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Ask Dr. Universe rcwebber
University Communications Network > Ask Dr. Universe > Articles by: rcwebber

Dr. Universe: What can I do to help stop ocean pollution? -Hailey, 10

It’s great to hear you want to help our oceans. After all, they do a lot for us. Life in the ocean provides much of the oxygen we breathe and is also a source of food for many animals, including humans. One of the most important things we can do to prevent more pollution is to keep our garbage, especially plastic, out of the ocean. That’s what I found out from my friend Richelle Tanner, a marine biologist and researcher at Washington State University. While a lot of plastic ends up in the ocean, it actually started under the Earth’s surface in the form of oil, leftovers of plants and animals that died long ago. Read More ...

Dear Dr. Universe: How do houses get built? -OWL School Students, United Kingdom

Humans have built all kinds of houses throughout history. During the Ice Age, humans made their homes in big caves. A few thousand years later, people figured out how to fire up a hot oven and bake their own clay bricks. A lot of the first houses made of these bricks didn’t even have front doors. To get in the house, you climbed up a ladder to the roof and used another ladder to get down inside. “As soon as humans left their caves and started settling in cities, architecture has been with us,” said my friend Mona Ghandi. Read More ...

Dear Dr. Universe: Why do flowers smell so nice? – Miles, 5

Flowers not only smell nice to humans, but also to many insects and birds who help the flowers do a really important job. Let’s imagine that you are a bee or a butterfly. You don’t have a nose on your face, but instead use your two antennae to smell things. As you fly around, you catch a whiff of chemicals floating in the air. Down below, you see a field of daisies. The flowers are releasing some chemicals, which are the building blocks of a smell. Read More ...

Dr. Universe: How many peas would fit in the sun? -Keegan, 8

Our sun is so massive, you could fit more than one million earths inside of it. To find out how many peas would fit inside the biggest object in our solar system, I decided to ask my friend and mathematician Kimberly Vincent at Washington State University. Vincent and her students said that to figure out how much of something can fit inside the sun, we need to know the volume of the sun. The volume is how much space something takes up. Read More ...

Dear Dr. Universe: How many different types of plankton are there? Are there freshwater plankton? – Arielle, 11

We can find millions and millions of plankton in bodies of water all over the world—from oceans, rivers, and lakes to ponds and mud puddles. That’s what I found out from my friend Julie Zimmerman, a scientist with the Aquatic Ecology Lab at Washington State University. In the lab, researchers can use powerful microscopes to get an up-close look at these tiny creatures. Read More ...

Dr. Universe: Why do gadgets need batteries? How do they work? -Shereen and Jasmine, 8, Florida

Dear Shereen and Jasmine, Batteries can power up all kinds of gadgets. To find out how batteries work, I decided to visit my friend and materials engineer Min-Kyu Song. He makes batteries in his lab at Washington State University. As you might know, materials are made up of atoms—and atoms have tiny parts called electrons. If you’ve ever felt a spark when you touched a doorknob, you’ve felt electrons making the jump from your body to the door. Read More ...

Dr. Universe: Why do we get phobias? -Ryan, 13, Hillarys, Western Australia

We all experience fear in our lives. It is a useful tool that helps humans and other animals survive. I happen to be afraid of dogs, thunderstorms, and water. But fears are quite different from phobias. A phobia is an intense fear of an object or situation, often one that you actually don’t need to fear. It can create a lot of anxiety. It can cause your heart rate to speed up, make it hard to breathe, and trigger nervousness, vomiting, sweating, or dizziness. Read More ...

Dr. Universe: Why do we get morning breath? -Stephanie, 10

Dear Stephanie, If you’ve ever caught a whiff of someone’s stinky morning breath, or even your own, you know it can be pretty rotten. We can trace the smell back to tiny culprits that live in our mouths. They are called microbes and they live around your gums, between your teeth, and on your tongue. Read More ...

Dr. Universe: What’s inside a sheep’s brain? – Aiden, 11

A sheep brain is about the size of a human fist and is squishy like Jell-O. In some ways, a sheep brain is very similar to a human brain. In other ways, it is quite different. I learned about sheep brains from my friend Craig McConnel, a researcher at Washington State University who is very curious about ruminants, a group of animals that includes cattle, giraffes, deer, antelopes, and of course, sheep. Like a lot of mammal brains, a sheep brain is made up of grey and white matter. It has folds and grooves, but not quite as many as a human brain. It’s also a little smoother. Read More ...

How many bones did dinosaurs have? – Addison, 9

Before humans even had a word for dinosaur, they were digging up dinosaur bones. When one paleontologist dug up a big dinosaur leg bone, he wondered if it belonged to a giant human. A woman who dug up some large teeth wondered if they belonged to a huge iguana. Read More ...