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In Virginia’s Luray Caverns, the stalactites themselves make the music. Each keyboard key triggers an electric mallet with a rubber tip, which gently taps a selected, tuned stalactite and sends a note through the cavern. Leland Sprinkle began building the Great Stalacpipe Organ after visiting in 1954. He connected a keyboard to rock formations spread across the cave, so the music comes from the stone.

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Water droplets can travel uphill on a heated track with tiny asymmetric ridges: heat and texture propel them. On metal hot enough, a droplet rides on a cushion of its own vapour. This is the Leidenfrost effect, also seen when droplets skate across a very hot pan. Researchers at Bath used the principle to build tracks and a maze. A carefully shaped surface lets vapour flow drive droplets along a chosen route.

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Leaves and petals were shaped from glass, with veins, colours and delicate forms carefully recreated by hand. Between 1886 and 1936, father and son Leopold and Rudolf Blaschka made thousands of botanical glass models for Harvard. These lifelike plants served as teaching tools students could examine throughout the year. The models included diseased leaves and rotting fruit: one apple shows brown rot, with the details of decay deliberately preserved in glass.

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These miniature jewelled tubes are protective cases built by caddisfly larvae. Usually, the larvae assemble cases from nearby materials such as sand, tiny stones or plant fragments. Artist Hubert Duprat supplied gold, pearls and gemstones instead, and the larvae used them. They bind the pieces with silk and line the inside with more silk. The striking result comes from the insects’ ordinary home-building behaviour.

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Those dots on a barreleye’s face are nostrils, not eyes. Its real eyes are green tubes inside a transparent, fluid-filled shield around its head. The eyes rotate, pointing upward to spot prey overhead and forward when the fish feeds. For decades, illustrations missed the dome, usually destroyed when the fish was caught in nets. Deep-sea cameras finally showed the animal intact.

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