Plants Listen to Beethoven!

I thought that might get your attention. In all the years that I have been teaching English as Second Language, I have had students from most countries in the world, but I never had one from Israel. That has now changed with the addition of Shira who hails from Ashkelon, Israel the city of Sampson and Delilah fame. Shira's field of science is Plant Genetics. Therefore, this story is mostly for her, but I am sure will be of interest to many blog readers.

I was idly thumbing through a magazine in the bookstore when a colored photograph of an ear of corn with a set of earphones on it caught my eye. "WHY WOULD EARPHONES BE ON AN EAR OF CORN?" I thought. I read the article.
A group of South Korean plant geneticists have been experimenting with rice. They played 14 different Beethoven symphonies in the presence of the rice plants to see if sound has any effect on plant growth. It has long been thought that it does. Twenty-five years ago, Prince Charles was ridiculed because he said his plants grew better because he talked to them. Prince Charles may not have been so crazy as people thought. The researchers found that music played at sound frequencies below 50 hertz had little effect on the rice, but when the rice was exposed to 125 hertz and 250 hertz frequencies, there was significant positive activity in two genes. The test was repeated in the dark (to negate the effects of light) and the results were the same. "So what?" you might say.
The Korean's teams research is suggesting that the future may hold out the promise of using SOUND to replace expensive chemical fertilizers and pesticides. More can be read on this subject in a publication entitled "Molecular Breeding" (published online on July 20, 2007.)
The part of this magazine article that interested me the most was the part that talked about using the polygraph machine (commonly known as a lie-detector machine) . I personally saw this machine used when I was in the military a long time ago and I was impressed at its ability to measure changes in human emotion from one moment to the next. (Whether its results should be allowed as evidence in a court of law in a trial is another question. However, there is no question in my mind that the machine measures differences in human emotions.) In this other experiment with the polygraph machine (not done by the Korean team but in the 1960's), the polygraph operator hooked up two plants to the lie-detector. He instructed 5 students to walk by the two plants and told one of the students to destroy one of the plants. Later he asked the 5 students to go back into the room and walk by the remaining plant. When the student who destroyed the other plant walked by the remaining plant, the electrical indicators on the polygraph reacted intensely! This work remains controversial. Is it all bunk? I, for one. do not think so, but more work needs to be done. This is where people like Shira come in. I can't help you much there unless you want me to bring my harmonica in to class. How about that? You bring in a geranium plant or something like that. I'll play the harmonica to it and we will see if it will grow better. (Maybe it will die! If not, maybe I 'll stick to teaching some English---advanced or otherwise---Okay?