All Stories
- Chemistry
New recycling technologies could keep more plastic out of landfills
Recycling plastics is really hard — especially into useful materials. But new chemical tricks could make recycling easier.
- Chemistry
Explainer: What are chemical bonds?
When various particles, atoms, ions or molecules come together to form a substance, they are held together with chemical bonds.
- Science & Society
Here’s why people picked certain stars as constellations
Patterns of human eye movement help explain why particular sets of stars form iconic shapes, a high school student showed.
- Chemistry
Level up your demonstration: Make it an experiment
What’s the difference between a demonstration and an experiment? Questions, measurements and many, many replications.
- Brain
Patterns in brain activity can identify who will struggle to read
Certain patterns of brain activity predict whether teens are strong readers or will struggle. Those diagnostic patterns show up even when doing math.
- Fossils
Dinosaur-killing asteroid radically changed Earth’s tropical forests
The asteroid collision initially reduced the diversity in what had been sunny tropical rainforests. In time, the forests would become permanently darker.
- Math
Scientists Say: Pi
Pi is the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter. But some mathematicians say life would be easier if we used a different ratio instead.
- Microbes
Several plant-like algae can morph into animal-like predators
Single-celled green algae swim through water as free cells. Most use only photosynthesis for their energy. But not all of them, a new study shows.
- Brain
Explainer: What is a neuron?
From the moment you are born, cells called neurons sense information, process it and then pass it on. Neurons allow you to do everything that you do.
- Brain
Search for ‘rewards’ is big driver in remodeling a teen’s brain
Communication ‘highways’ in the brain undergo a major overhaul as children morph into adults. Dopamine plays a big role in this remodeling project.
- Earth
Light levitation might help explore Earth’s ‘ignorosphere’
A toy called a light mill inspired researchers to invent a new way to fly. They’re using light to levitate small nanotube-coated discs.
- Space
Ingenuity helicopter makes history by flying on Mars
The copter's 40-second-long flight in the Red Planet’s thin air is only the first in a planned series of daring flights.
