Are boys doing better than girls at maths and science?

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK.

GiveMeTheVin.com is the best place to sell your classic or collectible, whether it's one car or an entire collection.

GiveMeTheVin want your muscle car, hot rod, or your old square body pickup, and they love buying resto mods.

Go to givemeTheVin.com today to sell your classic or collectible and avoid sellers' commissions, tire kickers, and low ballers on the internet.

It's as simple as going to givemethevin.com and entering your car's VIN number or license plate number.

GimmeTheVin.com is America's best car buyer.

Stop settling for weak sound.

It's time to level up your game and bring the boom.

Hit the town with the ultra-durable LG X-Boom portable speaker and enjoy vibrant sound wherever you go.

Elevate your listening experience to new heights because let's be real, your music deserves it.

The future of sound is now with LG Xboom.

And for a limited time, save 25% at LG.com with code FALL25.

Bring the boom.

X-Boom.

BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts.

You're listening to BBC Inside Science, first broadcast on the 13th of March, 2025.

Hello, I'm Professor Ben Garrett.

This week, have boys really jumped ahead of girls in maths and science?

And what mind-blowing effect does spending a long time in space have on the human body?

Science journalist Caroline Steele is here with me to bring her favourite stories of the week.

And she's also going to help us with a bit of a spinny space-themed studio experiment later on to find out.

Hi, Caroline.

Nervous?

Yes, I get every kind of travel sick, so anything involving spinning?

Yeah, not feeling great about that.

Can't see a problem there at all.

Can you give us a little taste of what we've got this week lined up?

So I've got an update on the Athena lander.

A chance for us all to see something very special in in the sky tonight, the latest on the environmental impact of the collision involving an oil tanker off the coast of Hull, and here's a clue for my final story.

Who was the first electricity detective?

Um, don't know.

Sherlock Ohms.

Okay.

But first.

There's a big gender gap between boys and girls in maths and science.

That's according to a new report out this week.

Boys in England in years five and nine, nine, that's ages nine and ten and thirteen and fourteen, are now significantly outperforming girls in both subjects, the report Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study suggests.

And the researchers say this gender gap is mirrored in other similar countries like Australia and the USA.

To explore what might be going on here, I'm joined by physicist Dr.

Jess Wade from the Imperial College London and maths teacher and national numeracy ambassador, Bobby Siegel.

Jess, before we get stuck in, you have thoughts on how this study was conducted, which you feel may have impacted the findings.

Is that right?

Yeah, I do.

This is a really interesting result, but the way that this exam was actually taken is that it's this kind of international maths and science assessment that actually this year or this cohort for the first time was performed digitally.

So the school groups did the tests on computers in their classrooms rather than doing them with kind of pencil and paper like they used to.

And there's quite a lot of evidence actually that girls particularly find that kind of transition to digital skills quite challenging.

They question their own ability, they have kind of fear of making guesses and particularly in things like multiple choice.

None of that is because of their mathematical or scientific prowess.

It's just about how they approach that kind of digital transition in the examination.

So that's why I think that we could be seeing these kind of slightly bizarre results.

Okay, well we have a statement from University College London who carried out the study.

They confirmed the way they present the test has changed on screen instead of on paper.

They agree with you Jess that there is evidence boys and girls can react differently on screen compared to on paper and this might mean some differences in individual scoring but they say not enough difference that they would expect to see such a gap in achievement between boys and girls.

But back onto that, you've actually questioned whether there's a gap at all.

Is there actually a problem do you think?

I think we've got a huge problem in how we support young women from kind of young ages into kind of throughout their scientific careers.

The interesting thing in this data actually is that the students who perform the exam or take the test in year five, there's no big difference in gender.

So boys and girls perform equally as well in maths and in sciences.

It's only when they get to kind of teenage years towards year nine that you start to see these differences emerging.

That indicates this isn't due to their ability.

It's not because boys are different in maths and sciences to girls.

It's actually to do with what happens when they're growing up and the types of stereotypes they experience or the way that they're developed from a kind of confidence perspective to pursue these types of subjects.

So if we're seeing that huge shift from year five to year nine, we know that we need to do more to support young women in those early ages, in those early years of secondary school, so they feel just as confident in their mathematical and scientific ability as their male counterparts.

And Bobby, are you seeing the same sort of thing in maths from your perspective?

Yes, as a school teacher, and I've been in school secondary and sixth form for more than a decade and also working now as a math specialist in a primary school.

