Dear Carlos,

Your question almost stumped me. I don’t really have dinosaur scientist pals. So, I turned to an expert on finding answers.

My friend Emily Cukier is a science librarian at Washington State University. She helps students and scientists find information. I asked her what dinosaur is the largest—and how she figures that out.

Cukier told me that I should think hard about my question. Are we looking for the tallest dino? The longest? The heaviest? Those might be different answers.

Then it’s time to ask the internet.

“I’m a librarian, but the first thing I would do is put it into … » More …

Dear Jacob,

I love vaccines. They keep us safe from germs that can make us sick. But I don’t love how much shots hurt. Sometimes I feel anxious before I visit the veterinarian for a vaccine.

I talked about that with my friend Roland Chen. He’s an engineer at Washington State University.

He’s working on brand-new needles that could make shots painless. They’re called microneedle arrays.

“You feel pain because the needle reaches the pain receptor,” Chen said. “Microneedles are much shorter than typical needles. They’re about one-third to half the size.”

Most vaccines are intramuscular injections. A trained healthcare provider gently slides … » More …

Dear Malachi,

Sometimes animated turtles seem to live inside their shells like it’s a tiny home. They may even hop out of the shell and run around.

That’s funny in cartoons and games, but my friend Ryan Wagner told me it could never happen in real life. He’s a wildlife biologist at Washington State University. He studies animals like turtles and frogs.

It turns out that a turtle’s shell doesn’t sit on top of its body. It’s part of the turtle’s body.

“Turtles are their shells,” Wagner said. “The shell is made up of their bones. As the turtle grows, its shell … » More …

Dear Anika,

My roommate is a normal cat. When she needs a treat, she smacks her lips. When she wants outside, she paws the door. But she never talks to me using words.

I asked Nancy Bell how my human friends developed language. She studies linguistics at Washington State University.

Bell told me that we don’t know exactly how or when it all started. All kinds of scientists want to figure that out.

“It’s just part of our species that we want to make meaning,” she said. “We want to communicate. That desire is what leads to language.”

Scientists use the word “hominin” … » More …

Dear Nghi,

When you and I take a deep breath, we pull air into our lungs. That’s because humans and cats are mammals. But fish aren’t mammals. They usually don’t breathe air. They usually don’t have lungs.

That’s what I found out from my friend Michael Berger. He’s a biologist at Washington State University.

He told me that you can actually see a fish breathe water. Its face gets bigger when it takes in a big gulp of water. Just like when you take a big bite of food.

When you look at a fish, you can usually see the gill openings—called gill slits. … » More …

Dear Joie,

After answering science questions all day, I like to play Mario. It’s relaxing to smash Goombas and zoom down pipes.

I asked my friend Dene Grigar if that’s wrecking my brain. She leads the Digital Technology and Culture program at Washington State University Vancouver.

She told me that sometimes people dismiss new things by calling them harmful.

That often happens with new technology or media. People reacted that way to railroads, telephones, cameras and television. People even freaked out about books. For a long time, books were hard to come by, and regular people couldn’t read. When that changed, folks worried about … » More …

Dear MacKenzie,

A neutron star is what’s left after a massive star runs out of fuel and explodes as a supernova.

I asked my friend Matthew Duez about it. He’s an astrophysicist at Washington State University.

He told me that a neutron star is the densest known object in the universe. Its mass is like the sun’s mass. But a neutron star is the size of a city.

When something is dense, it has lots of stuff—or mass—crammed into a small space.

Imagine if we took all the humans on the planet and squished them together. We mash and squash them until they fit … » More …

Dear Varish,

If we count all the species that humans have described so far, it’s about 2 million. New species get added all the time—about 15,000 of them every year.

But we have no idea how many species we’ve never met. Scientists think there could be 5 million species out there. Or maybe billions.

We’ll only know for sure when we describe all those organisms.

I asked my friend Rich Zack what that means. He’s an insect scientist at Washington State University.

He told me how we identify and name a new species.

Imagine we’re in my backyard collecting insects together. We see a … » More …

Dear Arielle,

Language changes all the time. Words get new meanings. New words get made up.

I talked about it with my friend Rich Zack. He’s an insect scientist at Washington State University. He does taxonomy. That’s the science of naming and classifying living things.

The way language changes is amazing—and skibidi. It’s neat that language morphs as we use it. But that can limit how well we understand each other. Some readers might see “skibidi” and think I passed out and hit random keys.

That’s the main reason scientists use Latin or ancient Greek to name things. They’re dead languages. Nobody uses … » More …

Dear Annika,

I’d love to read a creepy science fiction story where people dissolve.

I asked my friend Anders Omsland if that could happen. He’s a biomedical researcher at Washington State University.

He told me a lysosome is a specialized compartment in a cell. It’s like a little sack of digestive enzymes. Those are proteins that break stuff down. Our cells use lysosomes to help destroy germs or recycle old or messed up cell parts.

Lysosomes are basically the cell’s trash and recycling centers.

“I don’t think it’s possible for lysosomes to all pop at the same time,” Omsland said. “They don’t really explode … » More …