Page Type: Elementary

If a teacher asked you to design something that could help people in need, what would you create? 

When 11-year-old Rebecca Young received this assignment for a school project, she wanted to help people experiencing homelessness in her home city of Glasgow, Scotland. Rebecca knew they needed something to help them keep warm during the cold winters. She wondered, what if they could have a portable warming device? 

Rebecca designed a solar-powered backpack that can charge an electric blanket inside the backpack. Solar panels on the backpack collect the Sun’s energy and turn it into electricity to power the blanket. This gives the backpack wearer a warm blanket anywhere they need one. 

“The idea came from seeing how hard it is for people living on the streets of Glasgow, especially during winter, and wanting to create something that could make a real difference,” Rebecca, who is now 13, told The Guardian.

Rebecca’s backpack design won an engineering award in the United Kingdom. An engineering company used her design to make 30 backpacks with blankets. The company donated the backpacks to charities that help Glasgow residents who are experiencing homelessness.

Now, Rebecca is among the 10 young people named in Time magazine’s Girls of the Year list, which recognizes young leaders who are inspiring their communities. 

“Knowing that something I came up with is helping others makes me feel really proud. By seeing themselves as builders, girls can challenge norms, pursue any passion, and shape the world,” said Rebecca.

When Sue Stejskal puts her dog Maple in a bright white suit, she’s not playing dress up. She’s preparing Maple for an important task. Maple, a 9-year-old English springer spaniel, uses her amazing sense of smell to identify disease in beehives.

Bees play an important role in maintaining our food supply. They’re pollinators, meaning they help plants, including farmers’ crops, to reproduce. But the bee population has been falling in recent years, due partly to the spread of deadly diseases that people sometimes cannot detect until it’s too late. That’s where dogs like Maple come in. Research shows that dogs’ noses are so sensitive that they can sniff out certain diseases.

Researchers at Michigan State University (MSU) are training dogs to use their noses to find American foulbrood, a bacterial disease that can destroy the hives of honeybees by killing bee larvae (young bees).

Most storybook trolls aren’t known for their friendliness, but one group of real-life wooden trolls is doing a very kind thing. The trolls, along with the artist who makes them, are trying to teach humans how to take better care of the planet.

Danish artist Thomas Dambo and his team have created more than 150 troll sculptures using old wooden boxes, pallets, furniture, and more. The giant trolls are located in more than 20 countries, including 21 U.S. states. No two trolls are the same. Dambo’s website includes a helpful troll map with information about each troll, including its name, its story, and where it can be found.

The trolls are fun, but there’s a serious message behind them. Humans throw away tons of garbage every year. Dambo’s use of recycled materials is meant as a reminder that we all need to reduce the amount of waste we produce.

“I believe that we can make anything out of anything,” Dambo told the Associated Press. “We are drowning in trash. But we also know that one man’s trash is another man’s treasure.”

Trolls have been story characters since well before books existed—a time when people told stories aloud. The creatures are said to live for thousands of years, which means they will have seen the effect that pollution and waste have had on the planet. Dambo says most of his trolls don’t like humans because of what they have done to planet Earth.

What does summer mean to you? For many people in the eastern United States, the season brings the magical glow of fireflies, or lightning bugs. That’s been especially true in the summer of 2025. It seems like fireflies are everywhere! But while more fireflies are lighting up the night sky this year, experts say the insects’ numbers are dropping overall.

Even if you don’t live in the eastern United States, chances are good that fireflies live in your area. There are more than 2,000 firefly species, and some species exist on every continent except Antarctica. Some firefly species are easier to see than others. Those in the eastern United States can be seen on warm evenings, when the males take to the sky and light up to attract mates.

What do you get when you combine hockey with snorkeling? Underwater hockey!

Underwater hockey—also known as Octopush—is just what it sounds like. It’s a hockey game that’s played completely underwater. Wearing goggles and flippers, players race around the bottom of a swimming pool using small hockey sticks to try to push a puck (a heavy disc) into the other team’s goal. Teams of players score points each time they make a goal. 

Kids have lots of questions, but it’s not every day that a kid’s question leads to a scientific discovery.

