Alan Alda Challenges Scientists Again in This Year’s Flame Challenge

Alan Alda and the Stony Brook University Center for Communicating Science are challenging scientists to answer a fundamental question asked by 11-year-olds around the country: What is time?   That is the question for this year’s edition of the Flame Challenge, an international contest that asks scientists to communicate complex science in ways that would interest and enlighten an 11-year-old. The Flame Challenge began last spring with actor and science advocate Alan Alda’s childhood query: What is a flame?


Scientists have until March 1, 2013, to submit their answers in writing, video or graphics. The entries will be screened for scientific accuracy — and then judged by 11-year-olds around the world. More than 5,000 children already have registered through their schools to serve as Flame Challenge judges. We expect to have two winners, one each for written and visual entries. The winning scientists will receive a trip to New York City, where they will be honored at the World Science Festival on June 1, 2013. The Flame Challenge is being generously sponsored this year by the American Chemical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

The annual Flame Challenge contest is part of the Center for Communicating Science’s mission of helping scientists communicate more effectively with the public. Located in Stony Brook University’s School of Journalism, the Center gives innovative Communicating Science courses for graduate students in the sciences, and conducts workshops around the country. Alan Alda is a founding member of the Center for Communicating Science and a Visiting Professor in the School of Journalism.

For more information on entering or judging the contest, or to see last year’s top entries, please visit    To choose this year’s challenge, the Center for Communicating Science collected about 300 questions from children, ranging from “Does the universe have a known end?” and “How does the brain store all that information?” to “Why are Shetland ponies so small?”   The question “What is time?” was submitted by students around the country. Some asked exactly that question, and others asked related questions, such as: How do you make a time machine? Why can’t you go back in time? Is time an arrow? Is it a wave? How can you tell what time it is without looking at a clock? How many dimensions are there? How did time begin?

Sydney Allison, 11, a sixth-grader at Gomm Elementary School in Reno, Nevada, and Simon O’Rourke, 10, a fourth-grader at F.E. Bellows Elementary School in Mamaroneck, New York, were selected to represent those questioners.   Simon explained his idea of time this way: “The people who thought of time did it just to explain movements, like a year is just the movement of the earth around the sun and a day is just the movement of the earth. And that’s what I think time might be. That’s the best I can explain it.”




Name (required)

Mail (will not be published) (required)