Engineering Design
-
Teachers launch weather balloons, and a passion for science
Making science hands-on can help inspire students and show how interdisciplinary research can be. Here, two teachers share their experiences working with a high-altitude research-balloon kit.
-
Food can make an appetizing science fair project
Many students think they need a laboratory or special equipment for a winning research project. But finalists at the Broadcom MASTERS competition showed food-based research may require little more than your home kitchen
- Tech
Explainer: What is 3-D printing?
A new type of computer printer is already doing a lot more than spraying ink onto paper. Some dispense metal, plastic, food — even cells. In short order, people may be able to manufacture almost anything from their home or office.
- Microbes
Recycling the dead
When things die, nature breaks them down through a process we know as rot. Without it, none of us would be here. Now, scientists are trying to better understand it so that they can use rot — preserving its role in feeding all living things.
- Health & Medicine
Ebola treatments and vaccines could be near
Using experimental medicines against Ebola might help to slow or end an outbreak in Africa that has defied efforts to control it.
- Health & Medicine
Cookie Science 2: Baking a testable hypothesis
I would like to make a gluten-free cookie that my friend can eat. But to do that, I need to come up with a hypothesis to test.
- Health & Medicine
Fist bumps cleaner than handshakes
A handshake, while welcoming, can transmit lots of germs — many times more than a high five or, especially, a fist bump.
- Tech
Fashioning inks to ‘print’ tissues
3-D printing may one day create life-saving tissues and organs for transplants. But first researchers are learning how to tailor cell-filled “inks” for use in inkjet printers.
- Chemistry
Chemistry: Green and clean
“Green” means environmentally friendly and sustainable. Green chemistry creates products and processes that are safer and cleaner — from the start.
-
Wire critter shows power of surface tension
Water striders walk on water by using surface tension. Now you can do the same with a wire critter weight-lifting contest.
- Microbes
Superbugs: A silent health emergency
Have antibiotics become too popular? Overusing these medicines fuels resistant germs that pose a global health threat.
- Tech
A homemade bungee cord could save kids in hot cars
Babies left in hot cars are in serious danger. A middle-school student invented a simple reminder to help parents keep their children safe.
