Home ExpeRIments With Your Kids
Perhaps you’ve reached that point in the summer where your kids might be sitting around the house saying “I’m bored!” or perhaps you want them to be more engaged with the world around them...
Stories by Joanne Manaster
Annedroids: A New Science Program for Kids
Are you looking for an entertaining program for your kids to get them excited about science and engineering with role models their own age?
#Apollo45 Where were you when Apollo 11 Landed on the Moon?
In recognition of the 45th Anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission, the first moon landing, everyone is invited to participate in sharing their moon landing stories by uploading them to YouTube and sharing them with the hashtag #Apollo45...
The Sciences
Chat with Particle Fever’s Monica Dunford
If you’ve seen the movie, Particle Fever (You haven’t? You can get it live streaming on iTunes today, and at other VOD services July 15), then you are acquainted with the ebullient American physicist Monica Dunford, an experimental high-energy particle physicist who helped bring the ATLAS detector at CERN into operation for the first Large Hadron [...]..
The Sciences
Particle Fever Movie Streaming to a Device Near You
The fantastic movie about the search for the Higgs Boson at the Large Hadron Collider, Particle Fever, which packed theaters on its tour across the country (I know, I sat in on one!) will soon be available to everyone on iTunes beginning July 1 and on other VOD services as of July 15...
The Engineer Guy’s Stories of Technological Failures
My colleague at the University of Illinois, chemical engineer Bill Hammack, also known as The Engineer Guy, has been busy creating a new series of videos and was seemingly off the radar on youtube–but never fear, he is back!...
The Sciences
Monday Music Video: An Epic Rap Battle Between Newton and Nye!
Today on YouTube we see a showdown between two science greats, with an additional big scicomm name included for good measure! I’ve written about Epic Rap Battles of History previously about the immensely entertaining Einstein vs...
The Sciences
Meet 'The Physics Girl' Winner of Alan Alda's 'What is Color?' Video Contest
Imagine you are a 5th grader while watching this video. Would you love it? If it caught your interest, as it did mine, you are in good company. This is the winning entry for the 2014 Flame Challenge put on by Alan Alda and the Center for Communicating Science...
Hyperlapse Know How
I ran across this hyperlapse video of Singapore the other day: It got me thinking of a few other cities given the hyperlapse treatment, like Dubai: So I wondered, “What exactly is hyperlapse and how is it done?” I found a brief description at Know Your Meme website: “Hyperlapse Photography is a filmmaking technique that [...]..
The Last Man on the Moon
It’s no secret, I’m a space geek. And the other non-secret is I love when a good space travel book is turned into a movie. Astronaut Gene Cernan is known for being “The Last Man on the Moon” as he was the last man to walk on the moon during the Apollo 17 mission...
Amazing Animation Meets Mouse Genetics
How does a mouse build a burrow, and do genes help control this behavior? This was a question asked by members of the Hoekstra lab at Harvard.
Health
David Quammen on SciAm/Read Science! Chat
David Quammen, according to his website is ”an author and journalist whose twelve books include The Song of the Dodo, The Reluctant Mr.
Space & Physics
Astronaut Chris Hadfield's Snapshots from Space [Video]
Today, Chris Hadfield shared in social media a previously released video, Chris Hadfield’s Snapshots from Space! “Throughout his ISS mission, CSA Astronaut Chris Hadfield has been taking some of the most incredible photos of Earth ever seen...
SciAm & Read Science! Chat with Neil Shubin
I am very pleased to announce that Neil Shubin, author of “Your Inner Fish” and host of a PBS program by the same name, currently airing over the past several weeks, will be joining myself and co-host Jeff Shaumeyer for a chat in another SciAm/Read Science!...
The Perfect 46: The Future is Near
Visit theperfect46.com, and it looks like any business web page. The Perfect 46 purports to be a company that uses the power of genomics, the information stored in the entirety of your DNA–your genome–to determine if you are with “the one” for you...
Biology
Science Book Wins a Pulitzer Prize
I am always thrilled when a science themed book wins the General Non-Fiction Pulitzer Prize. Some of my favorites from previous years include the following: 2011 Siddhartha Mukherjee “The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer” 1998 Jared Diamond “Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies” 1995 Jonathan Weiner “The Beak Of [...]..
Biology
Sloth Squeak!
Lucy Cooke, the mastermind behind Slothville, a recognized National Geographic Explorer and award winning videographer and TV producer, has a new book, The Power of Sloth, coming out in the UK today...
Neil Shubin’s “Your Inner Fish” Comes to TV
Nothing makes me happier than reading a really good science book. After that, I am fairly pleased when some of my favorites are adapted for TV to reach those less likely to pick up one of those gems...
Space & Physics
The Psychedelic ROOMBA Experience
There is something about a ROOMBA, the robotic floor cleaning device, that inspires us to put things atop of them for a ride for our entertainment, including babies, cats in shark costumes, and my favorite, prairie dogs!...
The Secret Life of Bill Nye According to NOVA
I’ve had my head in the middle of a great deal of preparing coursework for my students and somehow managed to miss this series of videos in the NOVA’s Secret Life of Scientists and Engineers–all about Bill Nye!...
