If you ever had a question about why animals are shaped certain ways or how your body gets sick, an ASU service is answering these questions. And people from around the world have been asking.
The service is called Ask A Biologist. Originally built to field questions from students and teachers in K-12 education, they found questions were coming from learners of all ages.
“Nowadays, we say we’re K to gray,” said ASU Professor Charles Kazilek, founder of the Ask A Biologist website.
Hosted by the School of Life Sciences, the site was launched in 1997 and is visited by over 15,000 people every day. The service has answered over 34,000 questions.
“We have the question come in and a graduate student sends the question -- after they vetted it -- to one of our more than 150 volunteers," Kazilek said. "When we first started, all of them were from Arizona State. But over time, we’ve gotten more volunteers from not only around the country but also the world.”
In 2014, the website was visited by every country in the world, including North Korea and even Antarctica. With a 72-hour turnaround response window, Kazilek said common questions they receive often align to what students are learning in class or what is topical in the media.
