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First Place Natural

Organic Bed of Nails

The ‘bed of nails’ is an ancient acupuncture tool first discovered in Ancient Asia, and was used for meditation and healing. On the bed, the user would lie on dozens of sharp nails for prolonged periods of time. Though seemingly dangerous, the nails don’t penetrate the skin because the user’s weight is distributed evenly across each nail.

Water beads on a leaf behave in an almost identical fashion. Usually, water spreads out on a surface because of gravity; it doesn’t naturally form an almost perfect spherical shape, at least on Earth. Though, on many leaves, they bunch together like marbles. This is because most leaves are covered in microscopic wax needles, making them hydrophobic. The small pieces of wax act as a ‘bed of nails’, evenly distributing the water’s weight and preventing it from flattening out, making a marble-like water droplet. Though, in the photo, when I went in with my phone, I shook the leaf some. This created diamond-like facets all around the droplet which caused it to reflect the sunlight, making for a pretty picture.