In just a few years time, the students who have just graduated high school will be the ones in charge. What will that be like? And what is important to them?
This year, Cosmos joined forces with the National Youth Science Forum (NYSF) to produce Podcast Next Gen to give students interested in science a platform talk about important topics in their lives.
What were the most popular subjects: quantum; vaping; conspiracies; magpies, electric cars, and what is a snowflake? The world, it seems is in good hands.
If you missed out on them the first time, they’re all available in The Cosmos Podcast Feed, and we’ve included a selection below.
Magpies
If you want to hear the warble of a magpie while listening to a podcast, this one has that in spades! Elizabeth LOVES magpies, and wants everyone else to love them too.
She tells us about how they have their own awkward teenage phase, family issues and even rap battles.
Scrambled Eggs
Not everything needs to be vitally important for the world. Sometimes you just want to know how to best cook a scrambled egg! But as Lina found out, there’s a lot of science in making scrambled eggs.
Vaping
Unfortunately, if you’re a teenager you’ve probably been exposed to vaping. But one underreported part of the vaping problem is what to do with the waste.
Amy, who is also a casual bartender, knows way too many people with dead vape stashes under their bed, so she tries to find out how to get rid of them.
Electric Cars
Before Debunks did its own series on electric vehicles, Sascha wanted to know if her petrol car should have been an electric. Being both an environmentalist, and a motorsports fan on a budget was much harder than she thought.
Originally published by Cosmos as What science questions do year 12 students want to answer?
Jacinta Bowler
Jacinta Bowler is a science journalist at Cosmos.
They were published in the Best Australian Science Writing 2023.
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