Playgrounds can host a variety of natural wonders – and, of course, kids! Now some students are not just learning about insects and spiders at school — they are putting them on the map and even discovering and naming new species.

Studies indicate insect populations are declining, and species are going extinct every week in Australia. But scientists have only described about a third of Australia’s estimated total of insect species.

This means around 150,000 of our insect species do not have formal scientific names. We know little about where they are and what they do in ecosystems — vital information for stopping biodiversity loss.

So, our team developed the citizen science project Insect Investigators.

We took scientists to 50 regional schools across three states to learn about insects and other arthropods such as spiders. Students of all ages got to survey insect diversity, search for new species, and engage with entomologists and taxonomists throughout the school year.

Students helped name new species, including several species of parasitoid wasp.

Some of the scientific names include Apanteles darthvaderi (Back Plains State School students thought the wasp had gone to the “dark side” because of the way the wasp “sucks the life out of caterpillars”), Mirax supremus (named after the pinnacle science class at Beerwah State High School), and Coccygidium mellosiheroine, which means “honey-coloured hero” (named by students collaborating from several Queensland schools, who considered the wasp a hero as it attacks a crop pest).

Our latest paper on the project is now published. We learned hands-on citizen science increased students’ interests in insects, nature and science.

How many insects?

Around 1,800 students and more than 70 teachers collected insects in or near their schools.

Teachers sent samples to the project team, which sorted and sent a selection of specimens to be DNA barcoded. This method involves sequencing a small section of the genome to tell different species apart.

The specimens were then sent to experts around Australia, who are working to describe any new species collected.

The students collected more than 12,000 insect specimens, including 5,465 different species – many of which are probably not described.

It will take years to identify all the species and work out how many are new to science, but we already know 3,000 had not been recorded in the Barcode of Life DNA database (BOLD).

Good for insects, good for learning

Getting to know insects as part of this citizen science project was great for kids’ active learning and developing an appreciation of the natural world.

Students said they felt more interested in insects, nature and science, and it inspired them to spend more time outdoors.

“I learnt there are many insect and plant species… that I haven’t seen before and how in different ecosystems you can find different insects,” said a student from South Australia.

When students are engaged, it’s no surprise teachers enjoy their jobs more too — and this is exactly what we found. The more enthusiastic the students were about nature and science experiences through the project, the more interested the teachers were in teaching these topics.

One teacher reported “students gained an understanding of the work of scientists, how to participate in research, protocols to follow, and gained a huge interest in insects!”

What did students get out of it?

After the insect survey was completed, we asked 118 students and 22 teachers in nine of the schools about what they experienced, and how they see insects and nature now.

Students said the chance to find a new species, as well as discovering and catching insects they had not seen before, were highlights of Insect Investigators.

Experiencing a hands-on learning style, outside in nature, was also mentioned as a benefit of the program.

Many students said they now wanted to spend more time outdoors, act and encourage others to protect nature, and pay more attention to insect conservation and science classes. This implies the experience and discovery associated with hands-on citizen science has motivated greater engagement with nature and science.

The potential of school-based citizen science

Insect surveys offer an accessible way for students to actively learn about science and nature. Insects are virtually everywhere and by photographing them, students can observe natural insect behaviour – without the need to collect them.

The iNaturalist App and Atlas of Living Australia facilitate citizen scientists to explore nature around them. We’ve also created resources for teachers who want to introduce lessons on insects into their school homepage.

It’s never too early to develop science literacy skills and give children the chance to develop their curiosity, critical thinking and problem solving.

Connecting schools and scientists is a great way to engage young learners and foster connections to nature. It has the added bonus of inventorying our natural world which is vital to conserving Australia’s biodiversity.

Andy G Howe, Research Fellow (Entomology), University of the Sunshine Coast; Erinn Fagan-Jeffries, Wasp biodiversity group leader, University of Adelaide; Patrick O'Connor, Professor in Natural Resource Economics, University of Adelaide, and Trang Nguyen, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, University of Adelaide

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Why do people yawn while seeing other people who yawn? —Mithra, age 7, Chennai

Yawning happens when you open your mouth, take a deep breath and take in air without even thinking about it. You might be tired, bored or waking up. Most people yawn six to 23 times a day – even animals yawn!

You may have noticed that you often yawn after you see someone else yawn. This is called “contagious yawning”.

Contagious yawning feels automatic, like a reflex you don’t have to think about. But scientists know it’s not completely automatic because we are not born knowing how to do it.

