Science Friday Initiative
Science Friday: The Grasshopper Bot
Researchers built a new bot that can jump 27 times its own height. That's a world record. Learn more about the project.
Science Friday Initiative
Science Friday: Life on Our Skin
Dr. Martin Blaser at the NYU School of Medicine has been investigating the bacteria that live on human skin. On just six people, he and his researchers identified 182 species of bacteria! Aired May 28, 2009. [4:55]
Science Friday Initiative
Science Friday: Finding the Roots of an Ancient Crop
Agave plants, probably best known as the source of tequila, were important as a food crop long before the invention of margaritas. Wendy Hodgson, botanist at the Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix, says the plants were cultivated as far...
Science Friday Initiative
Science Friday: Dis Cern This: Large Hadron Rap
An original rap about the Large Hadron Collider--don't miss it. Brought to you by Will Barras, who was a Ph.D. student in the department of linguistics and English language at the University of Edinburgh and science writer (and rapper)...
Science Friday Initiative
Science Friday: Letter to a Young Scientist
The father of biodiversity, Edward O. Wilson addresses young scientists. [4:10]
Science Friday Initiative
Science Friday: Coolest Lab Ever?
Convincing a rat to run on a treadmill is just another day at the office for the researchers at the Concord Field Station (CFS), a Harvard lab located in Bedford, Mass. The lab focuses on comparative biomechanics, which requires lots of...
Science Friday Initiative
Science Friday: Science Friday in Space
Ira Flatow talks with NASA commander Dan Burbank and flight engineer Don Pettit from the International Space Station. [20:49]
Science Friday Initiative
Science Friday: March of the Immune Cells
Paul Kubes filmed the immune cells, neutrophils finding their way to a mouse's wounded liver. The researchers wanted to understand how neutrophils find injuries when bacteria aren't around to signal the damage. [3:32]
Science Friday Initiative
Science Friday: Dive Into Florida's Aquarius Reef Base
Take a tour of the only working undersea lab left today. (no sound)
Science Friday Initiative
Science Friday: Behold the Beauty of the Ant
The founder of AntWeb, an online repository of high-resolution shots of ants, discusses the taxonomy of these insects.
Science Friday Initiative
Science Friday: Creating Earth
There's artistry to creating the world, according to Rob Simmon, art director of NASA Earth Observatory. NASA's collection of Earth-from-space imagery dates back to the Apollo 8 mission, when astronauts snapped a picture of Earth rising...
Science Friday Initiative
Science Friday: Alan Alda Takes on a Hot Topic
When Alan Alda was 11-years-old he wondered, 'what is a flame?' He asked his teacher and the answer wasn't very satisfying, Alda told Ira in our New York studios last March. Sixty years later, Alda was still looking for a good answer so...
Science Friday Initiative
Science Friday: Smart Milk Jug, Invented by Sixth Graders
Check out this intelligent milk pitcher invented by a team of 6th graders from P.S. 126 in New York City. [2:46]
Science Friday Initiative
Science Friday: Super Crisp Brains
A new microscope technique produces extra-sharp images of large swaths of the brain. [1:06]
Science Friday Initiative
Science Friday: The Scoop on Stretchy Ice Cream
A traditional Turkish ice cream stretches like silly putty. Find out about the chemistry that is responsible for the behavior of this dessert. [3:16]
Science Friday Initiative
Science Friday: Evidence: Forensic Photography as Art
Artist Angela Strassheim began her career as a forensic photographer in a crime lab. She soon left to focus on art full-time, but she didn't entirely leave the field behind. Her body of work, Evidence, is a documentary art project...
Science Friday Initiative
Science Friday: A Robot That Swims With the Fishes
Based on mathematical models of the movement of fish, Maurizio Porfiri, an engineering professor at Polytechnic Institute of NYU, designed a robotic fish. See how when Porfiri puts the robofish in the lab pool with real fish, the minnows...
Science Friday Initiative
Science Friday: Bird in Hand to Save Those in the Bush
Join orinthologists at Braddock Bay, a prime stop for migrating birds, as they explain what can be learned from the songbirds they observe.
Science Friday Initiative
Science Friday: Computer of Bubbles
Bubbles can do computations, says Stanford professor Manu Prakash. Just like electrons running through wires in your computer, Prakash and Neil Gershenfeld, of MIT, directed bubbles through tiny etched tubes and showed basic computations...
Science Friday Initiative
Science Friday: Lab Raised Heart
Build them the right home and cells will organize themselves into a tissue. Bioengineer Gordana Vunjak-Novakovic, of Columbia University, focuses on designing environments to grow hearts, bones and blood vessels. We stopped by to see a...
Science Friday Initiative
Science Friday: Bird Banders
Join a scientist from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology as he discusses and demonstrates proper bird banding.
Science Friday Initiative
Science Friday: On a Quest to See the Light
Edith Widder has been exploring the deep sea for thirty years. When she descended for the first time, she turned off the lights of her submersible hoping to see marine organisms that make light--bioluminescent animals. Widder says she...
Science Friday Initiative
Science Friday: Dive Into the Physics of Splashing
Everybody knows that when a stone is dropped in water, a jet of water shoots up. Physicists Detlef Lohse, from the University of Twente in The Netherlands, and Heinrich Jaeger, of The University of Chicago, are combining math, theory and...
Science Friday Initiative
Science Friday: Secret to the Leap? Not the Flea's Knees
Fleas are admirable jumpers -- a talent that humans have recognized for thousands of years, according to engineer Greg Sutton. Yet, until this week, exactly how fleas propel themselves wasn't understood. Sutton and Malcolm Burrows, of...