Again, a lot of it's to do with confidence.

In fact, early this week, National Numeracy published a report on numeracy for gender equality.

And one of the bits of data was about maths anxiety.

They found out that women in the UK are actually twice as likely as men to feel anxious about using maths and numbers, even if they've got strong numeracy skills.

And I think the data was nearly one in four women, about 24%, feel nervous about numbers compared to about 12% of men.

So clearly, we've seen before,

from year five, year six, again, even as a teacher, it's not anything to do with innate ability, but I think there's other complicated factors to do with stereotyping, societal expectations and culture that play a part in this.

So you both mentioned confidence now and Jessie mentioned this first.

What do we think might be going on?

Why are we seeing that disparity between the confidence levels in boys and girls as they age?

I think it's about how much support they get both from kind of their teachers and also from their parents.

There's quite a lot of evidence that parent influences young women's perceptions of a subject so if kind of your parents continuously say oh maths is boring or i found maths really hard girls who are incredibly able can kind of internalize that and start thinking oh gosh i find maths really hard that's something that i'm not really confident in so there's certainly that kind of grown-up parental influence there's also the impact of teachers there's the type of careers advice we give young people you know are we telling these young people there are going to be so many extraordinary jobs in artificial intelligence and quantum technologies and in semiconductors if you pursue these types of subjects at school.

That kind of advice is really, really critical to getting young people engaged with a subject.

And at the moment, I just don't think we're doing it well enough.

You mentioned engagement there.

So, Bobby, you're obviously as a teacher, you're at the front line of this in the classroom.

Do you see differences in the way the boys and girls actually do engage with subjects like maths?

So, actually, there's one bit of research that I've sort of seen echoed in my work as well.

So, Professor Jo Bola, who's an education, maths education professor, and she's found actually there's two ways of teaching mathematics.

So one is like the one that encourages freedom of thought and lots of different approaches and methods.

And this is not timed and students think creatively about the subject, they work collaboratively.

And the alternate one is the one which most people know and experience in the school.

It's called performance maths.

And this is where a teacher put up a method on the board, you know, maybe quadratic equations, and then students will memorize the method and then reproduce it as quickly and as accurately as possible.

And this is known as performance mathematics.

And in fact, research by Joe Bowler, both in England in 2010 and in America in 2019, has found that actually girls and women, for some reason, they dislike the sort of performance element of mathematics.

And that maybe ends up reflecting in our test.

And I guess that's really important to incorporate here because although some of the, obviously there are universal laws in maths, but it's not universally taught in in the same way.

So are there other countries, other examples, where we teach maths more effectively or better, really?

So if we're looking globally, I think Singapore is a method where teachers in the UK have looked towards, and sometimes Shanghai as well.

They use a method known as mastery.

And this, in fact, applies to boys and girls equally, where they spend more time on the foundational content, understanding the building blocks of maths before finally going to the abstract.

Whereas in England, we move quickly from one topic onto the next, onto the next, and even if students haven't understood the basics of number, they're suddenly moving on to algebra, suddenly moving on to analysis of mathematics.

And I think that impacts our education significantly.

And Jess, you touched on this earlier.

What about the school environment itself?

Are kids, our students, our pupils in the best environment within our schools to learn the STEM subjects?

I think they could be in the best environments within our schools.

I think we just need to be able to work with teachers and, particularly, whole school kind of approaches to try and eliminate some of these stereotypes, to give girls and boys, but particularly girls, as the evidence shows, we need to do more to support them, to give them lots of different structured ways to get excited about maths.

Like Bobby said, we teach maths in a particular way.

But actually, I found that when you're teaching physics or engineering, it's when maths really comes alive.

It's when students see how they can apply that maths to something that they might experience or be excited about in the real world.

And that makes them really, really enthusiastic to learn the kind of root maths of the challenge that they're trying to solve.

One thing I think is really interesting will be to track what happens to this cohort of students as they go to take their national exams.

These international exams aren't sat by many students across the UK, but this cohort, this cohort that we're in year nine in 2023, will be doing their GCSEs this year.

So we'll see in those kind of results whether there has been this big gendered shift.

And I really, really genuinely doubt we'll see that.

We consistently see actually that girls outperform boys in subjects like physics at A-level when they take it.

The numbers are fewer, but girls get more A stars.

So if we see something big this year happening in our national exams, then I think we'll have a real cause for concern.

Actually, can I add to that?

