Joel Achenbach

By Larry Bock Founder and organizer, USA Science & Engineering Festival The world runs on science and math, but let's face it, to get this across effectively to young students we sometimes have to get a little, well... messy. No one knows this better than math and science author Sean Connolly who's gained a reputation with kids and teachers alike for breathing life into such potentially stuffy scientific tenets as Boyle's Law and Bernoulli's Principle through hands-on demonstrations and experiments that involve everything from potato guns and cola geysers to film-canister rockets and…

By Larry Bock Founder and Organizer, USA Science & Engineering Festival Planet Earth -- that fragile blue marble in space that we call home -- deserves better from all of us, I think we would agree. And for good reason. With such issues as energy, pollution, conservation and sustainability, and climate becoming rising worldwide concerns, it behooves everyone to do their part to make sure she thrives -- and survives. NASA astronaut Ron Garan said last year after returning from spending more than five months on the International Space Station situated 250 miles above Earth: "I looked down…