In the beginning, there is the fertilized egg. Its form couldn't be simpler. But this will change. It's a piece of work to craft a creature from a single cell. By the time it enters the world, every living thing has experienced an odyssey of alteration. Change doesn't stop with hatching or birth. Growing up is also a story of transformation. A newborn kangaroo can grow over 50,000 times in weight. Some creatures do far more than simply grow up. They reinvent themselves. A fish can start life as a female but end up as a male. A bird can grow or shrink a brain area for song to suit the season. Polliwogs become frogs. Caterpillars turn into butterflies. We learn few more curious facts than these. But it's easy to lose sight of just how astonishing these changes are! And even weirder transformers live among us. Turn and face the strange. Meet the body changers. Hey, Emma, come here! Compared to the epic alteration of a caterpillar, our own changes may seem subtle. But there's no denying that kids change shape as they turn into grown-ups.The brain kicks off our own sexual transformations. Girls tend to get curvier from estrogen and other hormones. A child's body, and that of many other young creatures, changes shape when it reaches the age for reproduction.

In Washington, D.C. the Trustees of the National Geographic Society gather to have a formal portrait taken. The picture will help commemorate the Society's Centennial. In 1988 Geographic completes one hundred years of exploration, research, and education. Everybody looking right at the lens. Ready? All right. Okay. Fine. Right here. Nice big smile now. Come on. Here, in 1913, a similar photograph was taken. Back then, the highest mountain had yet to be climbed, and no one knew the ocean deep, or what fire illuminates the stars. All this lay in the future the greatest adventure mankind has ever known. The explorers have left monuments all over the world. One of the most meaningful, and at the same time little-known, is to be found high on a hilltop in Nova Scotia. Here, alone with the sigh of the wind, are the graves of Alexander Graham Bell and his wife, Mabel. Bell called their estate here Beinn Bhreagh, or "beautiful mountain" In the late 1800s Bell spent much of his time promoting the National Geographic Society. Tags: Science, What Is Science, Projects, Science Project, Physical Science, Science Magazine, Science Articles, Forensic Science

It all begins with water and rock. As water seeks its level, it becomes acidic. And when it flows over limestone, it etches a path into the rock. Given eons of time, water will burrow and carve, with incredible force, the veins and arteries of planet Earth So the underworld of caves is born. And after torrents have done their work, patient drops do more wonders in a million years or so. Look now on a landscape no one dreamed existed just a few years ago. Here are bizarre and fantastic treasures that stun the eye and strain the imagination. Here is discovery and danger. Here is adventure. In New Mexico, members of a National Geographic Society expedition explore the world's newest and most exotic major cave. They are following one of man's most ancient imperatives to see and understand the unknown. Join us now as we embark on an extraordinary journey deep into the earth to confront MYSTERIES UNDERGROUND. In the Guadalupe Mountains of southern New Mexico, an awesome giant has lain hidden for a million years. Sometimes, in the desert silence, the monster could be heard breathing. The sound came from a yawning chasm in the rocks. In 1986 a trio of weekend explorers broke through a layer of rubble and discovered a new cave only a few miles from famous Carlsbad Cavern. Tags: Science, What Is Science, Projects, Science Project, Physical Science, Science Magazine, Science Articles, Forensic Science