Dear Marcelina,
Lots of warm-blooded animals get sick, including cats. I’ve had a fever before, but I wasn’t entirely sure why we warm up when we get sick. I decided to ask my friend and professor Phil Mixter at Washington State University.
Read More ...Dear Molly,
Just the other day I was taking down a string of lights from my lab, when I discovered the bulbs were burnt out. I visited my friend Aaron Crandall, an engineer at Washington State University, to see if I might get them working again.
Crandall explained when you plug in a string of lights to a power source, like an outlet, an electrical charge flows into the wires. A lightbulb works when an electrical current runs through thin metal wires in the bulb and electrical energy gets converted to heat and light. We can get this current of electricity to follow different paths, … » More …
Read More ...
Dear Mrs. Rubert and Students,
Fish swim in big schools. Baby ducks waddle in a straight line. Ants and bees divide up labor. The world is full of animals that live in groups and they do it for a few different reasons.
Read More ...Dear Tali,
We can make glass in factories and we can find it in nature. Some volcanoes make glass. When they spew out lava, it often cools into obsidian, a black glass. Glass can also form on sandy beaches. Small tubes with smooth glass on the inside may appear after super-hot lightning strikes the sand.
Read More ...Dear Tahira,
Planes are very heavy, yet they stay up in the air kind of like a bird in the sky. They can get us across the world in less than a day. Humans went from learning how to fly a plane to putting a man on the moon in a little over 60 years.
But the answer to your question goes even further back. It goes all the way back to the 1700s and actually started not with air, but with water.
That’s what I found out from my friend Michael Allen, a physics and astronomy professor at Washington State University. He thought you … » More …
Read More ...Dear Nghi,
When you and I take a deep breath, we pull air into our lungs. That’s because humans and cats are mammals. But fish aren’t mammals. They usually don’t breathe air. They usually don’t have lungs.
That’s what I found out from my friend Michael Berger. He’s a biologist at Washington State University.
He told me that you can actually see a fish breathe water. Its face gets bigger when it takes in a big gulp of water. Just like when you take a big bite of food.
When you look at a fish, you can usually see the gill openings—called gill slits. … » More …
Read More ...Dear Karthikeya,
Bird feathers are interesting. There are so many types, shapes, and colors. My friend Daniela Monk is a Washington State University professor who studies avian ecology, or the study of birds.
She told me about why the birds we know today have feathers and how they got them. Researchers believe that birds evolved from dinosaurs a very long time ago.
“One lineage of dinosaurs gave rise to birds,” Monk said.
Researchers around the world are finding dinosaur fossils that contain feathers. A fossil is the remains of a very old animal or plant that is preserved in a rock. From these fossils they … » More …
Read More ...Dear Ellie,
Sleep is one of the most important functions of our body. It helps us feel rested and gives us energy. Getting a good night’s sleep is important for our health. But when we don’t get enough sleep, or haven’t slept in a long time, we feel tired.
Read More ...Dear Hasandi and Harrison,
If you’ve ever been near a cat or dog when they tooted, the smell might have sent you running right out of the room. A lot of animals pass gas. But believe it or not, some animals do not.
Read More ...