Moment of Um

Airplanes fly high in the sky and at super fast speeds. But is there a limit to how fast they’re allowed to fly? You know, in the way cars have speed limits? For this episode, we talked to Bobby Sharp, an air traffic controller, who helps us understand if airplanes have a need for speed.Got a question you need answered fast? Send it to us at BrainsOn.org/contact, and we’ll try our plane old best to get it answered!

Have you ever been to the doctor and had them listen to your body with a stethoscope? It’s that funny looking thing that looks like a long rubbery tube with a round metal circle on one end and two ear pieces on the other. Doctors always seem to have one handy, but what is it and how does it work? We asked pediatrician Emma Gerstenzang to help us find the answer.Got a question that you need scoped out? Send it to us at BrainsOn.org/contact, and we’ll prescribe you an answer!

Most of us know that we have a heart. We know that it beats - sometimes faster, sometimes slower. But just how many times does it beat in a day? We asked Dr. Courtney Jordan Baechler to have a heart-to-heart with us about this question. (She is also the host of the podcast Heart-to-Heart Conversations!)Got a question that you just love? Send it to us at BrainsOn.org/contact, and we won’t beat around the bush!

Have you ever seen a sinkhole? These are spots in the Earth’s surface where the ground has collapsed and formed a hole. Sometimes they can be more than a hundred feet deep! But how do sinkholes form? We asked geologist Hazel Barton to help us find the answer.Got a question that’s a real hole in one? Send it to us at BrainsOn.org/contact, and we’ll help dig up the answer!