Sid Perkins

Freelance Writer

Sid is a freelance science journalist. He lives in Crossville, Tenn., with his wife, two dogs and three cats. He specializes in earth sciences and paleontology but often tackles topics such as astronomy, planetary science, materials science and engineering. 

 

In 2009, Sid won the Award for Distinguished Science Journalism in the Atmospheric and Related Sciences from the American Meteorological Society. And in 2002, he shared the American Astronomical Society’s Solar Physics Division’s Award for Popular Writing on Solar Physics. Sid’s writing also appears in Science, Nature, Scientific American, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and Science News.

All Stories by Sid Perkins

  1. Environment

    People are changing which parts of Earth get more (or less) water

    Human activities have been reshaping the planet’s water map. Some changes created new lakes. Others caused lakes to disappear.

  2. Chemistry

    Bioplastics could put some shrimp in your Barbie

    Teen researchers are looking to natural materials like shrimp shells and banana peels to make plastics ecofriendly and biodegradable.

  3. Health & Medicine

    Sore knees may get 3-D printed relief

    Teen researchers are looking into ways to use 3-D printers to make materials to replace, support or treat tissues of the body.

  4. Tech

    New eyewear could help the visually impaired

    Young inventors develop novel electronics to help people identify colors and navigate obstacles.

  5. Science & Society

    Heating up the search for hidden weapons

    Using an off-the-shelf camera and an innovative bit of software, a high-school student developed the means to inexpensively detect a hidden weapon.

  6. Animals

    Orca snot leads to a whale of a science-fair project

    DNA found in the mucus of orcas suggests that even though the traits of family pods may differ, these marine mammals all appear to belong to a single species.

  7. Tech

    Hurricane crisis inspires teen’s water-cleanup system

    In the wake of last summer’s devastating Hurricane Maria, a Puerto Rican Intel ISEF finalist developed a do-it-yourself system to create clean drinking water.

  8. Earth

    Robots and ‘green energy’ win the day at Intel ISEF

    The top three awards — each worth $50,000 to $75,000 — went for a window-washing robot, low-cost big batteries and ‘green’ capacitors

  9. Tech

    This robot can wash a skyscraper’s windows

    Cleaning windows on high-rise buildings can be perilous. But an Australian 12th-grader has created a robot to spare people the risk.

  10. Physics

    An ancient plant inspires a new lab tool

    Researchers have designed a lab tool that moves liquids from one place to another by mimicking a plant called a liverwort.

  11. Animals

    The secrets of super-slurper bat tongues

    Tiny hair-like structures greatly boost the ability of some bats to slurp up nectar from flowers.

  12. Physics

    Probing the power of the winds

    Young researchers have been exploring the energy in wind to see how best they might tame it, harness it and understand its role in shaping the natural world.