Stephen Wolfram Livestreams

Science & Technology Q&A for Kids & Others (159 videos)

Weekly ask-me-anything about science & technology

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New episode streaming Friday, June 6, 2025 at 3:30pm ET. Submit your questions

Science & Technology Q&A for Kids & Others:
Science & Technology Q&A for Kids (and Others) [Episode 141] »

50 min

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Have you had a chance to try Apple's new VR headset? Do you think travel vlogging is a new possibility with the headset? Do you think motion sickness will be a problem with Apple's headset? Will AI courses be common in curriculums? If so, how would you approach the subject? Do you think VR headsets have any place in the classroom? Or maybe they're a new opportunity for remote learning? Can you explain the tech behind Apple's new headset? Is it a realistic everyday use item? I just can't seem to grasp a new trend of walking to get coffee and bumping into headset wearers. One thing I like: let the AI first ask a few basic questions and let the student define some words—not for judging them on it, but for gauging what they already know/understand. What would happen if I were walking at 90% the speed of light? What would I see looking through my Apple VR headset? What is a magnetic field and in what medium does it exist? Do you think it will be possible to make the headset smaller in the future? View Less »
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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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