The Science that matters to you

Welcome to Science World's Teen Issue. Here, you'll find an alphabetical assortment of articles that tackle the science behind the issues and activities that rule your teenage years. To kick off this issue, we polled 664 subscribers to find out how teens like you spend their days.

One discovery: Your busy lives may be wearing you out. Although the surveyed teens spent the biggest block of time snoozing, they averaged only 7.5 hours of sleep a night. According to the National Sleep Foundation, teens should log at least 8.5 to 9 hours. Do you get the recommended amount of shut-eye but still feel tired? For a possible reason, see page 29.

Other than snoozing, our teen responders spent most of their after-school hours watching T.V. And on average, students reported spending more than 10 hours at the gym or on the playing field each week. That's good news for the teen brain (see p. 9).

We also learned that 49 percent of the surveyed teens sport eyeglasses or contact lenses. Some of them may soon have the option of tossing out their specs (see pp. 16-17).

check out the rest of the survey results, and see how your average week compares. For more real life science, flip the page and tour the table of contents.

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