19/9/2015

I watched a video called Endless Forms Most Beautiful and it was all about the ideas of Charles Darwin. Charles Darwin went on a voyage when he was 22 years old. He went around the world for 5 years and observed the surrounding carefully. His first great theory was the world was so much older that what it looked like and land forms changed.

During his entire voyage, he had 2 books with him which are The Bible and Charles Lyell's Principles of Geology. However, Darwin didn't agree with Lyell's theory on the structure and distribution of coral reefs. Darwin had his own idea on it as he thought many different coral reefs that he saw were different stages of the same process. He then said that a volcanic island tossed up out of the ocean and coral reefs grew around it. This caused the formation of shallow water and eventually formed fringing reef. The land then sank due to weight and lagoon formed in between outside reef and land. The outside reef became barrier reef and atoll formed as the outside reef sank out of sight.

However not only land forms changed, species changed too. Darwin also discovered that on Galapagos Island there were finches with different beak sizes and shapes. There were same species of animals from different places who had different characteristics.

I was amazed by the ability of Charles Darwin to observe in so detail that he can discover the small differences and similarities between animals. I am also amazed that he could derive theories in ancient time without the help of any advanced gadget. His theories were proven correct by fossils, examples and even modern technologies. 

I am really happy that I can learn something new through video and animation rather than reading all the passages from the boring text books. Although the video was quite long and boring at first, I did gain some knowledge that I never learnt before.