Dear Andrea,
You're right. If we took a trip into the mountains, we would find that it felt a lot colder. It all has to do with our atmosphere. We may not always think about it, but we are basically living in a giant ocean of air.
Read More ...Every smart science cat needs a great sidekick. Student science writers in the Murrow College of Communication help Dr. Universe connect K-8 students with researchers at Washington State University.
Why do people like to listen to songs over and over? – Daniel, 13, Richland, WA
By Cameron Sheppard
We don’t just use our ears to hear music. A big part of hearing also has to do with our brains. Our ears certainly are necessary to help us hear, but it is our brain that helps interpret the sounds in our environment.
… » More …
Read More ...Dear Nisi,
Just like humans, us cats lose hair. Have you ever brushed your hair and found that some ends up on the brush? Sometimes human hair falls out. It is the body’s way of shedding, or getting rid of dead skin and hair.
Read More ...Dear Coleman,
People have wondered if Mars has life for a long time. About a hundred years ago, an astronomer named Percival Lowell looked through a telescope and thought he saw canals—a possible sign of water and life as we know it—on Mars.
Read More ...Dear Karri,
Because cats and dogs are different species, they aren’t usually friends in nature. Dogs in the wild see cats as prey, and cats see dogs as a threat.
Read More ...Dear Brayton,
Snakes slither to move around because they have no legs. They rely on their muscles and scales.
The scales on a snake are made from a material called keratin. That’s the same material that makes up human fingernails. They help the snake move on different surfaces.
Read More ...Dear Charleigh,
Whenever there’s heavy rains or winds, butterflies seem to disappear. This is because butterflies hide when it rains. That’s what I found out from my friend David G. James who is an associate professor at Washington State University. He studies insects, including butterflies, in the Pacific Northwest.
Read More ...Dear Brianna,
A parasite is an organism that steals resources from another organism in order to survive. Our planet is home to all kinds of parasites and organisms that host them.
Read More ...Dear Brody and Friends:
While a stove or oven produces heat, a fridge can’t actually produce something called “cold.” So, how does a refrigerator manage to keep all your food cool?
Read More ...Dear Lucy,
There are a lot of different grasshoppers living on our planet. In fact, scientists have discovered more than 11,000 species. Exactly how these grasshoppers spend their winter depends on what kind of winter they experience.
Read More ...Dear Brody,
It’s a snowy morning and the thermometer reads 20 degrees Fahrenheit. You grab a jacket and a pair of mittens for your paws. It’s going to be a cold day.
Read More ...Dear Ana,
When the northern lights come out, beautiful, colorful patterns stretch across the night sky. But they begin with a star that is millions of miles away: our sun.
Read More ...Dear Jada,
If you were to travel around the world, the word “science” might look or sound very different. In Spanish, it’s ciencia. In Japanese, 理科. In German, wissenschaft! And in French…well, it’s also science. But with an accent.
Dear Brody,
By the time you finish reading this sentence, about twenty babies will have been born into our world. Sometimes they’re twins.
Read More ...Whether it comes from trees or is made by scientists in a lab, rubber can really bounce. Well, a rubber band or rubber on your shoes might not be very bouncy. But a super bouncy rubber ball? It can really catch some air.
Read More ...Dear Rahman,
Our animal kingdom is full of different eyes. The human eye weighs less than an ounce. That’s about as heavy as 11 pennies. But I suppose the answer to your question really depends on which eyeballs you are curious about. Perhaps you are looking for an answer about the biggest animal eyes on our planet.
Read More ...Dear Bhayana,
The very first roller coaster at Coney Island amusement park cost only a nickel to ride and was a big thrill for visitors—even if it did only go 6 mph.
Read More ...Dear Pablo,
We might not always think about it, but every day gravity keeps us pulled to the Earth. It’s what brings us back down when we jump on a trampoline. It’s why a Slinky tumbles down stairs.
Now think about what it would be like to live in a place with very little gravity. Let’s say you were 200 miles off the ground, orbiting earth in the International Space Station. Here, the idea of up and down really gets flipped around.
On Earth, the human balance system helps the head figure out how move up … » More …
Dear, Finn, Emily, and friends:
When a raindrop falls from a cloud, there are quite a few places it could end up.
Read More ...Dear Jose,
We live in a world filled with all kinds of smells. Take off a pair of tennis shoes after a long day and you might even get a whiff of something pretty stinky. You can blame it on your bacteria. Millions of these tiny things live on your feet.
Read More ...Dear Pablo,
Next time you eat an orange, try getting the peel off in one piece. Next, try to flatten out your peel. You’ll likely find it a bit tricky to make something round perfectly flat.
The same is true when we map our three-dimensional world onto a flat surface. It doesn’t work very well. That’s what I found out when I went to visit my friend Rick Rupp, a Washington State University researcher.
