Eureka! Lab
A place for discovery
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Cookie Science 15: Results aren’t always sweet
From my latest experiment, I now know how to make a cookie that my friend can enjoy. But here’s a puzzle: I could not repeat some results from my first set of tests.
- Microbes
Making a microbe subway map
We are surrounded by bacteria, fungi and other tiny organisms. Now, high school scientists have contributed to the first map of microbes in the New York subway system.
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National festival calling all math lovers
Math is important to everything from our computers to the magic in movies. Now there’s a national festival to show the fun side of numbers.
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The next MacGyver’s not a guy
A famous TV show featured an engineering hero. Now, a contest plans to bring engineering back to the screen, and needs your ideas.
- Animals
Mates or survival: Which explains a bird’s color?
When male birds are brightly colored, we assume that’s because their plumage attracts the gals. But a new study with thousands of museum specimens shows that sometimes survival is just as important a factor behind bird color.
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Cookie Science 14: One experiment, 400 cookies
Making delicious gluten-free cookies requires testing. And this means baking a lot of cookies with scientific precision.
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Teen helps plants fight off pests
When plants are attacked by predatory worms, often they don’t fight back. A teen studied why and used those findings to help the plants defend themselves.
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A plastic that heals itself
A scratch on a car can be expensive to fix. A teen helped to create a new smart material that can heal its own gashes.
- Animals
Finding out why birds are out of range
Sometimes people see large numbers of birds outside of their normal range. A student examined how to predict these excursions.
- Science & Society
Teens win top awards, as told on Twitter
Eureka! Lab live-tweeted the 2015 Intel Science Talent Search gala. Check out the finalists and winners.
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A teen and a trolley reveal society’s dark side
If a trolley continues on its track, five people will die. But you can flip a switch so that it only kills one. A student showed that how we decide what to do in this situation can reveal our hidden biases.
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That’s when I knew I loved science
Finalists at the Intel Science Talent Search competition tell Eureka! Lab when they realized they loved science, technology, engineering and math.
