By Claire Eamer
That's 500th blog post, not really 500th birthday -- just in case you're confused. And today's its publication day!
Way back in 2011, a few of us Canadian children's science writers decided to start a group blog. We called it Sci/Why. The name came courtesy of founding blogger Pippa Wysong, whose explanation is still in the title banner: "Canadian children's writers discuss science, words, and the eternal question - why?"
We thought it might be fun and interesting to mess around with the blog format for a little while -- and to let people know that (a) there are plenty of good Canadian kids' science writers and (b) what we're writing about. When we ran out of ideas or enthusiasm or time, we'd just shut the blog down. We thought.
Well, we haven't run out of ideas or enthusiasm yet. A few of us have run out of time to produce blog posts, but others have picked up the torch. And the blog carries on.
We've talked about everything from earthquakes (How big can an earthquake be?) to singing lice (The Singing Lice (that are not lice)), from fish sauce (Fishy Sauce and a Fishy Date) to fast travel (Terrifying Speed).
Most of our posts draw anywhere from a few hundred to a few thousand readers over time. That post about earthquakes might be the most popular of all, with more than 42,000 separate views -- and the number goes up every time a major earthquake hits (or, possibly, every time a teacher assigns a project on earthquakes). And -- for maybe less obvious reasons -- Shar Levine's 2011 post about a long-ago queen's trinket (Eleanor of Aquitaine Sundial) has garnered well over 10,000 views.
And that's just a taste of what you can find in Sci/Why. Drop by http://sci-why.blogspot.com/ any time and take a look around!