Rupp is an expert on geographic information systems, which can help us capture and analyze the geography of our planet. He explained that maps can show us all kinds of … » More …
Read More ...Dear Georgia,
Imagine you’re riding in the car on a very hot day, when you look out the window and see a shimmering puddle of water up ahead. As you get closer, you find there’s not really anything there. It’s a mirage.
Read More ...Dear Joseph,
If you’ve ever had a headache, it might have felt like pain was radiating right out of your brain.
Read More ...Dear Sarah,
At this very moment, several quarts of blood are circulating through your body at nearly 4 mph. But as you’ve pointed out, not everyone’s blood is the same.
Your question made me wonder exactly what we mean when we talk about blood types. I decided to ask my friend Amber Fyfe-Johnson, a researcher at Washington State University who studies cardiovascular diseases--diseases of the blood vessels-- in kids.
Read More ...Dear Leah,
If you’re like me, you’ve picked up a little dandelion fluff ball and blown the seeds around. Weeds like these make a lot of seeds. They get picked up by the wind and planted far and wide. And as you observe, they grow pretty fast, too.
Read More ...
Dear Case,
You know, most cats like to stay a comfortable distance from water.
But when I got your science question about our big ocean, I was ready to jump right in.
Ocean water moves in all kinds of ways. Waves curl and crash on the shore. Big conveyer belts of water, currents, flow for thousands of miles around our planet. The tides go out and come back in.
And yes, the wind plays a big part in all of it. That’s what I found out when I went to visit my friend Jeff Vervoort, … » More …
Read More ...Dear Bushra,
Our ancestors weren’t very picky eaters. In fact, they ate pretty much whatever they could find, wherever and whenever they could find it.
Read More ...Dear Susan,
It just so happens the Great American Eclipse is coming up on Aug. 21, 2017. This solar eclipse will be the only one visible from across the lower 48 states in nearly a hundred years. When it happens, parts of the country will experience darkness for a couple minutes during the day.
Read More ...Dear Anita,
Ants are pretty good little weightlifters. My friend Rich Zack, a scientist at Washington State University who studies insects, knows a lot about ants. One kind of ant that he has studied can carry up to 20 times its own weight.
Read More ...Dear Daniel,
It sure sounds like a nice idea. Print a bunch of money and everyone gets rich. We could buy anything we wanted. Ah, if only it were that easy. It turns out printing more money would have a much different outcome than we might like to imagine.
Read More ...
Dear Riley,
Humans have hair all over their bodies, including above the upper lip. Of course, not all hair is quite the same. A lot of people have very fine hairs on their faces. Others can sprout a thick beard or mustache.
Read More ...Dear Rhemi,
Astronauts eat all kinds of different foods up in space. The food is often similar to what we have here on Earth. But in space, there's very little gravity. There’s very limited refrigeration, too. On the International Space Station, the refrigerator is only about half the size of a microwave. That means scientists who prepare and package astronaut food have to do it in ways that take up very little room and don’t need to be kept cold.
Read More ...Dear Carmen,
Our planet’s surface is constantly on the move. Sometimes this movement really shakes things up.
The Earth’s crust is made up 14 major pieces and dozens of smaller ones, called plates, that move in super slow motion. Earthquakes can happen when these plates suddenly slip past each other. They send out waves of energy that make the ground shake.
Read More ...And while we’re at it, let’s answer these questions:
When lightning strikes the ocean, what happens to the fish? –Olivia, 12, Manchester, UK
Why is lightning attracted to metal objects? –Grant, 11, Pullman, Wash.
Why does lightning sometimes just happen in clouds? –Leo, 11, Cayman Islands
Dear Monica, Olivia, Grant, and Leo:
While you are probably not in the middle of an electrical storm right now, there are more than 1,000 happening at any given moment on our planet. They happen on Saturn, Venus, and Jupiter, too.
Dear Kalitia,
Believe it or not, pretty much all animals shed their skin. Some animals make it a bit more obvious than others. Snakes, and some other reptiles, will often shed all at once.
Read More ...Dear Charan and Aishwarya,
Imagine you are playing a game of soccer and your best friend is on the opposing team. The sun is out, you are having a great time, and you score the winning goal. You’d probably feel pretty happy and so would your team.
Read More ...Dear Christina,
You know summer is just around the corner when the smell of barbecue is in the air. It’s a great question you ask and it leads us to the Meats Lab at Washington State University. That’s where I met up with my friend and animal scientist, Jan Busboom.
Read More ...Dear Jax,
Animals make their journeys to islands in different ways. Some float. Some fly. Others will swim.
