Jesslyn Shields is a freelance science writer working out of Athens, Georgia. She writes about brand new research for HowStuffWorks. Since 2010, Jesslyn's written science news and content for educational videos, because she loves to always have something new to yammer on about at parties. You can find her online at www.jesslynshields.com

Recent Contributions

Niels Bohr proposed the model of the atom that we still learn in school today, even though it's technically incorrect.

By Jesslyn Shields

Gondwana was a humongous landmass that persisted for 300 million years before it began to break up, forming all the continents in the modern Southern Hemisphere.

By Jesslyn Shields

A research team has found that water acts strangely on an air-drying towel, which contributes to its signature stiffness.

By Jesslyn Shields

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It's possible that the giant, deadly serpent hanging out at the bottom of Fosse Dionne spring is just a legend, but divers have disappeared trying to find out, so who knows?

By Jesslyn Shields

The Collatz conjecture can be worked on by 9-year-old math whizzes, but it's flummoxed some of the greatest minds of the past century. Will it ever be solved?

By Jesslyn Shields

Dividing fractions is easy once you learn a couple of rules and remember three words — keep, change and flip.

By Jesslyn Shields

The Denmark Strait cataract dwarfs every other waterfall in the world, but you can't see it because it's deep under the Atlantic Ocean.

By Jesslyn Shields

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It's an important question, so come with us and we'll show you how to figure it out.

By Jesslyn Shields

When it comes to rivers, longest doesn't necessarily mean biggest, and length can be difficult to determine, so the top spot will always be debated.

By Jesslyn Shields

You could stack the Eiffel Tower, the Washington Monument and the Statue of Liberty in Crater Lake, the deepest lake in the U.S. But, do you know what the deepest lake in the world is?

By Jesslyn Shields

A strange, but surprisingly accurate, ancient Egyptian pregnancy test survived for millennia and was spread around Africa and Europe because it was just that effective.

By Jesslyn Shields

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You can't find trees taller than these behemoths. But do you know which is the tallest tree in the world?

By Jesslyn Shields

Numerators and denominators, oh my! It sounds complicated, but learning how to multiply fractions is easy. It just takes three simple steps.

By Jesslyn Shields

Entropy is the disorder of a system, but that means a lot more than making a mess of a room.

By Jesslyn Shields

Mammatus clouds, which are made from falling air instead of rising air, are one of the most spectacular cloud formations you'll ever see.

By Jesslyn Shields

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Finding the range of a set of numbers is an easy subtraction problem!

By Jesslyn Shields

The part of your cells that helps you recover from a hangover is shaped like a maze of tubes and is made of two parts — the rough endoplasmic reticulum and the smooth endoplasmic reticulum.

By Jesslyn Shields & Yara Simón

The curves of the Serpent Mound, Ohio state's massive and mysterious geological wonder, line up with the sun during equinoxes and solstices.

By Jesslyn Shields

Cousins are indeed complicated. Who's your first cousin once removed? What is a second cousin? And what are kissing cousins? We'll tell you.

By Jesslyn Shields & Austin Henderson

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The oceans take up most of the surface area of our planet and remain mostly unexplored. But how many oceans are there?

By Jesslyn Shields & Austin Henderson

The very idea of trying to subtract one fraction from another may send you into convulsions of fear, but don't worry — we'll show you how.

By Jesslyn Shields & Austin Henderson

While they may incite fear due to their impressive dimensions, these spiders play crucial roles in their ecosystems and have become subjects of significant scientific interest and study.

By Jesslyn Shields

A perfect square is a number, but it can also be explained using an actual square.

By Jesslyn Shields & Austin Henderson

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Cell division can be confusing, but it's not as difficult if you pretend chromosomes are sentences.

By Jesslyn Shields & Austin Henderson

Centrioles are spindles that create the pathways for chromosomes to follow during cell division.

By Jesslyn Shields