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Much of North America is experiencing record cold temperatures, but extreme cold can be fun! Make candy by boiling pure maple syrup and pouring it onto clean snow. Watch a balloon deflate outside and re-inflate indoors. Try blowing bubbles high in the air and watch them freeze on the way down!
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The Quadrantids meteor shower will be most visible tonight. The meteors are caused by space debris from a metallic asteroid called 2003 E H 1. Because of the nearly full moon, the meteors will be harder to see. They will peak earlier in the evening but you can watch them all night long.
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Today is National Drinking Straw Day, but modern plastic straws can harm the environment and wildlife. Paper straws were invented in 1888 by Marvin Stone. Ancient Sumerians were using gold straws to drink beer 5000 years ago! Argentinians use metal straws that end in sieves called bombillas. Invest in a steel or bamboo straw to celebrate!
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If you just had your winter break from school, you probably enjoyed sleeping in. Human adults need 8 hours of sleep while babies need 16. Bats sleep about 20 hours, and giraffes take brief naps that add up to two hours a day. Dolphins can sleep with half of their brain and just keep swimming!
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Eye color depends on two layers in your iris, the colored part of your eye. The epithelium is the back layer and can show through as dark specks. The front layer is the stroma. If it contains lots of melanin, your eyes are brown. Excess collagen makes them green. Blue eyes have neither!
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Scientist Piotr Naskrecki created a nature documentary called “The Human Botfly”. He found his skin infested with botflies after a trip to Belize. Naskrecki extracted one, but let the others continue their life cycle and filmed the whole process. Watching maggots make their film debut is both revolting and fascinating!
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Stop playing with your food- unless you are creating art with it! Artist Michele Baldini uses his skillet as a palette, turning fried eggs into masterpieces. Check out his creations on his Instagram page, “The Eggshibit”. Then look at “Saipancakes”, the website gallery for artist Nathan Shields, who paints with pancake batter!
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Today is National Science Fiction Day and the birthday of one of science fiction’s greatest writers, Isaac Asimov. Science fiction is a literary genre that often involves space or time travel, alien life, or parallel universes. “A Wrinkle In Time”, “The Missing” series, and ” I, Robot” are some sci-fi novels you might enjoy!
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18 year-old Hillary Diane Andales of the Phillipines is the winner of the 2017 Breakthrough Junior Challenge. The competition with a 250,000 dollar prize challenges teenagers to create a 3 minute video that simplifies a big math or science idea. Hillary explained Einstein’s Theory of Relativity using frame of reference and a pickup truck!
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Researchers at the University of Tokyo have developed a new type of self-healing glass. The glass is a polymer that can fuse itself together when pressure is applied at room temperature. Imagine how great it will be when your phone screen cracks and you can just press it back together!
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