In fact, contagious yawning only starts around ages four or five, which is when kids begin to develop better empathy. Empathy means understanding and sharing the feelings of others. So, without even thinking about it, seeing someone yawn can make you want to yawn, too.

How do scientists know this?

Scientists have noticed that people yawn more when the other person they see yawn is someone they know well – like a best friend or a parent.

This supports the idea that empathy plays a big role in contagious yawning. When you see a friend or family member yawn, your brain understands their feelings, and you might yawn, too.

Contagious yawning can also help strengthen social connections and coordination within a group. In other words, it’s one way our brains help us connect with others.

Yawning animals

Scientists found people might also yawn when they see animals like birds, reptiles and fish yawning (yes, fish yawn too).

In fact, some animals like dogs and chimpanzees also experience contagious yawning. When a chimpanzee sees another chimpanzee yawn, it often yawns, too. Like for us humans, this helps them build social connections with each other.

Scientists found that both in humans and in animals like chimpanzees and bonobos, contagious yawning is more common among those who share a strong bond. This means you’re more likely to catch a yawn from your best friend or family member than from a stranger.

As people get older, they become better at understanding others’ feelings, and they yawn more when they see others yawn. However, this ability to catch yawns might decrease in very old age. This is seen in both humans and chimpanzees.

Humans can have a contagious yawn from many different types of animals – not just their pets that they love and know well. This shows that yawning helps us connect and understand each other, whether it’s with another person or an animal.

What happens in the brain when we catch yawns?

Your brain has special cells called mirror neurons. These neurons activate when you see someone do something, and they make you feel like doing the same thing – for example, yawning. It’s like your brain is mirroring what the other person is doing.

So, the next time you see someone yawn and feel the urge to yawn too, you’ll know it’s your brain’s way of building a connection with your friends, family and even pets.

Johanna Simkin, Senior Curator of Human Biology and Medicine, Museums Victoria Research Institute

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Curious Kids is a series for children of all ages. If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, send it to CuriousKidsUS@theconversation.com.

How is the International Space Station able to orbit without burning up? – Mateo, age 8, New York, New York

Flying through Earth’s orbit are thousands of satellites and two operational space stations, including the International Space Station, which weighs as much as 77 elephants. The International Space Station, or ISS, hosts scientists and researchers from around the world as they contribute to discoveries in medicine, microbiology, Earth and space science, and more.

One of my first jobs in aerospace engineering was working on the ISS, and the ISS remains one of my favorite aerospace systems. I now work at Georgia Tech, where I teach aerospace engineering.

The ISS travels very quickly around the Earth at 5 miles per second (8 kilometers per second), which means it could fly from Atlanta to London in 14 minutes. But at the same time, small chunks of rock called meteoroids shoot through space and burn up when they hit Earth’s atmosphere. How is it that some objects – such as the International Space Station – orbit the Earth unscathed, while others, such as asteroids, burn up?

To answer why the ISS can stay in orbit for decades unscathed, you first need to understand why some things, such as meteoroids, do burn up when they enter our planet’s atmosphere.

Why do meteoroids burn up in the atmosphere?

Meteoroids are small chunks of rock and metal that orbit the Sun. These space rocks can travel between 7 and 25 miles per second (12 to 40 km per second). That’s fast enough to cross the entire United States in about 5 minutes.

Sometimes, the orbit of a meteoroid overlaps with Earth, and the meteoroid enters Earth’s atmosphere – where it burns up and disintegrates.

Even though you can’t see them, the atmosphere is full of a combination of particles, primarily nitrogen and oxygen, which make up the air you breathe. The farther you are from the surface of the Earth, the lower the density of particles in the atmosphere.

The atmosphere has several layers. When something from space enters the Earth’s atmosphere, it must pass through each of these layers before it reaches the ground.

Meteoroids burn up in a part of Earth’s atmosphere called the mesosphere, which is 30 to 50 miles (48 to 80 kilometers) above the ground. Even though the air is thin up there, meteoroids still bump into air particles as they fly through.

When meteoroids zoom through the atmosphere at these very high speeds, they are destroyed by a process that causes them to heat up and break apart. The meteoroid pushes the air particles together, kind of like how a bulldozer pushes dirt. This process creates a lot of pressure and heat. The air particles hit the meteoroid at hypersonic speeds – much faster than the speed of sound – causing atoms to break away and form cracks in the meteroid.

The high pressure and hot air get into the cracks, making the meteoroid break apart and burn up as it falls through the sky. This process is called meteoroid ablation and is what you are actually seeing when you witness a “shooting star.”

