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. Physics

    Scientists Say: Yottawatt

    On Earth, scientists measure energy use in watts. When you have lot of those watts — one million billion billion — you have a yottawatt.

  2. Physics

    Scientists Say: Wavelength

    When something travels as a wave — such as light — scientists can measure it by its wavelength, the distances between the peaks.

  3. Physics

    Scientists Say: Watt

    Say Watt? This is a unit used to measure the flow of energy being used.

  4. Math

    Scientists Say: Y-axis

    The bars on a graph tell you nothing unless you know what they mean. The lines on the sides can let you know.

  5. Life

    Scientists Say: Yeast

    For some people, yeast bring to mind slimy infections. But these little fungal beasts are used to make bread rise, too.

  6. Teen scientists win big for health and environmental-cleanup research

    The Intel Science Talent Search honors 40 students each year. The 2016 top award winners studied health technologies and how to clean local streams.

  7. Math

    Scientists Say: X-axis

    The bars on a graph tell you nothing unless you know what they mean. The lines on the sides can let you know.

  8. Physics

    Scientists Say: Kinetic energy

    This is energy that an object has when it is in motion.

  9. Scientists Say: Replication

    A scientist can run an experiment and get a result. But that result won’t be truly trustworthy until other scientists rerun the tests and replicate the findings.

  10. Physics

    Scientists Say: Potential energy

    This is the energy an object has because of its position or condition.

  11. Animals

    Roadkill : Learning from the dead

    Roadkill can be more than a smooshed-up carcass. Scientists study these highway casualties to learn more about wildlife and their environments.

  12. Health & Medicine

    Scientists Say: Zika

    Zika virus has burst into the news because it is linked with microcephaly — a condition where babies are born with small heads.