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Below are the first 10 and last 10 pages of uncorrected machine-read text (when available) of this chapter, followed by the top 30 algorithmically extracted key phrases from the chapter as a whole.
Intended to provide our own search engines and external engines with highly rich, chapter-representative searchable text on the opening pages of each chapter.
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Introduction
Exploring the Unseen
Some explorers lift off into space. Others dive deep beneath the
sea or trek through mountains or rain forests. Shirley Ann
Jackson explores the universe too, but on a smaller scale and
from a different perspective. She is a physicist who investigates
the world on a submicroscopic level. She studies the tiniest elements
of the universe, the particles that make up all matter.
Why is it so exciting to learn about things you can't even see?
Split one of those tiny particles and you could cause catastrophic
destruction. Or you could harness its powerful force to improve
the way we work and play and live our lives.
Because of Shirley's scientific expertise and her willingness to
take on new challenges, her career has moved in exciting directions.
In industry, she worked on the cutting edge of technology,
discovering ways for materials to be more useful in our everyday
lives. When President Bill Clinton asked her to head the Nuclear
Regulatory Commission in 1995, she made sweeping changes to
ensure the public's safety, in our own country and around the
world. As president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, she is
creating unique opportunities for the next generation of scientists.
How did Shirley Ann Jackson achieve so much? She began
with a curious mind and a passion for uncovering the secrets
that lay hidden in the world around us.
ix
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To Shirley,
the world was
full ofmysteries
and living creatures
provided theclues
that could help solve them.
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1
BEE SECRETS
S hirley Ann Jackson stood in the hot summer sun, patiently
staring at a large rosebush in her family's garden. It was still
early morning, but already the heat was beginning to build.
Shirley could feel a sneeze making its way through her nose. At As a young girl,
10 years old, Shirley was allergic to many things, including the Shirley (opposite)
was fascinated by
pollen from the flowers she admired so much.
the behavior of
But this day, Shirley wasn't just admiring the garden of her bees. The bees
family's home in Washington, D.C. She had important work to pictured above are
making honey in a
do. She was capturing bees.
honeycomb.
As a large bumblebee headed for the rosebush, Shirley tensed
in anticipation. The bee hovered over the bush, flitting here and
there until it found just the right spot. It touched down and nestled
itself into the center of a wide-open bloom. Shirley watched its
fuzzy body vibrate as it slurped up the flower's nectar.
Carefully--very carefully--she reached down with one hand
and closed the petals around the bee. She held her breath slightly,
then gently plucked the bloom with her other hand. She could feel
the bee's wings beating frantically inside the petals as it tried to
escape. But that didn't worry Shirley. She had been capturing bees
this way since she was eight years old. By now, she knew exactly
what to do.
1
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She dropped the bloom containing
the bee into an empty mayonnaise
FORCE jar. Quickly--before the bee even
knew where it was--she screwed
on the top, which already had
tiny holes punched in it so the
STRONG
bee could breathe.
Shirley carried the jar with
her new specimen to the wooden
porch in the back of the house.
She scooted under the porch where
it was dark and cool, a perfect place
for her bee collection. When her eyes
adjusted to the dim light, Shirley picked out a
Honeybees and plants spot on a ledge where she would put her newest
share a symbiotic addition. It would sit between two other jars. One held three yellow
relationship, which
jackets and a wasp, and the other held a wasp and a bumblebee. The
means that they
benefit each other. summer was only half over, but she had already collected dozens of
Bees consume flower bees in jars that her mother had cleaned out for her.
nectar, and flowers
reproduce because
~Bee
they are pollinated by
bees traveling from Behavior
one flower to another.
Some people thought it odd that a young girl would want to collect
bees. After all, bees sting! And most of the other kids were afraid of
them. Amazingly, Shirley had never been stung. But she wasn't
just collecting bees the way some people collect dolls or marbles.
She had a purpose: to learn about bee behavior and in that way
unlock one of the secrets of nature.
To Shirley, the world was full of mysteries, and living creatures
provided the clues that could help solve them. She chose bees to
study because they were always buzzing about and she would never
run out of specimens. Plus, they were easy to keep in captivity.
Shirley had several questions about bees. For example, she
wanted to know how they might behave if they were fed certain
things. To find out, she had a different way of capturing them.
She waited until the bee was at the edge of a flower petal. Then,
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holding the jar on one side and the top on the other, she closed The flowers and shrubs
the bee into the jar without the flower. She added different foods, around Shirley's home
provided an endless
such as sugar, for the bees to eat. Then she observed their behavior source of specimens for
after they ate the different foods. her bee research.
