Welcome to the Kids' Science Challenge!

    Do you like science projects and winning some awesome gifts? This is the challenge for you. What's even better is that you don't have to build anything--simply come up with an original idea or design that relates to one of three topics given below.

Wonderful Sounds

    Ready for Wonderful Sounds? Click on Science Secrets to meet our sound specialist. And be sure to download fun activities with crazy new sounds and musical instruments in the Dig In section! Now what kind of new musical instrument can you invent?

Super Material for Sports

    Ready for Super Material for Sports? You'll discover the amazing world of Materials Science, where scientists and engineers develop new materials for everyday functions--like sports! Click on Science Secrets for information about our scientist. And don't forget to download the fun activities in the Dig In section! Now can you come up with a new sports material that would help you play your favorite sport?

Magical Microbes

    Ready to discover Magical Microbes, the tiniest living things on earth? Click on Science Secrets for information about our scientists. And be sure to download all the fun activities in the Dig In section! Now can you think of a brand new way that microbes can help people?

    It was a cold winter day. A woman drove up to the Rainbow Bridge tollbooth (收费站). “I'm paying for myself, and for the six cars behind me,” she said with a smile, handing over seven tickets. One after another, the next six drivers arriving at the tollbooth were informed, “Some lady up ahead already paid your fare.”

    It turned out that the woman, Natalie Smith, had read something on a friend's refrigerator: “Practice random(随意的，随机的) kindness and aimless acts of beauty.” The phrase impressed her so much that she copied it down.

    Judy Foreman spotted the same phrase on a warehouse wall far away from home. When it stayed on her mind for days, she gave up and drove all the way back to copy it down. “I thought it was beautiful,” she said, explaining why she'd taken to writing it at the bottom of all her letters, “like a message from above.” Her husband, Frank, liked the phrase so much that he put it up on the classroom wall for his students, one of whom was the daughter of Alice Johnson, a local news reporter. Alice put it in the newspaper, admitting that though she liked it, she didn't know where it came from or what it really meant.

    Two days later, Alice got a call from Anne Herbert, a woman living in Marin. It was in a restaurant that Anne wrote the phrase down on a piece of paper, after turning it around in her mind for days.

    “Here's the idea,” Anne says. “Anything you think there should be more of, do it randomly.” Her fantasies (imagination) include painting the classrooms of poor schools, leaving hot meals on kitchen tables in the poor part of town, and giving money secretly to a proud old lady. Anne says, “Kindness can build on itself as much as violence can.”

    The acts of random kindness spread. If you were one of those drivers who found your fare paid, who knows what you might have been inspired to do for someone else later. Like all great events, kindness begins slowly, with every single act. Let it be yours!

    I was selfish as a teenager. I usually spent my time thinking about myself and taking care of my own needs. I let my older brother do most of the work around the house until he left for college. I let my mom and dad worry about our bills and problems while I read books, played, and lost myself in my own imagination. This didn't change even when I went to college either. I studied hard but only to make my own life better. Even when I started to explore my faith, it was only to increase my own happiness.

    I married after graduation and decided to start a family. Of course, I had no idea what hard knocks reality had in store for my selfish soul. Soon I found myself unemployed, deeply in debt, and with a new baby on the way. l found out that life has little sympathy for spoiled people. In fact, all of the struggles I was going through were beating the selfishness slowly out of me.

    Still, I didn't give up on happiness. I knew that there must be a way to find it. I finally realized, however, that it had to include more than just my own needs, wants, and desires. The answer began to make itself clear one night shortly after my baby boy was born. I got a bottle and held him in my arms. As I was feeding him I looked down and saw his big, innocent, trusting eyes. I smiled and talked to him. Then he smiled and I could feel my heart growing, expanding with love. I felt such peace and joy. At that moment I had a hint of the truth: it is by growing our hearts with love that we find our happiness.

    Carolyn Arends wrote: "The more people you let into your heart, the bigger your heart gets. The more love you get, the more love you have to give. It just keeps growing." So, keep loving, keep living and keep caring. Keep growing your heart today, tomorrow, and always.

