You know a lot about water already because it’s such a big part of your life! Ice is what we call water when becomes a solid, and it’s a really important part of life on Earth. Three truths everyone knows about solid ice waterit solidifies at 0°C, and is the basis for the temperature scale its solid floats just above its liquid, with 90% below the surface it expands as it solidifies, unlike most every other substanceThe water…

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Terrific news about our own L.E. Carmichael! A fine book by this author and her illustrator Josée Bisaillon has won a national award.Kids Can Press is the publisher of their book, The Boreal Forest: A Year in the World's Largest Land Biome.  The word went out on Twitter from Kids Can Press, saying:THE BOREAL FOREST by @LE_Carmichael & illustrated by @joseebis has won the 2021 Children’s Literature Roundtables of Canada’s Information Book Award! Read all about…

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by Nina MunteanuIt was early winter, before the snows, as I entered the large cedar swamp-forest and felt magic touch my shoulder. It wasn’t just the deep soggy forest and the twittering birds or the fresh pungent smell of cedar in the air. Or the lanky trees creaking in the warm wind. There was something in the air that stirred my senses. The magic of discovery.Amid the soft hush of the breeze through the leaves,…

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by Kim Woolcock The new year makes me think of new beginnings. Why not new bio-inspired technologies? As microplastics clog up our newsfeeds and the biosphere, the search for biodegradable materials becomes more important. One that’s catching my attention is fungal fabric.Mycena inclinata, Clustered bonnetImage credit: Stu's ImagesWhen many people think of fungi, they think of mushrooms or mold. Fungi are both of these things, but they are also so much more. The mushrooms that we…

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  Netta Englehardt is a 32-year-old theoretical physicist. She’s a professor at MIT and is making waves for her work in resolving a decades old paradox, relating to Black Holes and Quantum Mechanics. In the 1970s Stephen Hawking came up with the Black Hole Information Paradox, and physicists have been working since then to make sense of the problem. Hawking found that Black Holes don’t continue gobbling up matter forever. Black Holes have a temperature;…

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 by Paula JohansonIf you're studying math, and fractions, sometimes it's hard at first to see the connection between numbers on a page and real life. That's when it's good to do some baking, where bakers use fractions and precise measurements to make wonderful cakes and cookies and pies. "Baking is science for  hungry people," wrote artist and writer Jeph Jacques in Questionable Content, his internet comic strip about friendship, romance, and robots. There are other…

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guest post by author Sheryl McFarlaneOBITUARY Carol “Diane” Swanson (April 5, 1944 – November 19, 2021) Well-known Victoria, BC children's science writer, Diane Swanson, passed away after a lengthy illness. She was 77. Born and raised in Lethbridge, Alberta, Diane was a self-described ‘nature nut’. She graduated from the University of Alberta with a Bachelor of Arts degree (Honours) in social sciences and taught in the West Indies for two years before moving to Ottawa where…

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The work that scientists do is real work. It takes time, careful effort, training, and applied knowledge. Sometimes there are hours of tiring or boring work. There can even be heavy lifting or danger! And always, the work of a scientist must be recorded accurately and shared among other scholars. So, what is the work of a scientist worth? There are lots of ways to answer that question, from the wages of a researcher working for…

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 by Megan ClendenanWhere I live, in the Pacific Northwest, autumn means rain and plenty of it. The rain pours down and flies sideways, soaking your cuffs and everything else if you’ve forgotten an umbrella.If you’re out walking during a storm in a city, you might notice rainwater soaking the streets, skidding across parking lots and sidewalks and then pouring into drains – if they aren’t clogged by soggy leaves or other debris. All that storm…

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Climbing VolcanoesBy Elaine Kachala I waited…and waited. One by one, people descended the mountain. They looked sweaty, red-faced, and they were breathing heavily. But where were my husband and daughter? They’d woke early to hit the trailhead at 6 am. But it was going on twelve hours since they’d left our campsite to hike Mount St. Helens—an active volcano in Washington State.  The mountain stands at 8,363 (f) (2,549 m). The hike is 10 miles (16 km)…

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