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What makes fireflies light up at night? – Asher, 7, Maryland

August 31, 2023 melissamayer

Dear Asher,

When I was a kitten, there were tons of fireflies in my grandparents’ yard. My litter mates and I loved to gently catch them and let them go.

I talked with my friend Richard Zack about how and why fireflies light up. He’s an insect scientist at Washington State University.

Those glowing insects are a kind of beetle. But we call them fireflies or lightning bugs. Their glow is a form of bioluminescence. That’s when a chemical reaction inside a living thing makes it light up.

Who invented books? – Nicole, 6, Washington

November 17, 2022 melissamayer

Dear Nicole,

Some people only like paper books. But I love the library app on my phone. It’s like having stacks of library books in my pocket.

To learn more about books, I talked with my friend Greg Matthews. He’s the rare books librarian at Washington State University. “The short answer would probably be the Romans,” Matthews said. “But Rome was a really vast empire. So, it could have been a Roman in North Spain. It could have been a Roman in Egypt.”

How does the Internet actually work? I know you can type in most anything and it just pops up and all that, but how? - Eden, 8, Oregon

April 24, 2020 jaime.chambers

Dear Eden,

If you wrote me a physical letter, it would take a few days to reach me. You put the letter in your mailbox. A postal worker picks it up. Then it travels between different post offices on its journey from you to me.

But within seconds of you sending this question over the Internet, it was sitting in my inbox. How can this be?

The whole Internet works like the mail system—but much faster. That’s what I learned from Adam Hahn, an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Washington State University.

How do I make a diary? -Nimra, Kitchener, Ontario

April 20, 2015 rcwebber

Dear Diary,

Oh, I mean...Dear Nimra,

Making a diary is like creating your own top-secret book. So, I headed straight for a Washington State University library where there are more than a million books.

My friend Linnea Nelson was working with some of the books from the special collections when I went to visit her in the lab. She is a conservator, so part of her job is to repair and re-build old books. It preserves their history.

Some of the books had an old smell that wafted up into my little nose. The smell comes from different chemical compounds that escape into the air, including one similar to vanilla. The compounds are in the ink, paper, and other materials used to keep the pages together. And one way to keep the pages together is to bind them with thread.