    A team of engineers at Harvard University in trying to create the first robotic fly. Designed to do what a fly does naturally, the tiny is the size of a fat housefly. Its mini wings allow it to stay in the air and perform controlled flight tasks.

    "The added difficulty with a project like this is that actually none of its components is off the shelf and so we have to develop them all on our own' said Robert Wood, a Harvard engineering professor.

    They engineered a series of systems to start and drive the robotic fly. "The seemingly simple system which just moves the wings has a number of interdependencies (相互依赖）on the individual components, each of which individually has to perform well, but then has to be matched well to everything it d connected to," said Wood.

    While this first robotic flyer is linked to a small, off-board power source, the goal is eventually to equip it with a built-in power source, so that it might someday perform data-gathering work at rescue sites, in farmers' fields or on the battlefield. "Basically it should be able to take off, land and fly around," he said.

    Wood says the design offers a new way to study flight mechanics and control at insect-scale. Yet, the power, sensing and computation technologies on board could have much broader applications." You can start thinking about using them to answer open scientific questions, you know, to study biology in ways that would be difficult with the animal, but using these robots instead" he said. "So there are a lot of technologies and open interesting scientific questions that are really what drives us on a day-to-day basis."

    How a few members of the animal kingdom handle the transition to adulthood?

    African elephants

These beautiful beasts come close to imitate teen rebellion. Calves spend a decade with their mothers in female-dominated groups —- and ladies stay there —- but adolescent boys leave mom for noisy crews of bros. In their 20s, they often downsize to smaller male groups.

    Orangutans (猩猩)

Slow metabolism allows these primates to survive food shortages —- times when weather makes ripe fruit scarce. But energy efficiency comes at a cost; growth and maturation take time. Orangutan mamas nurse their young longer than any other wild creature does.

    Orcas(逆戟鲸)

    Killer whales join their mother's familial group for life. This lasting-relationship seems to increase a pup's chance of survival; if mom dies  a young male (under 30) is three times more likely to die than a peer whose mother is alive. Risk of death post-mom-mortem rises as kids get older.

Harp seals

A harp seal's "childhood" lasts just 12 days. A pup's sole purpose during that brief period of coddling(宠爱) is to constantly nurse, gaining a fifth of its birth weight in blubber(鲸脂) every day. Once it's fat —- they become greater from 25 to 80 pounds —- it slides off the ice and takes on the sea.

    Wolf spiders

    Every parent knows that tired toddlers love to hitch a piggyback ride. The wolf spider straps all her babies (40 or 50, on average) onto her back at once, carrying the brood until they are capable of fully functional spider-hood. But luckily she only has to pull them for a few days.

    My teacher held up a piece of broken glass and asked, "Who broke this window?"

    Thirty boys tried to think about not only what they had done, but also what our teacher may have found out. She seldom became angry, but she was this time.

    "Oh," I thought. I was the one who broke the window. It was caused by a naughty throw of a baseball. If I admitted guilt, I would be in a lot of trouble. How would I be able to pay for a big window like that? I didn't even get an allowance. "My father is going to have a fit." I thought. I didn't want to raise my hand, but some force much stronger than I was pulled it skyward. I told the truth. "I did it." It was hard enough to say what I had.

    My teacher took down a book from one of our library shelves and I had never known my teacher to strike a student, but I feared she was going to start with me.

    "I know how you like bird," she said as she stood looking down at my guilt-ridden face. "Here is that field guide about birds that you are constantly checking out. It is yours now. It's time we got a new one for the school anyway. You will not be punished as long as you remember that I am not rewarding you for your misdeed, I am rewarding you for your truthfulness."

I couldn't believe it! I wasn't being punished and I was getting my own bird field guide—the very one that I had been saving up money to buy.

    All that remains of that day is my memory and the lesson my teacher taught me. That lesson stays with me every day, and it will echo forever.