Shhh! We're going inside Amazon's super-secret chip design lab! But not the kind where they invent new potato chips. Amazon gave the BBC a rare look inside Annapurna Labs, where engineers design custom computer chips that power artificial intelligence.
Their teams oversee the entire process, from testing newly built silicon chips to making sure they're ready to be installed in massive data centers. These chips are the brains behind AI tools that millions of people use every day — from chatbots and translation apps to online shopping recommendations and voice assistants. Each chip can perform more than 1,000 trillion calculations every second. If you solved just one calculation every second without ever stopping, it would take about 80 million years to do the same amount of work!
There are companies that specialize in making chips, but Amazon designs its own to help make AI systems faster, more energy-efficient, and less expensive to operate. As AI becomes more powerful and more common, Amazon is competing with companies like Google, Microsoft, and Nvidia to build the chips that will power the next generation of AI.
Feeling stressed? Try reading this out loud!
Researchers have found that reading together can help strengthen bonds and reduce stress. In a recent study, families were asked to read together while wearing a brain monitoring cap that tracks activity over time. The results suggested that moments of shared reading can sync brain patterns between two people, which then suggest that the experience of reading books together helps parents and children connect.
Furthermore, the importance of stories themselves can’t be ignored. Stories are how people explain the world and their lives to one another — the decisions you make and the person you become are partially influenced by the stories you’ve read or heard. The research is very new, but studies of this sort can help us understand why reading together builds empathy, focus, emotional well-being, and might support children’s development and encourage a lifelong love of reading. And not just because a good story might distract two siblings for long enough to stop flicking each other’s ears!
Being an astronaut is no joke — for your brain and your body to be prepared, you need to train, not unlike sports or school. Want to train for a soccer match? You may need to go for runs or lift weights. Need to prepare for a math test? You may need to repeat your times tables. Going into space soon? You may need to put on a space suit and get strapped into a full-sized replica of the International Space Station, then submerged in a 12-meter (40-foot!) deep pool for six hours. At least, that’s what astronaut Rosemary Coogan did to make sure she was ready for her spacewalk.
Coogan was chosen from 22,000 applicants to become a European Space Agency astronaut and may be the first Englishwoman to set foot on the moon.
Space preparation is daunting, but she had teams of supporters like divers and control room workers to make sure she was safe. The spacewalk test is meant to make sure that Rosemary could survive the conditions off of earth, even when things don’t go according to plan.
In Can Young Blood Reverse Aging?, Dr. Michael Mosley explores historical experiments where scientists transfused young mouse blood into older mice to study aging. The results suggest surprising improvements in brain function and cell regeneration, raising questions about whether similar approaches could one day work in humans. This video is excerpted from BBC’s The Wonderful World of Blood, in which Dr. Michael Mosley carries out six experiments on his own blood, from starving it of oxygen to injecting it with snake venom.
Dive into this curated playlist of clips from Got Science?, the BBC’s magazine-style series that unpacks the science behind everyday life. From why we melt at baby animals to why scary movies make us jump, each episode reveals the surprising biology and behavior shaping our world. Students can explore questions like why flies are nearly impossible to catch and why bedbugs are so tough to defeat. Every video includes discussion questions, writing prompts, and more to spark curiosity and critical thinking in middle and high school classrooms.
Explore the five senses like never before! Dive into 10 fascinating BBC videos from shows like Got Science? and Secrets of Skin that uncover the amazing science behind how we see, hear, smell, taste, and touch. Students will discover why food tastes different on an airplane, how smell involves more than just the nose, why our eyes make emotional tears, how sound can change flavor, and how fingertips and smell receptors send powerful signals to the brain. It’s a fun, surprising look at the hidden connections between the brain and our everyday experiences.
This video playlist brings together 10 fascinating clips from the BBC’s Got Science? series, where everyday questions lead to surprising scientific discoveries. Students explore what’s really happening in the body and brain — from what your brain is doing during sleep paralysis to what it truly means to be “left-brained” or “right-brained.” They’ll investigate what happens when the body becomes dehydrated, how cold temperatures and high altitudes affect how we function, and the unexpected ways our bodies trick us every single day. Packed with “What! Really?” moments, this weird-but-wonderful playlist helps learners connect real science to daily life in unforgettable ways. Get ready to see the familiar become fascinating.
Muffin, it's my turn! Talk to your class about the importance of listening and sharing through the Bluey episode "Faceytalk." Because we all know what happens when you hog! The lesson includes printables for three activities in which kids use a bubble map to brainstorm five different ways to share, listen to complete a directed drawing of Bluey in front of her house, and play a Bluey twist on Simon Says.