Guy German, a professor of biomedical engineering at Binghamton University, wrote an article explaining why our fingers get wrinkly during a long bath. The answer has to do with our blood vessels, the narrow tubes that carry blood to all parts of our bodies, including our fingers. When our fingers have been soaking for long enough, our skin absorbs water. The water decreases the amount of salt in our skin. When our salt levels are lower, our brains respond by constricting, or squeezing, our blood vessels. With our blood vessels even narrower, the skin around them folds inward, or wrinkles.

German’s article was written as part of a series that invites kids to send in their questions so that a scientist can answer them. After the article was published, German received a follow-up question from a young reader. The reader wanted to know if a person’s skin wrinkles in the same pattern every time it gets soaked. German didn’t have the answer, so he did what he knows how to do: He set up an experiment.

German and one of his students asked three people to soak their hands in water for 30 minutes. They then took photos of the pattern of wrinkles on each person’s fingers. The three people came back and did the same thing 24 hours later. It turns out, each person’s wrinkle pattern was the same.

Officials in California are building a bridge over a busy highway—not for people, but for animals. Located over U.S. Highway 101 in Southern California, the Wallis Annenberg Crossing will make it safer for wildlife to cross the road.

Wild animals depend on their habitat for food, shelter, and reproduction. But when a road goes right through that habitat, it puts those animals in danger by making it harder for them to reach the resources they need to survive. Animals that do try to cross the road are at risk of getting hit and killed. Experts are particularly concerned about a population of mountain lions living in the nearby Santa Monica Mountains.

Could you find your way on a long journey using only the stars? Some humans and birds can. But scientists recently learned that the bogong moth also has this ability—and they’re surprised, considering that the moth’s brain is smaller than a grain of rice!

Every spring, Australia’s bogong moths escape the heat by migrating (traveling) 620 miles (1,000 kilometers) south. Settling in a mountain range called the Australian Alps, they take shelter in cool caves and stay there all summer. 

Scientists noted that each generation of moths goes to the Australian Alps without ever having been there before. They wondered how the moths found their way. Some migrating animals use Earth’s magnetic field (our planet’s built-in compass) to sense which direction they’re facing. Others use the stars. Do bogong moths use either of these methods?

A wheelchair can cost thousands of dollars. For families of kids with disabilities, whose wheelchairs need to be replaced as they grow, the expenses add up fast. So an organization called MakeGood NOLA found a way to produce wheelchairs for a lot less money—by printing them out.

A 3D printer can produce just about any three-dimensional object if the user provides a design and some material, like plastic or metal. Anyone in the world with a 3D printer will be able to go to MakeGood NOLA’s website and download the free design for its printable wheelchair, called the Toddler Mobility Trainer (TMT). If they put the correct materials in the printer, they can print the TMT, part by part, and then put it together, with no tools required.  

“We designed this to be modular and easy to make. Really, anyone with a 3D printer and some [material] can download the files and print it,” said Noam Platt, an architect who founded MakeGood in 2021.

Many architects design buildings, but some design devices that can be used in health care. At MakeGood, Platt is part of a team of experts who design not only wheelchairs but also many other useful tools. They include a pen ball, a ball that fits over a pen and can make it easier to grip, and a phone cuff, which goes over the hand and makes a phone easier to hold. All of the designs are free to download and can be printed with a 3D printer. MakeGood also helps individuals by designing and printing items to fit their needs.

Millions of years ago, a dinosaur lumbered across ancient North America, leaving footprints in soft mud. The footprints eventually turned to rock and became frozen in time. Researchers now know these fossilized footprints belonged to the three-toed ankylosaurid, a new species of armored dinosaur with a stiff, sledgehammer-like tail. This is the first footprint discovery of this dinosaur type anywhere in the world.

Two sets of 100-million-year-old fossilized footprints—each made by a three-toed dinosaur—were found in the Canadian Rockies, a mountain range that goes across the Canadian provinces of Alberta and British Columbia. Paleontologists, scientists who study dinosaurs, have named the new species Ruopodosaurus clava. This species is related to ankylosaurs, armored dinosaurs that had four toes on each foot and a flexible tail.