Leah Ceccarelli is a professor of communication and author of the book "On the Frontier of Science: An American Rhetoric of Exploration and Exploitation." She answered a few questions about the book ...

Here at Science Friday, we’re big fans of metaphors. They can make complicated scientific concepts easier to understand, for both non-experts and scientists themselves. For example, “the big bang” ...

As my teaching winds down for the academic year, I’ve just given my last undergraduate science writing workshop – a sort of gun-for-hire side hustle that, via word-of-mouth, has gradually spread ...

Poet laureate of the United States Tracy K. Smith. Credit: Shawn Miller/flickr/CC BY 2.0 Read excerpts of Tracy K. Smith’s poems, “My God, It’s Full of Stars” and “Watershed.” Read excerpts of Rafael ...

For decades, debates about gender and science have often assumed that women are more likely than men to “leak” from the science and engineering pipeline after entering college. However, new research ...

In a common metaphor used to describe human fertilization, sperm cells are competitors racing to penetrate a passive egg. But as critics have noted, the description is also a 'fairy tale,' rooted in ...

This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American Metaphors are our shortest stories. They are ...

No matter if you're in school or well past your days in English class, figures of speech are used every day in our lives. From songs and television shows to conversations and advertisements, we often ...