Faceytalk Episode Summary: Bluey and Bingo love to video chat with Muffin and Socks so they can all draw pictures together. When Muffin won’t give Socks a turn, the kids discover what happens when you hog.
Watch the episode here! (Click here to watch in Australia.)
Get ready for cuteness overload with this heartwarming playlist of baby animal videos! Watch ducklings wobble, elephants splash, wildebeests race, seals snooze, and otters play with endless charm. Perfect for captivating your class while sneaking in a little science, these clips will have your students saying “aww” while you say, “This totally counts as learning!”
What if school started so early that your brain felt like it was the middle of the night? For a lot of teens, that’s actually what’s happening.
One school decided to take the science seriously. Researchers have found that during adolescence, your body clock shifts later — meaning you naturally fall asleep later and wake up later. So when teens are forced to get up at 7 a.m., it’s not just “early”… it’s the biological equivalent of an adult waking up at 4:30 a.m. Imagine trying to learn, focus, and take tests at that hour every single day.
Instead of ignoring this, the school changed its start time to better match how teenage brains actually work. The goal? Help students get enough sleep, feel more awake in class, and stop the cycle of constant exhaustion.
It raises a big question: if we know teens’ brains are wired this way, should more schools rethink their schedules too?
“I’ll ask ChatGPT” is probably something you hear (and say) more and more these days. With AI here to stay, schools are thinking about how to handle the situation.
AI tools like ChatGPT may seem like a quick fix to homework you don’t want to do, but it struggles with the kind of higher-level thinking that students need to be demonstrating. It also has giveaways like repeating questions, offering surface-level answers, and even giving fake or inaccurate references!
But, instead of flat-out banning AI, universities are teaching students how to use it properly. You shouldn’t (and probably can’t) get answers straight from ChatGPT, but there’s a way to use it for initial brainstorming, or as a starting point. After that, students still need to go the extra mile. The goal is to encourage students to learn how to use AI to work with, not instead of, their brains.
The article "Why Cheese Tastes So Good ... and Smells So Strange!" from BBC's Science Focus explores why cheese is so delicious and sometimes smelly. It explains how bacteria and fungi change milk into cheese and create its unique flavors. The article also looks at why our brains crave cheesy foods and why we enjoy strange smells in cheese.
Shhh! We're going inside Amazon's super-secret chip design lab! But not the kind where they invent new potato chips. Amazon gave the BBC a rare look inside Annapurna Labs, where engineers design custom computer chips that power artificial intelligence.
Their teams oversee the entire process, from testing newly built silicon chips to making sure they're ready to be installed in massive data centers. These chips are the brains behind AI tools that millions of people use every day — from chatbots and translation apps to online shopping recommendations and voice assistants. Each chip can perform more than 1,000 trillion calculations every second. If you solved just one calculation every second without ever stopping, it would take about 80 million years to do the same amount of work!
There are companies that specialize in making chips, but Amazon designs its own to help make AI systems faster, more energy-efficient, and less expensive to operate. As AI becomes more powerful and more common, Amazon is competing with companies like Google, Microsoft, and Nvidia to build the chips that will power the next generation of AI.
Feeling stressed? Try reading this out loud!
Researchers have found that reading together can help strengthen bonds and reduce stress. In a recent study, families were asked to read together while wearing a brain monitoring cap that tracks activity over time. The results suggested that moments of shared reading can sync brain patterns between two people, which then suggest that the experience of reading books together helps parents and children connect.
Furthermore, the importance of stories themselves can’t be ignored. Stories are how people explain the world and their lives to one another — the decisions you make and the person you become are partially influenced by the stories you’ve read or heard. The research is very new, but studies of this sort can help us understand why reading together builds empathy, focus, emotional well-being, and might support children’s development and encourage a lifelong love of reading. And not just because a good story might distract two siblings for long enough to stop flicking each other’s ears!
Being an astronaut is no joke — for your brain and your body to be prepared, you need to train, not unlike sports or school. Want to train for a soccer match? You may need to go for runs or lift weights. Need to prepare for a math test? You may need to repeat your times tables. Going into space soon? You may need to put on a space suit and get strapped into a full-sized replica of the International Space Station, then submerged in a 12-meter (40-foot!) deep pool for six hours. At least, that’s what astronaut Rosemary Coogan did to make sure she was ready for her spacewalk.
Coogan was chosen from 22,000 applicants to become a European Space Agency astronaut and may be the first Englishwoman to set foot on the moon.
