Vandaag weer eens sinds lange tijd geluisterd naar Science Friday van Ira Flatow.
Heerlijke onderwerpen, vaak vanuit de voorhoede van de technologie en research.
1 van de onderwerpen die ik beluisterd heb ging over de Flame Challenge. Een initatief van Alan Alda.
Het heet Flame Challenge omdat het ooit begonnen is met een eenvoudige vraag: wat is een vlam?
Wetenschappers of wie dan ook mogen vertellen wat het is, met als voorwaarde dat een 11 jarige het snapt! Hier links naar de voorgaande jaren: 2012, 2013 en 2014.

En Hier de Video winnaar van dit jaar

Er is ook een schrijvende winner:

Brandon Aldinger’s entry:

Danger! If you don’t sleep, you’ll die! Like us, almost all animals need to sleep—everything from fish, to horses, to birds. Even butterflies and worms sleep!

Although there’s still some mystery as to exactly why we sleep, we know that our body takes care of two big things while we’re sleeping. First, our brain organizes what it learned while we were awake. Your brain is made up of billions of cells called neurons. These neurons are connected in a huge network. While we sleep, our brain strengthens and rearranges these connections to help us remember things more quickly and easily when we are awake. So, the next time your mom or dad yells, “Wake up! It’s time to go to school!” you can explain to them that you were actually still studying from yesterday!

The second thing that happens during sleep is our body heals itself. Sleep is a little bit like a superpower. If you want to get over a cold quickly, make sure you sleep a lot. You might also have noticed that adults in your home don’t sleep as much as you do. That’s because your body needs more sleep to manage the stuff that happens while your body and brain are still growing.

So those are two reasons why we sleep, but what about dreams? Well, as your brain is calming down from being awake, parts of it shoot out random signals, like a TV station with too much static. Another part of your brain does its best to make sense of these signals, but the story it puts together can be pretty weird! Does anyone else dream about fighting a gang of mutant ninjas, or is it just me?

(86)