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By Mike McRae and David Shaw Attracted to doing some hands-on science? Why not use a magnet to create a ‘reed switch’?

It’s three in the morning. Nature calls. You stagger from your bed, squinting in the darkness as you blindly weave your way past a bookshelf, around the glass cabinet, and down the corridor into the smallest room in the house. Not only do the scientists John O’Keefe, May-Britt Moser and Edvard Moser understand how your…

Getting out of bed some days feels like too much effort. If only night lasted all day, just like it does for the blind Mexican cavefish. Like the fish, you just might save some energy by living in an endless night.

January has been a busy month for CSIRO’s dragon experts, so we thought you might also enjoy reading about a living dragon found in the real world: the Komodo dragon!

Written by Justin McGuire This activity may splash some water around, so try it over a sink or outside.

Welcome to Double Helix magazine’s Q&A section – Microscope. We take a close look at small questions full of big ideas. Q: What makes some plants have purple leaves? The Helix reader, Sudashree from South Australia

Welcome to Double Helix magazine’s Q&A section – Microscope. We take a close look at small questions full of big ideas. Q: I would like to know how a Higgs boson gives other particles their mass?

Welcome to Double Helix magazine’s Q&A section – Microscope. We take a close look at small questions full of big ideas. Q: What is the weight of a rainbow?

Welcome to Double Helix magazine’s Q&A section – Microscope. We take a close look at small questions full of big ideas. Q: I want to know which is hotter, fire or lava? Or are they both the same?

Two centuries ago, nobody knew much about what made a single fertilised cell grow into a human. Or – for that matter – a dog, a sea urchin, a worm or a whale. The problem was nobody could imagine how a microscopic bag of chemicals could possibly split in half again and again, yet still…