January 6, 2011
8 Year-olds Publish Scientific Paper in Peer Reviewed Journal Research on bees conducted by a class of 8-10 year olds was published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal, complete with crayon illustrations. In the paper published in Biology Letters, children from Blackawton Primary School reported that buff-tailed bumblebees can learn to recognize nourishing flowers based on colors and patterns. The paper is written entirely by the kids, who may be the youngest scientists ever to be published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal. Their principal finding: "We discovered that bumble-bees can use a combination of color and spatial relationships in deciding which color of flower to forage from. We also discovered that science is cool and fun because you get to do stuff that no one has ever done before." |