My Mom recently explained to me how to tell if an aloe plant needs to be watered: if there isn’t enough water in the surrounding soil, the roots will draw water down from the stalks. As water is drawn down, the stalks will start to sag, kind of like a hot-dog balloon losing air.
This got me thinking that there may be a formula that relates the angle an aloe stalk makes with the normal to the ground and its percent water capacity–perhaps involving cosine? The basic idea is that as percent water capacity decreases, the angle with the normal increases.