Read More ...Dear Reader,
You’re right, turtles and tortoises live a lot longer than most other animals. If you were a turtle, you might live for more than 150 years. One giant Galápagos tortoise named Harriet even lived to be more than 170 years old, said my friend Donna Holmes.
Read More ...
Dear Gianni,
Our planet is home to more than seven million amazing animal species. While we have our differences, we also have something in common: We are all made up of a bunch of cells.
Read More ...Dear Rhianna,
Each planet is a little different on the inside. And what’s inside a planet can shape what’s on the outside, too. That’s what I found out from my friend Steve Reidel, a geologist at Washington State University.
“Well, there’s the rocky planets,” he said. “Then there are the big, gas giants.”
Rocky planets, like Earth, are wrapped in a thick crust. Beneath Earth’s crust is the mantle. The mantle is quite solid, but it actually behaves more like a fluid. It flows and deforms. It’s similar to Silly Putty, but a really strong version of Silly Putty. It’s about 1,800 miles thick. It is also the main source of Earth’s volcanoes.
Read More ...Dear Pranav,
If you’re anything like me, one of the first things you'll do in the morning is check the weather. Sometimes it’s rainy and I’ll put on my rubber boots. Other days it’s really sunny and I’ll grab my sunglasses. When we look at the patterns of these weather conditions over a long time—sometimes over hundreds of years—we can learn about a place’s climate.
Read More ...Dear Norelle,
Our bodies have many living parts, like skin, muscle, brain and bones. Blood helps keep these parts alive and healthy. The system that moves our blood around the body is sort of like a city’s postal service, said my friend Astrid Suchy-Dicey.
Read More ...Dear Tanya,
You know it’s springtime when animals start coming out of hibernation. That includes ladybugs that crawl out from their cozy winter hiding places.
Read More ...Dear Daiwik,
If you are anything like me, you like watching the night sky. The stars we see are a lot like our nearest star, the sun. They are just much farther away. That makes stars look like small twinkly things instead of a big, furious thing like our sun.
Read More ...Dear Keegun,
We’ve got about three pounds of brain in our heads that help us look for answers and solve all kinds of problems. But it isn’t always easy. Sometimes an experiment doesn’t go the way I expect or I get stuck on a particularly tricky science question.
Read More ...Dear Gabby,
Our brains are pretty busy. They are constantly thinking, feeling, and sensing our world. One thing that can help some people relax is spending time with an animal friend. You might play fetch with a dog, sit with a cat, brush a horse, or even watch a goldfish zip around its bowl.
People who spend a lot of time with animals might tell you that something special seems to be going on here. But scientists are looking for evidence and want to find out for certain just what is going on. They want to know … » More …
Dear Nadia,
A lush tropical rainforest, a field of sunflowers, a garden in your neighborhood. Our Earth is home to all kinds of plant life. From trees to catnip, there are thousands of different species of plants. Most of these plants are green, but not all of them.
Read More ...Dear Karen,
When it comes time for bumble bees to find a home, it’s pretty much up to the queen bee.
That’s what I found out from my friends Rachel Olsson and Elias Bloom. They are graduate student researchers here at Washington State University and really curious about bees, too.
Read More ...Thanks for taking the 2017 Kid Survey! Dr. Universe loves answering your questions. Now she’s got some questions for YOU.
Read More ...Dear Angelika,
Believe it or not, we are mostly water. Of course, you may have noticed we aren’t sloshing around and spilling everywhere.
Read More ...Dear Ammon,
Everything our computers do, they do because we program them to do it. Maybe you want to design a game or an app that’s brand new. To create that game or app, you have to help your computer understand what to do.
Read More ...The chirps of birds. The squeaks of mice. The barks of dogs. In a world full of different sounds, our ears take in almost everything. But it takes more than just our ears to hear.
Read More ...Dear Madeline,
You’re right. It can take a really long time for some things to decay.
If we buried an apple peel in the backyard it might only take a few weeks to break down into the soil. But if we buried a plastic water bottle, it would probably still be there hundreds of years from now.
Read More ...Dear Kennedy,
Maybe you’ve caught a snowflake on your tongue. Or sprinkled salt on your food. Perhaps you’ve imagined what it would be like to explore a big crystal cave.
Read More ...Dear Nina,
Our world is full of slime makers. Slugs and snails leave behind gooey trails. Bacteria can create layers of slippery slime in water pipes. Even your body makes its own kind of slime. In our joints, we have slime that helps protect our bones.
Read More ...Dear Hannah,
Of all the whales that live in the sea, the largest are blue whales. In fact, blue whales are the biggest known animals to have ever lived on our planet. Yep—even bigger than dinosaurs.
Read More ...Dear Silas,
There are more than a billion cows on our planet and they all need to burp. Just like us, they burp to get rid of extra gas in their stomachs.
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