Why doesn’t the ISS burn up?

So why doesn’t this happen to the International Space Station?

The ISS does not fly in the mesosphere. Instead, the ISS flies in a higher and much less dense layer of the atmosphere called the thermosphere, which extends from 50 miles (80 km) to 440 miles (708 km) above Earth.

The Kármán line, which is considered the boundary of space, is in the thermosphere, 62 miles (100 kilometers) above the surface of the Earth. The space station flies even higher, at about 250 miles (402 km) above the surface.

The thermosphere has too few particles to transmit heat. At the height of the space station, the atmosphere is so thin that to collect enough particles to equal the mass of just one apple, you would need a box the size of Lake Superior!

As a result, the ISS doesn’t experience the same kind of interactions with atmospheric particles, nor the high pressure and heat that meteoroids traveling closer to Earth do, so it doesn’t burn up.

A high-flying research hub

Although the ISS doesn’t burn up, it does experience large temperature swings. As it orbits Earth, it is alternately exposed to direct sunlight and darkness. Temperatures can reach 250 degrees Fahrenheit (121 degrees Celsius) when it’s exposed to the Sun, and then they can drop to as low as -250 degrees F (-156 degrees Celsius) when it’s in the dark – a swing of 500 degrees F (277 degrees C) as it moves through orbit.

The engineers who designed the station carefully selected materials that can handle these temperature swings. The inside of the space station is kept at comfortable temperatures for the astronauts, the same way people on Earth heat and cool our homes to stay comfortable indoors.

Research on the ISS has led to advancements such as improved water filtration technologies, a better understanding of Earth’s water and energy cycles, techniques to grow food in space, insights into black holes, a better understanding of how the human body changes during long-duration space travel, and new studies on a variety of diseases and treatments.

NASA plans to keep the ISS active until 2030, when all of the astronauts will return to Earth and the ISS will be deorbited, or brought down from orbit by a specially designed spacecraft.

As it comes down through Earth’s atmosphere in the deorbiting process, it will enter the mesosphere, where many parts of it will heat up and disintegrate.

Some spacecraft, such as the crew capsules that bring astronauts to and from the ISS, can survive reentry into the atmosphere using their heat shield. That’s a special layer made up of materials that are able to withstand very high temperatures. The ISS wasn’t designed for that, so it doesn’t have a heat shield.

If you’d like to see the space station as it passes over your area, you can check out NASA’s website to find out when it might be visible near you.

Hello, curious kids! Do you have a question you’d like an expert to answer? Ask an adult to send your question to CuriousKidsUS@theconversation.com. Please tell us your name, age and the city where you live.

And since curiosity has no age limit – adults, let us know what you’re wondering, too. We won’t be able to answer every question, but we will do our best.

Kelly Griendling, Lecturer of Aerospace Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Curious Kids is a series for children of all ages. If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, send it to curiouskidsus@theconversation.com.

Is ranch dressing a liquid or a solid? – Gabriel, age 8, DeLand, Florida

Imagine you’re eating dinner. You try to pour some ranch dressing onto your plate to dip your veggies into. You tip the container upside down, but nothing comes out. Seems like a solid.

So you shake the bottle up and down, and a big blob of dressing plops out and hits your plate. Seems like a liquid.

But the dressing doesn’t spread all over the plate, like milk or any other liquid would if you spilled it. Rather, it maintains some shape, kind of like the veggies on your plate. Seems like a solid.

But every time you plunge your solid carrot or celery into the blob of dressing, it distorts the shape of the blob a bit. You can even smear and spread the blob around, but the shape and stiffness of the celery isn’t affected by this game. Seems like a liquid.

So, is ranch dressing a liquid and a solid? Or is it neither?

I’m a professor of physics and biophysics, and my research focuses on understanding squishy materials that have both liquid and solid properties. Physicists call these materials soft matter. In my lab, we investigate what makes biological materials such as skin and snot squishy – and how we can create bio-inspired materials that have the same fascinating properties. I also host a social media channel, Physics Mama, where my two boys and I ask and answer questions about the physics of everyday life.

The basic states of matter

To figure out what’s going on with ranch dressing, you need to understand what the different states of matter are and what makes each one unique. “Matter” is just the scientific word for “stuff,” and it is anything that is made up of the microscopic building blocks called atoms and that has mass.

You probably learned in school that there are three states of matter: solid, liquid and gas. Think ice cube, a puddle of water and steam. Maybe you also learned about a fourth state, known as plasma.

