Finding Stuff Out

From lightning to lightning bugs, nature and the cosmos create its own light in a spectacular variety of ways. Even though we can’t produce light like fireflies do, we’ve learned to harness nature’s elements to light up our lives.

By getting to know our food, how it’s made and where it comes from, we can make choices that can help the environment and even change the world.

Many animals and plants have poison or venom for survival. We humans have found ways to protect ourselves, but we still need to be careful.

Extreme cold can be dangerous, but some animals and plants can adapt to it. Throughout human history, our species has used ingenuity to adapt too.

Heat can change things in surprising and amazing ways. When heat adds energy to an object, it can expand, it can shift from solid to liquid, or liquid to gas, or it can cause a chemical change - like an explosion. And when we add heat to the atmosphere, it can change life on the entire planet!

Many of the earth's scariest creatures are actually just trying to survive.

Soft bodied invertebrates have no bones or major hard parts, which gives them some big advantages. There are also some major challenges to being squishy, but these animals have come up with some pretty amazing solutions for survival.

Darkness is a state that means there is low level light or absence of light, and it influences all life forms on Earth.

We often think that sticky is icky, but nature uses stickiness in many ways. And humans use stickiness for many useful purposes: to keep from getting sick, make our daily lives easier and even for flying at supersonic speed! A key point we need to make in the episode is that there are different types of “sticky”. For example, there are positive and negative charges between molecules, there are physical hooks on things such as VELCRO brand fasteners, burs and chrysalises as well as other types of bonds, like molecular bonds. There are natural glues made by animals.

Our brain can play tricks on us, and there’s a lot of cool science in what fools our senses.

Pain is unpleasant but it’s our body’s way of telling us when we are hurt, sick or in danger.

Humans have been discovering and inventing things since the dawn of our species, there’s still lots more to discover and invent, and best of all: kids can and do make important inventions and discoveries too!