At first, she kept the bees with their own kind. Then
she wondered how they would behave with other
species. She decided to mix them all up: bumblebees
with yellow jackets, wasps with bumblebees, yellow
jackets with wasps. The bumblebees seemed to be the
most aggressive at first, but eventually all the species of
bees got along pretty well with each other.
Shirley also wondered how the bees would act if
they spent more or less time in the dark. In their spot
under the eaves the bees were in the dark a lot of the
time. Shirley would bring them out during the day to
see if their behavior was different when they were in
the light.
Like any good scientist,
Shirley kept a detailed log of
her observations. And when
she analyzed her data she
discovered some interesting
things. For example, Shirley
noticed that under normal
circumstances, bees have a
circadian-type rhythm--or
a pattern of behavior that is
repeated every 24 hours.
Shirley found that she
could change this rhythm
by changing how long she
kept the bees out of the
light. If the bees stayed in
the dark under the porch
until the middle of the day, they tended to behave as though it
were the middle of the night.
BEE SECRETS 3
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~Lessons from the Bees
FORCE
Surprisingly, the most important thing the bees taught Shirley was
not so much a scientific lesson as a lesson about life itself. Shirley
STRONG realized that no living thing likes to be in captivity. When the
bees were first caught, they would bang against the side of the jar,
trying to get out. Over time, they got more and more passive.
That's when Shirley knew it was time to let them go. But by then
the bees had become so used to their new environment that some-
Beatrice Cosby
Jackson taught her times they didn't leave right away, even after Shirley opened the
children to read jar. It was as though they had given up. So Shirley would leave
before they went
the jars open for as long as it took for the bees to fly away.
to kindergarten.
Pictured here are As Shirley got older, she saw the lesson of the bees repeat itself
three of the four in the human world around her. Shirley realized that, just like the
Jackson children (top
bees, people can easily become conditioned to having their space
left to right), Gloria,
George, and Shirley. and their possibilities limited. And just like the bees in captivity,
these people may simply
stop trying.
Shirley's parents already
knew this reality all too well.
George H. Jackson, a postal
supervisor, and Beatrice
Cosby Jackson, a social
worker, were African
Americans raising a family
in the 1950s. They saw the
limits placed on black
children every day. At that
time, segregation laws in the
United States meant that
blacks were not allowed to
use the same facilities as
whites. In addition to attending separate schools, African Americans
drank from different water fountains, used separate restrooms, sat in
the backs of buses, and were often barred from eating in the same
restaurants as whites.
4
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Though the Jacksons
lived only a few blocks
from the Barnard School,
a public elementary school, they
were forced to send their children to Parkview
Elementary, an all-black school a couple of miles away. It was
more than an inconvenience. The city did not provide school bus Segregation laws
service, so families had to figure out on their own how their prohibited blacks
from using the same
children would get to and from school each day.
facilities as whites.
The fathers on Shirley's block banded together to work out a Restriction signs were
car-pooling system. One father would take the kids to school in everywhere--at water
fountains, restrooms,
the morning and another would pick them up in the afternoon.
restaurants, and train
Each time, they drove right past the "whites only" school. and bus station
Segregation was a reality, but Shirley's parents believed that waiting rooms.
their four children, Barbara, Shirley, Gloria, and George, should
still strive to achieve their potential. Education, they knew, was
essential for success. "Aim for the
stars, so that you can reach the
treetops, and at least you'll get off
the ground," their father would urge.
Both parents encouraged any
educational activities that interested
their children. Beatrice had a lifelong
love of literature and read to them
every night. One of Shirley's favorite
books was a biography of Benjamin One of Shirley's heroes
Banneker. Born in 1731, the African- was Benjamin Banneker
(17311806). Among
American son of a former slave was a
other accomplishments,
self-taught clockmaker, astronomer, he published six annual
and mathematician. When Shirley's farmer's almanacs. They
provided information on
hometown of Washington, D.C.,
tides, medicine and
was being built, Banneker helped medical treatment, and
survey the land, plan the streets, eclipses that he calculated
himself.
and select building sites. Shirley
drew inspiration from this man who refused to let the prejudices
he suffered hinder his intellectual development.
BEE SECRETS 5
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~And They're Off!
FORCE
While Shirley's mother instilled in her a love of literature, her father
shared his talent for mathematics and science. Though he had only
STRONG a high school education, he had a great thirst for knowledge and a
natural ability for math and mechanical things. He had put these
gifts to work during World War II. During the Allied landing at
Normandy in France, the vehicles that transported the soldiers from
water to land lost their rudder mechanisms.
This made them vulnerable to enemy fire.
Shirley's father fashioned a new steering
mechanism for these vehicles from scrap
metal, which ensured the safety of the sol-
diers. For this accomplishment he received a
Bronze Star and a special citation.
