Bethany Brookshire

Bethany Brookshire was a longtime staff writer at Science News Explores and is the author of the book Pests: How Humans Create Animal Villains. She has a B.S. in biology and a B.A. in philosophy from The College of William and Mary, and a Ph.D. in physiology and pharmacology from Wake Forest University School of Medicine. She was a 2019-2020 Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT, the winner of the Society for Neuroscience Next Generation Award and the Three Quarks Daily Science Writing Award, among others.

All Stories by Bethany Brookshire

  1. Chemistry

    Scientists Say: Photochromic

    Photochromic chemicals change shape when exposed to a specific wavelength of light. The shape change changes the chemical’s color.

  2. Brain

    Tongues ‘taste’ water by sensing sour

    Water doesn’t taste like much, but our tongues need to detect it somehow. They may do it by sensing acid, a new study shows.

  3. Brain

    Scientists Say: Amygdala

    Named after the Greek word for “almond,” the amygdala helps us process emotions, make decisions and form memories.

  4. Brain

    Brains learning together act the same

    When students are all focused on the same thing, their brainwaves look the same, a new study shows.

  5. Chemistry

    Scientists Say: Catalyst

    Sometimes a chemical reaction can take a while. If speed is needed, a catalyst can help.

  6. Physics

    Scientists Say: Acoustic

    Acoustic is an adjective used to describe something involving sound. It’s also a noun that refers to the branch of physics that studies sound.

  7. Animals

    Scientists Say: Extremophile

    Some species can survive high heat, freezing cold or other extreme environments. Scientists call these organisms extremophiles.

  8. Chemistry

    To test pill coatings, try a stomach in a flask

    Which pain reliever should you buy? The tablet, gel tab or compressed caplet? A teen did an experiment to find out.

  9. Chemistry

    BPA-free plastic may host BPA-like chemical, teen finds

    Something has to replace the BPA in ‘BPA-free’ plastics. A teen has been probing what that is.

  10. Genetics

    Scientists Say: Chromosome

    This threadlike structure is made of DNA wrapped around protein. It allows the 3 billion base pairs in human DNA to stay neatly packaged in a cell.

  11. Earth

    To study a geyser, these teens built their own

    Fascinated by geysers but unable to see one? These teens decided to build their own. It allowed them to study how temperature and pressure make the water spew into a founta.

  12. Health & Medicine

    Cooking can alter a food’s vitamin C content

    Scurvy plagued pirates and sailors on the high seas. It also inspired a teen to find out more about the vitamin C in her veggies.