?

In the absence of any background research whatsoever, and only a few moments of reflection, how can a fruit with such a homogenous structure with those segments ever come to pass? Especially with pips totally unconnected and simply floating in the pulp? The pips at least seem to be easy. Hypothetically they could grow early in the process and detach to float in the segments as the fruit grows. There might even be the beginnings of pips and segment separation films in each pip, ready to form the foundation of a new fruit? Isn't biology fascinating in many ways? If the GCSE had been more about how these things work, it might have turned out better...

How would you even begin to model the growth of an orange? What makes it grow? The cells multiply, yes, and the hydrostatic pressure causes some growth by stretching, but is that all? How does the proliferation of pulp affect it all? Here's the six million dollar naive question, though: Why does it stop? Is there a genetic switch, primed to go off at the appropriate time of year? Does the plant stop providing water and energy? Does the ever thickening peel of the orange finally stop its expansion from sheer resistance? Is it all of the above? Obviously there will have to be some purchases of textbooks in the future.

With every question you can ask about the things around us, any answer will only provide more questions, especially in the natural world. How does this plant work? Oh, that seems simple! Why did it develop that way? Hmmm. Logical, logical. Do we know how this family of plants began? No? Why, why, why, and how? Questions are always more interesting than answers! Here ends the case study, as all case studies must end, in questions.

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