Sid Perkins | Science News for Students

BIO

  • Contributing Writer

Sid Perkins

For 10 years, Sid Perkins was the Earth Sciences writer for Science News magazine. In 2010 he left to become a freelance science writer, now living on a farm in Crossville, Tenn. But he remains part of the extended Science News family, writing stories for that magazine and ours. He still specializes in writing about Earth sciences and paleontology (dinos!) but also tackles topics such as astronomy, planetary sciences, materials sciences and engineering.
 
Sid has won awards for his writing from the American Meteorological Society and the American Astronomical Society’s Solar Physics Division.
 
Before coming to Science News, Sid taught high school for two years (physics, chemistry, algebra II) and served in the U.S. Air Force for 13 years. There, among other things, he used computer programs to estimate how quickly cracks would grow in aircraft parts. He has college degrees in natural science (with a concentration in physics), aeronautical engineering and journalism.
 
Explains Sid: “I love to read, enjoy woodworking, and have recently discovered golf (and am gradually, very gradually, getting better at it!).”

Sid's Content

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gun detected in waistband

Using thermal imagery and some sophisticated software, a Maryland teen has developed a system that can detect hidden weapons. Here, it reveals a simulated handgun tucked inside a waistband.

Andrew Karam

Eureka! Lab Young Scientists
Heating up the search for hidden weapons
A simple infrared-sensing camera and some fancy software can reveal the presence of a concealed knife or gun
orca snots

When killer whales surface to breathe, they start by expelling a mist — called a “blow” — which contains some of their DNA. A teen used DNA collected from that mist to look for a potentially key genetic difference in whales from several pods.

sergioboccardo/iStockphoto

Eureka! Lab Young Scientists
Orca snot leads to a whale of a science-fair project
Young scientist studies a gene to probe whether there is more than one species of killer whale
PRNG water

After Hurricane Maria wiped out power and running water last year in Puerto Rico, National Guard troops helped bring in much needed drinking water. The crisis inspired one 2018 Intel ISEF finalist to develop a do-it-yourself water-filtration system.

Puerto Rico National Guard/Flickr (CC BY 2.0)

Eureka! Lab Young Scientists
Hurricane crisis inspires teen’s water-cleanup system
Intel ISEF finalist filters contaminants from water using readily available parts
window washing robot

This robot can wash a skyscraper’s windows even in moderate winds, its Australian inventor reports.

O. Nicholls

Eureka! Lab Young Scientists
This robot can wash a skyscraper’s windows
Teen’s invention can spritz, wipe and squeegee clean the dirty panes on a high-rise building
pipette forest

This is not a garden but a collection of lab tools called pipettes. They’re used to move small amounts of fluid from one place to another. And these experimental designs are based on part of a liverwort, a type of plant. (10 millimeters equals 0.4 inch.)

K. Nakamura et al/Journal of the Royal Society Interface 2018

 Physics
An ancient plant inspires a new lab tool
This novel pipette can pick up and release tiny amounts of liquid
hairy tongue
Hair-like structures on the tip of some bats’ tongues help them slurp nectar far more efficiently than a smooth tongue would. Here these structures are shown up close.
Cally Harper/Brainerd-Swartz Laboratory at Brown University
 Animals
The secrets of super-slurper bat tongues
Hair-like structures help animals effectively scoop nectar with each dip