Space preparation is daunting, but she had teams of supporters like divers and control room workers to make sure she was safe. The spacewalk test is meant to make sure that Rosemary could survive the conditions off of earth, even when things don’t go according to plan.
In Can Young Blood Reverse Aging?, Dr. Michael Mosley explores historical experiments where scientists transfused young mouse blood into older mice to study aging. The results suggest surprising improvements in brain function and cell regeneration, raising questions about whether similar approaches could one day work in humans. This video is excerpted from BBC’s The Wonderful World of Blood, in which Dr. Michael Mosley carries out six experiments on his own blood, from starving it of oxygen to injecting it with snake venom.
Dive into this curated playlist of clips from Got Science?, the BBC’s magazine-style series that unpacks the science behind everyday life. From why we melt at baby animals to why scary movies make us jump, each episode reveals the surprising biology and behavior shaping our world. Students can explore questions like why flies are nearly impossible to catch and why bedbugs are so tough to defeat. Every video includes discussion questions, writing prompts, and more to spark curiosity and critical thinking in middle and high school classrooms.
Explore the five senses like never before! Dive into 10 fascinating BBC videos from shows like Got Science? and Secrets of Skin that uncover the amazing science behind how we see, hear, smell, taste, and touch. Students will discover why food tastes different on an airplane, how smell involves more than just the nose, why our eyes make emotional tears, how sound can change flavor, and how fingertips and smell receptors send powerful signals to the brain. It’s a fun, surprising look at the hidden connections between the brain and our everyday experiences.
This video playlist brings together 10 fascinating clips from the BBC’s Got Science? series, where everyday questions lead to surprising scientific discoveries. Students explore what’s really happening in the body and brain — from what your brain is doing during sleep paralysis to what it truly means to be “left-brained” or “right-brained.” They’ll investigate what happens when the body becomes dehydrated, how cold temperatures and high altitudes affect how we function, and the unexpected ways our bodies trick us every single day. Packed with “What! Really?” moments, this weird-but-wonderful playlist helps learners connect real science to daily life in unforgettable ways. Get ready to see the familiar become fascinating.
Muffin, it's my turn! Talk to your class about the importance of listening and sharing through the Bluey episode "Faceytalk." Because we all know what happens when you hog! The lesson includes printables for three activities in which kids use a bubble map to brainstorm five different ways to share, listen to complete a directed drawing of Bluey in front of her house, and play a Bluey twist on Simon Says.
Faceytalk Episode Summary: Bluey and Bingo love to video chat with Muffin and Socks so they can all draw pictures together. When Muffin won’t give Socks a turn, the kids discover what happens when you hog.
Watch the episode here! (Click here to watch in Australia.)
Get ready for cuteness overload with this heartwarming playlist of baby animal videos! Watch ducklings wobble, elephants splash, wildebeests race, seals snooze, and otters play with endless charm. Perfect for captivating your class while sneaking in a little science, these clips will have your students saying “aww” while you say, “This totally counts as learning!”
What if school started so early that your brain felt like it was the middle of the night? For a lot of teens, that’s actually what’s happening.
One school decided to take the science seriously. Researchers have found that during adolescence, your body clock shifts later — meaning you naturally fall asleep later and wake up later. So when teens are forced to get up at 7 a.m., it’s not just “early”… it’s the biological equivalent of an adult waking up at 4:30 a.m. Imagine trying to learn, focus, and take tests at that hour every single day.
Instead of ignoring this, the school changed its start time to better match how teenage brains actually work. The goal? Help students get enough sleep, feel more awake in class, and stop the cycle of constant exhaustion.
It raises a big question: if we know teens’ brains are wired this way, should more schools rethink their schedules too?
“I’ll ask ChatGPT” is probably something you hear (and say) more and more these days. With AI here to stay, schools are thinking about how to handle the situation.
AI tools like ChatGPT may seem like a quick fix to homework you don’t want to do, but it struggles with the kind of higher-level thinking that students need to be demonstrating. It also has giveaways like repeating questions, offering surface-level answers, and even giving fake or inaccurate references!
But, instead of flat-out banning AI, universities are teaching students how to use it properly. You shouldn’t (and probably can’t) get answers straight from ChatGPT, but there’s a way to use it for initial brainstorming, or as a starting point. After that, students still need to go the extra mile. The goal is to encourage students to learn how to use AI to work with, not instead of, their brains.
The article "Why Cheese Tastes So Good ... and Smells So Strange!" from BBC's Science Focus explores why cheese is so delicious and sometimes smelly. It explains how bacteria and fungi change milk into cheese and create its unique flavors. The article also looks at why our brains crave cheesy foods and why we enjoy strange smells in cheese.