These different states are defined by how the extremely tiny molecules making up the matter interact with each other. These molecules are so small that you can’t see them with your naked eye. But their invisible interactions determine the properties of the materials that you can see.

Molecules in a solid are physically attached to each other in a way that keeps them from moving around relative to each other. This is what makes solids rigid and able to keep a fixed shape.

The molecules in a liquid, on the other hand, are not connected to each other. They can move around, slide past each other and mix themselves up. This freedom of movement is what allows a liquid to take the shape of whatever container it is in.

The molecules in a gas are completely free to move around without really bumping into the other molecules in the gas too much. Like a liquid, a gas will take the shape of any container it is in and has no fixed shape. But unlike liquids and solids, gases can also change their size or volume.

A plasma is similar to a gas but has much more energy. This energy causes the electrically charged parts of the molecules, called protons and electrons, to break apart. The Sun and stars are examples of plasma, as is the material that makes neon signs glow.

Elasticity and viscosity

While solids hold their shape, they are not completely rigid. The connections between the molecules behave like tiny springs, which makes solids elastic. If you push on a solid, it will deform – but it will bounce back to its original state when you stop pushing, kind of like your mattress when you bounce on your bed. Of course, this happens at the molecular level, so you can’t see it happening.

And even though liquids easily change shape, they do resist this change due to the friction between the liquid molecules as they try to move past each other. This friction is called viscosity. Liquids such as honey or syrup are much more viscous than liquids such as milk or water, making them harder to stir. Imagine trying to swim in a swimming pool of honey – delicious but difficult.

A fifth state

Ranch dressing is actually a fifth state of matter known as soft matter. Soft matter can have properties of both liquids and solids, so materials scientists say it is viscoelastic – a combination of viscous and elastic. Other common examples of soft matter include yogurt, cookie dough, shampoo, toothpaste, silly putty, snot, slime and frosting.

These substances aren’t quite solid and aren’t quite liquid – they’re a little of both. You can pour shampoo out of a bottle, but if you put a bit between your fingers and pull them apart, it will stretch between your fingers. Cookie dough can hold its own shape, but if you push on it, it deforms and doesn’t bounce back.

Many viscoelastic materials exhibit shear thinning, which means that their viscosity decreases the more you agitate them. This is why shaking your bottle of ranch dressing or ketchup allows you to pour it out – even though before shaking it was too solid-like to leave the bottle. It’s also why yogurt that seems quite solid and able to maintain its shape becomes more liquid-like when you stir it quickly.

Squishy materials can also exhibit shear thickening – they become more rigid the harder you try to deform them. This is how Oobleck, a simple mixture of cornstarch and water, works. You can slowly pour it and submerge your hand in it, like any other liquid, but if you squeeze it or shake it up it solidifies.

A different kind of molecule

The reason these squishy materials have both liquid and solid properties is that they’re made of polymers: long, chainlike molecules. These long chains get all tangled up, like a bowl of spaghetti, so they are sort of connected, like the molecules in a solid, but also sort of free to move past one other, like molecules in a liquid.

Most store-bought ranch dressing contains xantham gum, which is a natural polymer used to thicken and stabilize many foods.

So the next time you try to pour your ranch dressing out of the bottle, you can imagine the xantham gum polymers all tangled up with one another, making the dressing act like a solid. When you shake the bottle, you’re disentangling the polymers so they slide and flow past each other, allowing the dressing to flow easily out of the bottle and onto your plate.

This article has been updated to correct the term for water in the gas phase.

Hello, curious kids! Do you have a question you’d like an expert to answer? Ask an adult to send your question to CuriousKidsUS@theconversation.com. Please tell us your name, age and the city where you live.

And since curiosity has no age limit – adults, let us know what you’re wondering, too. We won’t be able to answer every question, but we will do our best.

Rae Robertson-Anderson, Professor of Physics & Biophysics, University of San Diego

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Curious Kids is a series for children of all ages. If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, send it to curiouskidsus@theconversation.com.

What was the first thing scientists discovered? – Jacob, age 9, Santiago, Panama

All societies have had ways of understanding nature based on their experiences of it. For example, farmers need to understand the seasons and weather to know when to plant and harvest their crops. Hunters need to understand the lives of animals to know how to hunt them.

This kind of understanding of the natural world isn’t quite the same as science though. Science typically refers to knowledge that’s more organized and formal than that. It’s not just an explanation, but a system that uses observations and experiments to build theories that are recorded, passed on to others and built on.

