Save the Roses !

My Mother is not particularly happy to receive flowers as a

    gift on Valentines Day or any other red-letter day. I guess that

    the reason is unconscious : quickly wilting flowers are a sorry sight

    with rather obvious symbolic significance. ( " you look like the last

    rose of summer ! " )

         Anyway that damm WLKW just its listeners some " professional "

    advice on how to keep those roses fresh a lot longer : Cut the stem

    diagonally and immerse them not in water but in the soda beverage " Sprite ".

           This is not nonsense. There is in fact a little higher math

    here. If you ever tip a glass of water you can notice how the surface

    area stretches into an elliptical shape. Proving that the cross section

    of a cylinder is an ellipse is an exercise in a subject that is hardly

    taught anymore - Solid Geometry.

          The area of an ellipse ( forgive the jargon ) is a function of

    semi -axis A and semi- axis B.  When they are equal ( A=B ) we have

    a circle whose area is (pi ) AB . When unequal the area ( if A is greater

    than B ) is a larger ellipse- (pi)AB . Notice that the area of a circle

    is the more familiar (pi)r(squared ( A=r)

           We learn the area of a circle in grade school. But the PROOF is

    only encountered in Calculus - with the more general case of the

    ellipse.

           The sugar and I guess the salts and nutrients in Sprite preserve

    the roses.

          But what does  higher mathematics and botany have to do with LOVE

    and VALENTINES Day. " A Rose is a Rose is a Rose ".

            " Love " is a factor in the population explosion. With you

    like to know more about " geometric progression " - exponential growth ?

    ( would you ? )