Lesson Plans

Picture it: A giant (like, seriously giant) tray full of bacteria. Billions and billions of bacteria just growing and spreading. A germaphobe's worst nightmare? Nah. These bacteria (like most [...]

How do you design a robot that can swim efficiently under water? Scientists are studying the physics behind dolphin movement for the answer! (And if you're wondering why scientists are [...]

Tanning mice. Yep. You read that right. Mice with tans are at the center of this story of how researchers are looking into drugs that can trick our cells into tanning without the sun.

Quantum physics is behind advances in digital cameras and cell phones, so it must also be able to explain the basics, right? Wrong. It turns out that classical physics doesn’t always work in the [...]

Using DNA analysis, researchers were able to effectively trace the evolution of HIV backwards in time to find the common ancestor of HIV samples circulating among humans today. Why is that [...]

Seen one solid, you've seen them all, right? Of course not. In fact, researchers recently developed a whole new type of solid that might be the key to future technologies, from clean energy to [...]

What separates the gold medal sprinters from the casual weekend jogger...besides the intense training, of course? Thanks to a careful analysis of human runners and good old-fashioned physics, we [...]

Fins, wings, and...fractions? Find out how simple measurements revealed a striking convergence among animals as varied as whales, birds, and sea butterflies. (Wondering what a sea butterfly is? [...]

What do aching knees, a sore back, diabetes, and poor eyesight have in common, besides being, well, common? You’ll find out in this lesson, but here’s a hint: it has something to do with evolution.

Sometimes you need to slow things down to figure out what’s going on. At a molecular level, slowing things down requires some pretty specialized equipment: lasers.