Can rivers, lakes and trees be granted their own rights, just like people?

April 24, 2022July 24, 2022 Sci/Why Communication, Education and Outreach, General Science

By Megan ClendenanApril 22nd is Earth Day – a great opportunity to consider how we are caring for our home planet. Are we using the golden rule? Are we treating our planet how we ourselves would like to be treated?A different perspective shows us how everything on Earth is connected. The right to life. Freedom from...

Tasty Rocks: salt and friends

April 22, 2022 Sci/Why Communication, Education and Outreach, General Science

Salt — that stuff that melts the ice on sidewalks and makes popcorn taste so yummy — salt is a rock! Well, the kind in your salt shaker is rock-y. There's also salt dissolved in the oceans. It is dissolved rock! A mineral, actually. Salt is mined just like rocks too! It takes huge mining equipment...

When Ice Plays the Frazil Jam

April 9, 2022July 25, 2022 Sci/Why Communication, Education and Outreach, General Science

by Nina MunteanuI’m a limnologist (someone who studies water and water systems); I’m also a Canadian, living in the north. That means that the water and waterways I study are often covered in ice and snow. Since moving to Peterborough a few years ago, I’ve been walking daily along the shores of the Otonabee River,...

Millipedes

March 25, 2022July 25, 2022 Sci/Why Communication, Education and Outreach, General Science

by Kim Woolcock It’s spring, and all kinds of creatures are crawling out from under the leaf litter. Including millipedes.Their name means “thousand legs” (even though only one millipede, Eumillipes persephone, has more than a thousand legs, and it was just discovered in December 2021). Despite their many legs, they are not fast runners, and...

Why Do Kids Play?

March 15, 2022July 25, 2022 Sci/Why Communication, Education and Outreach, General Science

by Anne Munier Kids doing what kids do best! Children are playful creatures. This holds true all over the world- whether that’s playing 4-square in the schoolyard, engaging in some shadow tag if you happen to be in Ireland, or maybe partaking in a bit of luksong-baka if you’re in the Philippines (it translates to...

Antelope Island and Its Famous Residents—the Bison

March 13, 2022July 25, 2022 Sci/Why Communication, Education and Outreach, General Science

by Elaine KachalaPhoto by Michael Kachala It might surprise you to learn that one of the largest free-roaming herds of bison lives in a state park! Recently, I had the incredible experience of visiting Antelope Island State Park. Located in Utah, United States, it’s the largest island in the middle of Great Salt Lake and...

The Other Entanglement

March 4, 2022 Sci/Why Communication, Education and Outreach, General Science

A year ago I wrote a blog entry which included “entanglement” – a complicated quantum mechanics concept where multiple particles … never mind. (If you’re interested, go and look for the February 2021 blog “Schroedinger’s Bird ??????”. This other entanglement is more easily understood. Why does hair tangle and how do you get it untangled? When you look at hair under a microscope, you can see that the core of the hair is covered with…

The Science of Wordle

February 25, 2022 Sci/Why Communication, Education and Outreach, General Science

By Raymond K. Nakamura Do you play Wordle? If you haven’t heard, it’s a popular online word game. It has become a pandemic diversion and also reminds me of DOING science. It’s not a perfect analogy, of course. As far as I know, nature was not BUILT by an engineer and has not yet been...

Virtual Author Visit coming to a Public Library

February 18, 2022 Sci/Why Communication, Education and Outreach, General Science

Our own Lindsey Carmichael, author of over 20 books, will be doing an author visit at North Vancouver Public Library on Wednesday, March 2, 2022 - 1:30pm to 2:30pm. This is great news, not only for people in North Vancouver, but anywhere -- because this author visit is online! As Lindsey notes on Facebook:I'm doing a...

Fossil Microbes

February 7, 2022February 7, 2022 Sci/Why Communication, Education and Outreach, General Science

Paleontologist Andrew Knoll has just been awarded the Crafoord Prize for Geosciences, a prestigious international award from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. The academy chose Knoll to honour his work on understanding the first 3 billion years of Earth's history. By examining layers of bedrock, Knoll can learn not only whether it is volcanic or...

Author: Sci/Why