Bethany Brookshire

Bethany Brookshire was a longtime staff writer at Science News Explores and is the author of the book Pests: How Humans Create Animal Villains. She has a B.S. in biology and a B.A. in philosophy from The College of William and Mary, and a Ph.D. in physiology and pharmacology from Wake Forest University School of Medicine. She was a 2019-2020 Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT, the winner of the Society for Neuroscience Next Generation Award and the Three Quarks Daily Science Writing Award, among others.

All Stories by Bethany Brookshire

  1. Float candy on a sea of salt

    tir salt into water and make a candy bar float. Sure, it’s fun — but you can also make it research. You just need a big bag of candy and some measurements to turn this demo into an experiment with density.

  2. Chemistry

    Scientists Say: Organic

    These days you might think organic refers just to food. But it has a completely different meaning in chemistry.

  3. Brain

    Lessons from failure: Why we try, try again

    We all suffer failures. But we don’t always try again. Focusing on what they can be learned might help people keep going, brain imaging data now show.

  4. Brain

    Males and females respond to head hits differently

    Men and women are playing sports equally — and getting concussions in comparable numbers. But how their brains respond may differ greatly.

  5. Math

    Scientists Say: Quartile

    A quartile might sound like a fourth. But that’s not quite what it is.

  6. Brain

    Can’t sing on-key? Blame the brain

    Tone-deafness doesn’t mean that someone can’t hear music. The brain just misinterprets what it “hears”, a new study suggests.

  7. Chemistry

    Making caffeine content crystal clear

    Many popular drinks contain caffeine — a stimulant that in high amounts can keep you up at night. One teen is now measuring just how much is in the beverages we drink.

  8. Earth

    Scientists Say: Jet Stream

    You might hear about the jet stream on a weather report, but what is it? We explain.

  9. Chemistry

    Got milk? Do you know what’s in it?

    One teen was dismayed to learn milk might host harmful pollutants. This prompted him to use his science fair project as a way to find out just what was in his favorite drink.

  10. Cookie Science: A bit about butter

    I teamed up with the ACS Reactions team to make a video about cookie science. Here are the details of our experiment.

  11. Hitting headgear hard to head off concussions

    When one soccer player saw her friends getting head injuries, she decided to do something about it. She used her science fair project to test protective headgear.

  12. Plants

    Scientists Say: Xylem

    How do trees ferry water from the soil to branches hundreds of feet in the air? This week’s word is the answer.