With that idea in mind, as a historian of science, my best answer to the question of what the first scientists discovered is Babylonian astronomy.

The Babylonians lived from about 2,500 to 4,000 years ago in the area that’s now Iraq. What makes Babylonian astronomy stand out as being especially scientific is the careful, organized way in which Babylonian scribes – their keepers of knowledge – observed, recorded and eventually mathematically predicted the ways that the Sun, Moon, stars and planets move in the skies.

Babylonian astronomy was uniquely scientific

Before clocks, observing the sky was how people knew the time. During the day you can see the Sun, and at night you can see the stars. Many calendars are based on the skies too. A month is about how long it takes the Moon to go through its phases. A year is one full revolution of the Earth around the Sun.

But keeping track of time wasn’t the only way the Babylonians used astronomy. Like today’s world, Babylonia could be both predictable and chaotic. The weather changed with the seasons; crops were planted and harvested; festivals were celebrated; people were born, aged and died, all predictably. But a bad harvest might cause high prices for grains and starvation; a king might die young, causing political upheaval; a disease might kill thousands, all unpredictably.

The stars and planets can seem like that, too. The stars are always in the same places in relation to one another, so you can identify constellations, and those constellations rise and set at regular times over the course of a year. But the planets move around – they’re not always in the same places, and sometimes they even seem to stop and move backward in their paths. Sometimes even more spectacular events occur, such as eclipses.

For the Babylonians, those ideas were linked. They saw changes in the motions of the planets or rare events such as eclipses as signs – omens – about what was going to happen on Earth. For example, they might think the shadow of the Earth moving over the Moon in a certain way during a lunar eclipse meant that a flood would also happen.

The scribes kept a book called Enūma Anu Enlil listing omens and their meanings. So if the seemingly changing motions of the heavens could be predicted, maybe earthly events could be, too. This led the scribes to study astronomy.

How Babylonian astronomy worked

The foundation of Babylonian astronomy was kept in a book called MUL.APIN, meaning “The Plough Star,” the name of a constellation. It recorded the positions of the stars, when in the year they would first be visible, the paths of the Sun and Moon, the periods when the planets would be visible in the night sky, and other fundamental astronomical knowledge.

Later, Babylonian scribes began to keep their Astronomical Diaries, which contained detailed records of the positions of the Moon and planets along with events on Earth such as the weather and the price of grain. In other words, they recorded their observations of both astronomical omens and the events they might have predicted.

This kind of careful observation and record-keeping is a major part of science. The Astronomical Diaries were kept for over 700 years, making them maybe the longest-running scientific project ever.

The records in the Astronomical Diaries helped Babylonian scribes take another scientific step: predicting astronomical events. One part of this was computing what the Babylonians called goal-years: the number of years it took for a planet to return to the same place on the same day. For example, they computed that the period for Venus was eight Babylonian years. So if Venus was somewhere on a particular day, it would be in the same place on the same day eight years later.

By around the fourth century B.C.E., the scribes developed this knowledge into a system of mathematically predicting astronomical events. They made tables called ephemerides that showed when these events would happen in the future. So Babylonian scribes succeeded in their project: They made the motions of the Sun, Moon and planets predictable.

Babylonian astronomy and you

MUL.APIN, the Astronomical Diaries, the ephemerides and all of Babylonian astronomy had a major impact on later astronomers, one that continues to today. Greek astronomers used Babylonian observations to make geometric models of planetary motions, part of the long path toward modern astronomy. The ephemerides were the ancestors of astronomical tables, which still exist. For example, NASA has a table of eclipses online that goes to the year 3000.

But the most familiar thing that comes from Babylonian astronomy is how we tell time. The Babylonians didn’t use a decimal system with units of 10 like we do. Instead, they used a sexagesimal system, with units of 60. Babylonian observations were so important that later people kept Babylonian units for astronomy, even though they used a base 10 system for other things.

So if you’ve ever wondered why an hour has 60 minutes, and a minute has 60 seconds, it’s because we’ve kept that way of measuring from Babylonian astronomy. Whenever you tell the time, you’re using some of the very oldest science.

Hello, curious kids! Do you have a question you’d like an expert to answer? Ask an adult to send your question to CuriousKidsUS@theconversation.com. Please tell us your name, age and the city where you live.

And since curiosity has no age limit – adults, let us know what you’re wondering, too. We won’t be able to answer every question, but we will do our best.

James Byrne, Assistant Teaching Professor in the Herbst Program for Engineering, Ethics & Society, University of Colorado Boulder

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.