Exploring Evolution

Exploring with Zometools in lab, our group considered constraints and innovations that related to the process of building, creation, and growth. Our group immediately jumped into the process by working together towards creating our final product. While the team pieced the Zometools together, it became more apparent that there in no fine line in finding an end point to a "final product."

Consider the Zometools as an environment. The environment consists of white polygonal balls and colored sticks about three inches long. The balls and sticks interact in the environment and are able to connect to build a complex thing. The more the team expanded on th eproject, it became more and more evident there would be no clear stopping point, with the exception of running out of resources.

Our small-scale construction project with Zometools relates to evolution. While there is never a final product or stopping point in evolution, there is also no clear stopping point in creativity, building, and innovation in our learning and exploration with the toys.

While the Zometools provide a theoretical application of the fact that things never really do stop evolving, humans are a real life example that things never stop evolving. It is cool to see that even though we are at the top of the food chain and dominate every other animal, humans evolved to beat the Black Death back in the 1300’s. The people that had a mutation of their genes that allowed them to be immune to the disease lived on and had children while millions and millions perished. Another example of the evolution of humans, particularly in America, is the fact that 75% of Americans can drink milk. According to the US National Library of Medicine, "Approximately 65 percent of the human population has a reduced ability to digest lactose after infancy" (page 1). These two examples show the fact that even complex things like humans are still evolving, pretty much proving that things never really stop evolving.

US National Library of Medicine. May 2010. Bethesda, MD. [January 17, 2017; January 23,           2017]. https://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/condition/lactose-intolerance#statistics.