Now a father, he amazed his children
with the mathematical calculations he
performed in his head. And after tackling
tasks from rebuilding car engines to finishing
the family basement, he seemed to have
every tool imaginable in his workshop.
He encouraged his children to learn to
use them.
George Jackson also enjoyed showing
his children how to use scientific principles
to add some fun to their everyday lives.
For his special This included teaching Shirley and her younger sister, Gloria,
efforts in World War how to build soapbox go-carts or "hot rods." These wooden rac-
II, Shirley's father,
ing cars were built from spare parts. They rolled downhill just
George H. Jackson
(right), received a from the power of a big push.
Bronze Star and a To build their hot rod, Shirley and Gloria started with wooden
special citation from
planks for the body. Then they went scavenging through the
General Benjamin
O. Davis, Sr. (left), neighborhood for various other parts, such as wheels, pipes, bolts,
the first African and pedals. The tricky part was the steering. Shirley tried all kinds
American general in
of steering mechanisms, but ultimately settled on bicycle handles.
U.S. history.
6
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Shirley was the second
oldest in a family of
four siblings: Barbara
(in giraffe skirt), Shirley,
Gloria, and George.
The finished result looked like a cross
between a sled and a wagon.
Shirley, a born leader, organized go-cart
races with some of the neighborhood kids.
The neighborhood was built on hills, so
the drivers could use gravity to propel the
carts. They would line up their hot rods
in the alleyways that ran between the
houses and get ready to race.
Shirley soon figured out that the trick
to winning a race was to build a cart that would natu-
rally go faster than the others. This meant that the builder had to
be clever in choosing axles
and wheels, as well as the bearings around the wheels. Attention
Shirley often spent
also had to be paid to the most important element of the design: time reading on the
the sleekness and shape of the cart's body. porch of her house
in Washington, D.C.
Shirley found that if she made the front of the body narrower
than the back, the air would flow around it more freely. This
aerodynamic shape reduced air resistance and made the cart go
faster. She did not know it at the time, but in designing her
go-cart, Shirley was making the same kinds of decisions that car
manufacturers make every day. These design decisions were based
on physics, the science of matter and energy.
BEE SECRETS 7
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Shirley enjoyed winning the races. What she liked best, though,
was figuring out what kinds of materials and design increased
FORCE speed and efficiency. She also liked to consider where to position
the cart before the race in order to get the maximum speed. By
doing all this, Shirley was actually learning
Even as a young girl, Shirley
STRONG about applied physics. (See box.) She was
had the ability to recover also learning valuable lessons in leadership.
from hurt and to not let One particular race taught Shirley
obstacles stand in her way. another kind of lesson. After Shirley won
the race, one of the neighborhood kids
became angry. In a jealous rage, he jumped up and down on the
Jacksons' cart and broke it in two. Gloria was devastated.
Shirley was upset, too, and not just because all their hard work
was ruined. She hated to see her family or friends hurt or
treated unfairly.
Bodies at Rest, Bodies in Motion
Like everything else on Earth, Shirley's motion. It also says that the stronger
go-carts obeyed the basic principles of the force, the greater the acceleration.
physics called Newton's Laws of Motion. So what did this mean to Shirley? She
knew she couldn't make her go-cart too
Newton's First Law of Motion includes
big or it would be hard to push off the
the idea that an object at rest will
starting line. And she also knew that
remain at rest unless an outside force
the starting push would be critical. The
acts upon it. In the case of the go-cart,
bigger the push, the faster the go-cart
Shirley knew her cart would sit at the
could move down the hill.
starting line unless a force--such as
gravity, someone giving the cart a push, Newton's Third Law of Motion states
or both--set it in motion. that for every action there is an equal
and opposite reaction. This law would
Newton's Second Law of Motion
have come into play if Shirley's cart had
describes the relationship between
accidentally veered off course and hit
mass and acceleration. This law states
another cart!
that the more mass something has, the
more force is needed to change its
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On Sundays, Shirley
liked to dress up
and attend church
with her family.
So Shirley considered what she should do. Although she didn't
like to back down from a fight, Shirley was smart enough to know
that the best revenge was not to get even, but to succeed.
Determined, she went back to her father and asked him to help
rebuild the cart. The girls returned another day with the rebuilt
cart and went on to race it again and again.
Even as a young girl, Shirley had the ability to recover from
hurt and to not let obstacles stand in her way. She also had the
power to persevere. This strong inner force and her dignified
manner would carry Shirley through other challenges and obstacles
in her life.
BEE SECRETS 9
Representative terms from entire chapter:
ann jackson
