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This is StarTalk, Cosmic Queries edition.

And for this one, this is going to be our second occasion bringing Cosmic Queries to the Science's cool conference hosted by PocketLab.

Chuck, always good to have you as my co-host.

What's happening, Neil?

And these are questions coming from science school teachers from K through 12.

These are the people who have the future of civilization in their hands, which is the next generation of people who will rise up and become captains of industry and political leaders and whoever else will help to shape what civilization is and will become.

They're in their classrooms right now.

So let's get on with some of this Q&A, Chuck, what do you have?

This is all from the teachers and we've got some great questions here.

Let's just start off with Abby Gandhi.

She's coming to us from Ottawa.

I hope she's in the room with us now.

How can we encourage curiosity in all students, given our work and their limited resources and time in this coming year?

There seems to be a theme that's running throughout all the questions, the fact that we're learning remotely and that over digital platforms and that type of stuff.

But that notwithstanding, how do you encourage curiosity?

So I don't have a silver bullet there, but what I do know, and I've said this before, that kids, obviously we had kindergarten through upper high school represented among the teachers.

And children students are different at each of these stages, or I get that.

I can tell you, and you certainly know, those who teach kindergarten and first through fifth grades, that curiosity is just a built-in feature of what it is to be a kid.

And so I think for me, the task of teachers is not so much how to stimulate curiosity, but how to not squash the curiosity that's already there.

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