Baby Mathletes

Goo goo … a-HA! This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science. When it comes to math skills, are we Born This Way? Elisabeth Spelke and Fei Xu from the Northeastern University of Boston went to the source: Babies! They seated sixteen six-month-olds in a comfy chair.

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Blockheads

Disordered building blocks of different colors

Are the building blocks for math skills… literal building blocks? This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science. Luis builds a tower. Kim builds a town. Rosie crashes in, and it all falls down! Building blocks are great for preschoolers playing pretend, but do they REALLY teach

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Bee Mathletes

What’s smarter than a talking horse? A spelling bee? This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science. Besides making honey, honeybees can communicate with dance, and even count! What CAN’T they do? Scarlett Howard from the Université de Toulouse BEE-searched this question. She tried to train bees

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Big Hoax

How many people does it take to fake a moon landing? This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science, saying: One to take a giant leap for mankind, and 399,000 to hold the fake scenery! It’s not a very good joke. But that number, 400,000, is totally

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Pick Your Battles

Democracy is all about civility… right? This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science. Conflict happens. Kids pull hair, spouses fight, politicians declare war. But democracies have voting power! Does that make us nicer than dictatorships? Meet political scientists Michael Gilbilisco, from Caltech, and Casey Crisman-Cox from

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Bubble Trouble

Am I tipsy, or are my beer bubbles….sinking?! This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science. Fans of the Irish stout, Guinness, are perplexed. The bubbles in their pints seem to…. sink! William Lee, a mathematician at the University of Portsmouth has BURST this case wide open!

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String Theory

Think filing your taxes is a pain? Imagine doing it in macramé! This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science. It may sound far-fetched but that’s exactly how the ancient Incas kept records. With colored, knotted strings called khipu. Colonial documents verify that khipu were used in

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In a Spin

When physicists get bored, curious things happen. This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science. Meet Mir Abbas Jalali of the University of California, Berkeley. He was playing with his wedding ring on his desk one day. Like you do. The ring wobbled and spun like a

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