DESERT DUNES: Exploring the Science of Sand Avalanches🏜️🌪️

Fun Kids Science Weekly

Fun Kids

Education For Kids, Kids & Family, Science

4.4 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 11 October 2025

⏱️ 34 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Get ready for another adventure through space, nature, and the strangest corners of science on the BIGGER and BETTER Science Weekly!

This week, we’re answering YOUR questions, have scientists battle it out to decide which science is the best, and uncovering the surprising reason we have nails — and why they’re much more important than you might think!

In Science in the News, we’re diving into some earth-shaking discoveries! The world’s brightest minds have been honoured with this year’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry, celebrating breakthroughs that could change our future forever. Then, we look to the skies where renewable energy has officially overtaken coal as the world’s biggest power source, and travel thousands of years back in time with Professor Peter Bellwood, who reveals the world’s earliest evidence of mummification and what it tells us about ancient civilizations.

Then we dive into your questions: Evie wants to know why we have nails, and evolutionary biologist Greg Hurst is here to reveal the clever science behind them.

Dangerous Dan is back too, with another wild and deadly creature that’ll have you watching your step!

And in Battle of the Sciences, Nathalie Vriend joins Dan to explore the fascinating world of granular flows, revealing how sand dunes “talk” to each other and how avalanches made of sand can transform entire landscapes.

What do we learn about?
· Why we have nails
· The winners of this year’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry
· How renewables are beating coal
· The world’s earliest evidence of mummification
· A deadly new creature in Dangerous Dan
· And in Battle of the Sciences... how sand dunes “talk” to one another!

All on this week’s episode of Science Weekly!

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Fun Kids Science Weekly with Collins Space Tour.
0:05.0	Explore the solar system planet by planet in an out of this world adventure for young space explorers, written by the National Space Center.
0:14.4	Let's explore the universe. Welcome along. We're leaving planet Earth and searching for some science secrets across the solar system.
0:22.5	My name's Dan, and it's a brand new Fun Kid Science Weekly.
0:26.9	This week we'll take a look at your hands and your feet. Weird, but have you ever thought what your nails actually do and why we have them?
0:35.3	You can hear the clever reason behind that.
0:39.8	Nails like we have go all the way through primates. That's to say they're at us, they're in
0:44.4	chimpanzees, they're in monkeys. They're at all the primates. Primates became tree lovers,
0:49.5	and they became animals that swung from trees. And if you swing from trees, you need really good feeling in your fingertips.
0:56.9	Also, you've heard of snow avalanches, but there's another kind you might not expect made of sand.
1:05.9	So if the slope is too steep, it just starts to naturally av have a lens and the sand just slums down.
1:12.9	Sometimes in some dunes in the world, there are about 50 dunes that are known. If that happens,
1:18.3	it's not only the movement of the sand. It's actually a sound that's being generated.
1:23.9	And for our dangerous Dan, we're searching out one of the strangest materials in the world.
1:30.1	It's all on the way in a brand new Fun Kid Science Weekly.
1:36.9	Let's start with your science in the news.
1:39.2	The Nobel Prize for Chemistry has been awarded to Susumu Kitagawa, Richard Robson and Omar M. Yagi for their work on metal organic frameworks.
1:51.0	Now, the Nobel Prize, one of the biggest prizes that you can win in any field across the world.
1:57.7	Now, the scientists work, it's very smart.
2:00.0	It's all about how molecules can be built
2:02.2	together into structures or metal organic frameworks. They worked out how to build these constructions
2:09.8	with large spaces between them, which the gases and other chemicals can flow. So it's big things,
	...

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