Stephen Wolfram Livestreams

Science & Technology Q&A for Kids & Others (152 videos)

Weekly ask-me-anything about science & technology

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New episode streaming Friday, December 27, at 3:30pm ET. Submit your questions

Science & Technology Q&A for Kids & Others:
Science & Technology Q&A for Kids (and Others) [Episode 140] »

1 hour 22 minutes

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Can you explain dark matter in layman's terms? Could dark matter just not be interacting with light/photons? If our universe is accelerating faster than the speed of light, does that mean we cannot see anything past the speed of light? So the "viscosity" of the Higgs field gives mass to particles? How might the topological stability and quantization of skyrmions, initially proposed as models for nucleons, relate to our understanding of gravity, considering their presence in solid-state physics? Can the probability of a random walk returning to its origin be another way of defining local dimension on a graph? I'm quite confused with heat/temperature and the general introduction of thermodynamics. Can you explain? View Less »
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Science & Technology Q&A for Kids & Others:
Science & Technology Q&A for Kids (and Others) [Episode 139] »

1 hour 15 minutes

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Why do you think there is matter at all? How does friction affect the motion of an object? On the topic of physics, what is the relationship between force, mass and acceleration? Can you explain the difference between static and kinetic friction in the context of Newton's laws? How do Newton's laws of motion apply to objects moving in circular motion? How would you structure a discussion on the introduction of physics? View Less »
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Science & Technology Q&A for Kids & Others:
Science & Technology Q&A for Kids (and Others) [Episode 138] »

1 hour 24 minutes

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​​Do we know enough neurobiology to assert that the human brain works differently from a machine learning or artificial intelligence model? How would you begin an introduction to chemistry course? How are chemical reactions balanced, and why is it important to balance chemical equations? Is it right to still use the periodic table today, or is it an order of the past? Is there research on computing outside of the classical (binary) and "quantum" states of electrons, for example biology-, chemical- or light-based data storage and processing? Molecules are graphs. The system of balancing molecules and equations is just a new variation of "this" equals "that." What strategies and techniques can be employed to effectively control and optimize chemical reactions for various practical applications, including maximizing yield, minimizing waste and achieving desired products? Molecular-level mechanisms govern the magnetic properties of materials. How do these mechanisms lead to phenomena like ferromagnetism, paramagnetism and diamagnetism? What about radioactive substance reactions? View Less »
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Science & Technology Q&A for Kids & Others:
Science & Technology Q&A for Kids (and Others) [Episode 137] »

1 hour 21 minutes

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​Can you tell us some not-widely-known insights about prime numbers? Are the distances between twin primes now quite well known, though? What does the factoring learned in an Algebra 2 class actually do in a real-life situation? ​​Assuming one-way functions don't exist, could the uncertainty given by a multiway function be able to save cryptography? ​​How can we prove this randomness on a big scale? ​​Could there be an inverse of the law of entropy increase? Something like under certain conditions, structural organization always increases? Which maybe gives rise to something like bioevolution? Is there really an infinite amount of primes? View Less »
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Science & Technology Q&A for Kids & Others:
Science & Technology Q&A for Kids (and Others) [Episode 136] »

1 hour 16 minutes

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How is it that animal species all look relatively similar, or at least similar across a breed (ex: dogs, golden retrievers), yet all humans have unique features? ​​What's your intuition for Euler's number, e? In the recent Halloween spirit, is there any science behind ghostly appearances? If an advanced civilization lived on Earth one billion years ago, would there be signs of their existence in today's time? How does photography work? How are we able to capture an image so easily, whether on film or on a phone screen? Kind of a similar topic: how do mirrors reflect images, and can we trust these images or do they change our perception? Is there a number like e or π that instead of being small (under 10) is big (like over 100)? How do these numbers get specific notation/names? How many digits of pi can you recite at this moment? View Less »
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Science & Technology Q&A for Kids & Others:
Science & Technology Q&A for Kids (and Others) [Episode 135] »

1 hour 8 minutes

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Is it possible that individual particles have a halo of dark matter, like galaxies have? ​How is antimatter made in the lab, and what makes it so difficult to produce? ​​I am curious about your perspective on the recent unveiling of smart glasses equipped with AI assistants (LLMs) by Meta. Do you see this development as a natural evolution of smartphones? But was the separation of matter and antimatter proposed by Feynman, or earlier? And how can this be measured by experiment? Are there anti-neutrons? Anti-elements? Does technology behave differently depending on outside factors (such as atmospheric pressure, temperature of weather, gravity, etc.)? Is there an ideal environment? Deionized (distilled) water won't conduct.​ How about solar flares? How do they affect technology? A gamma ray burst hit us last year about this time. It was called the BOAT (biggest of all time). Did we learn anything new from the data from that burst? What determines the color of a leaf when the weather changes? Why are some yellow, some orange and some red? Could there be nanites waiting for more favorable conditions to multiply (nanometer-size robots or organisms) in the samples we brought back from the asteroid Bennu? How could we be sure there aren't any?​ View Less »
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