Many real-world phenomena and parts of the infrastructure of our society can be phrased in terms of networks. An electricity network for example describes how electricity can flow.
Traffic lights are currently an annoying but inevitable part of traffic. With the introduction of self-driving cars however, can we avoid having to wait for a red light ever again?
In 2012 a team of Russian scientists managed to germinate a 30.000 year old seed of an indigenous Siberian flower, called the Silene stenophylla. The seed blossomed into a plant, whose flowers produced fertile seeds.
Chemical reactions evolve in the same way as water flows through a network of rivers. When describing a chemical reaction you can imagine that the concentrations of the reactants are flowing through the reaction network in the same way as water flows through the network of rivers.