Art as Therapy: How to Age Creatively
A new exhibition at the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C., showcases the work of elderly artists with memory loss and other chronic conditions
November 07, 2012 |
By Megan Gambino
Teaching Physics with a Massive Game of Mouse Trap
Mark Perez and his troupe of performers tour the country, using a life-sized version of the popular game to explain simple machines
October 19, 2012 |
By Megan Gambino
A New Great Depression and Ladies on the Moon: 1970s Middle School Kids Look to the Year 2000
The ideal future according to a ten-year-old: shorter school days, lower taxes, and lots and lots of robots
October 12, 2012 |
By Matt Novak
1987 Predictions From Bill Gates: “Siri, Show Me Da Vinci Stuff”
The co-founder of Microsoft worried that, in the information age, people would prefer synthesized reality.
June 27, 2012 |
By Matt Novak
Predictions for Educational TV in the 1930s
Before it became known as the "idiot box," television was seen as the best hope for bringing enlightenment to the American people
May 29, 2012 |
By Matt Novak
Jobs of the Future: How Accurate Were the Soothsayers of 1982 At Predicting Today’s Top Careers?
College graduates take note: Your dream career as a robot psychologist or nasal technologist is just around the corner
May 15, 2012 |
By Matt Novak
14 Fun Facts About Jellyfish
Number 8: One species may be immortal. It can play its lifecycle in reverse, transforming from an adult medusa back to an immature polyp
April 17, 2012 |
By Megan Gambino
One Library for the Entire World
In the years preceding the Internet, futurist books hinted at the massive information infrastructure that was to come.
February 21, 2012 |
By Matt Novak
Sunday Funnies Blast Off Into the Space Age
When Dr. Athelstan Spilhaus met President Kennedy in 1962, JFK told him, "The only science I ever learned was from your comic strip."
January 27, 2012 |
By Matt Novak
How to Measure the Moon this Weekend
The people of Byzantium viewed a lunar eclipse as a bad omen, but today it's just another time to do science
December 08, 2011 |
By Sarah Zielinski
1968′s Computerized School of the Future
A forward-looking lesson plan predicted that "computers will soon play as significant and universal a role in schools as books do today"
November 16, 2011 |
By Matt Novak
Ann Finkbeiner: Why I Like Science
As a way of working, it's wide-open, competitive, nit-picky and nerve-wracking; it's outright warfare
October 06, 2011 |
By Sarah Zielinski
The Boston Globe of 1900 Imagines the Year 2000
A utopian vision of Boston promises no slums, no traffic jams, no late mail deliveries and, best of all, night baseball games
October 04, 2011 |
By Matt Novak
Why Are Finland's Schools Successful?
The country's achievements in education have other nations doing their homework
September 2011 |
By LynNell Hancock
Do Kids Have Too Much Homework?
Across the United States, parents, teachers and administrators alike are rethinking their approach to after-school assignments
August 22, 2011 |
By LynNell Hancock
The Animaniacs’ Take On Science
A look into the intelligent humor of this 1990s-era cartoon
August 15, 2011 |
By Sarah Zielinski
The Cambrian Explosion in Song
What does a music teacher do when he ends up teaching science?
July 13, 2011 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Top Ten Kids’ Movies With a Green Theme
Loggers, hunters, developers, fishers, polluters and whalers are the evil villains in this movie genre
June 24, 2011 |
By Julie Mianecki
Why Scientific Ignorance Can Kill You
While working on this story from Smithsonian's May issue about oncologist Brian Druker and his discovery 10 years ago of a breakthrough drug for chronic myeloid leukemia, I was struck by the following passage:Over the pub’s blaring music Mayfield said of his BCR-ABL gene, “I had the G250E mutation—...
April 21, 2011 |
By Sarah Zielinski