On physics, so the Institute of Physics did some research in the past decade, but it showed that girls at single-sex schools are almost like two and a half times more likely to go on to do A-level physics compared with mixed schools.

And this sort of suggests gender biases played in schools.

So, almost like sometimes if a girl is in a mixed environment, there can be unconscious bias by teachers thinking, oh, boys should do maths and physics, and maybe girls should do English and the arts.

Where in a girl-only environment, whether it's state or private, girls pick up physics and maths at a much higher level because you can be anything in that environment.

So, I definitely think the school environment needs to think carefully about the language they use about maths and sciences and gender.

Clearly, we need to address any disparity that we see within both STEM in terms of employment and also uptake and this whole leaky pipe thing of losing people engaging with it throughout the

system.

How do we address any disparities such as we might be seeing here, do you think?

I definitely think a big part is our sort of cultural attitudes toward it and the language.

And I know a lot of my students, they use social media and they talk about the influencers and people that they follow.

I think there's a big part to play actually in putting out good role models of, in fact, Jess is a great one out there, Jess obviously here, but having great role models that show actually women and girls can be physicists, can be mathematicians, and that definitely can seep through to young people's attitudes.

I was reading about the, from the X-Files, I think most of us grew up in that generation, having Dana Scully as a strong, independent, effective role model within STEM made a significant impact on young women feeling they could engage.

Is that the answer, Jess?

Do we need more, stronger, better better role models to engage young people to get in and to retain their engagement with sciences, do you think?

I think role models is part of it.

I mean, beyond the X-Files, when the incredible movie Hidden Figures came out and told the stories of kind of Catherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson, that inspired a whole generation of young women to think, I could be a mathematician, you know.

But I think alongside the role models who can work for some people, but for other people can make them think, oh, gosh, I'm not that clever.

You know, sometimes role models are really hard to aspire to.

So alongside the role models, I'd really like to reform that kind of careers, advice, and experience of the real world of science and maths so that we really get everyone excited about how phenomenal these opportunities are.

Well, thanks for joining me, Bobby Siegel, and Jess Wade.

And we should just say the schools minister Catherine McKinnell has said the government will continue to promote science, technology, engineering, and maths subjects, especially among girls and through a range of initiatives.

Now, imagine this.

You're trapped 250 250 miles above the Earth.

Your sleeping space is the size of a phone box, gravity doesn't exist, and you get 16 sunrises and sunsets every single day.

Now, my head's spinning just thinking about that, but it's been a reality for Sonny Williams and Butch Wilmore, the two NASA astronauts who went to the International Space Station for little more than a week, but are still there nine months on after there were problems with their return capsule.

Helped by SpaceX, they'll be shortly on their way home.

But what's it like to spend the best part of a year in space?

What does it do to your body and what does it do to your brain?

Here with me in the studio back on Earth is physiologist Professor Damian Bailey from the University of South Wales.

I'm sure we've all seen footage of astronauts floating around in space, so we have this concept of our bodies being weightless.

But what's actually happening inside our bodies when we're up there?

So space is by far the most extreme environment that humans have ever encountered, and we've just not evolved to handle the extreme conditions.

So next to perfect vacuum, ionizing radiation

and it really causes us to age much, much faster than we would do on Earth.

So up to two liters of blood shifts up through the upper thoracic cavity and into the brain and this can cause a variety of problems for the astronauts.

One in particular is the space-associated neuro-ophthalmological syndrome.

It causes blurred vision and irreversible eye damage as well.

And that's just one of the organs.

There are many other organ systems.

Every organ system is affected effectively.

So the other fascinating thing about the brain in space is that it floats.

Astronauts have spent 180 days on the International Space Station, and you can image the brain before and when they come back.

And if you play those images back and forth really quickly, you can actually see that positional shift in the brain.

It's pushing up inside the skull.

And again, we think that this can cause pressure changes in the brain, and that's associated with one of the syndromes that the astronauts really, really struggle with, and it's a red risk syndrome.

Are there ways that we can get around these problems then?

So one of the countermeasures to prevent that upper shift of fluid into the brain is to try to suck some of that down into the legs.

So it's a bit like Wallace and Grommet, Feathers McGraw.

Do you remember those trousers, pneumatic trousers, where you suck the air out and you pull the blood away from the brain?

That's a fabulous countermeasure.

And so the lower body negative pressure, those Beathers McGraw trousers, are actually being used in space.

Astronauts are using them right now on the International Space Station.

I think for me, it's, and many of us, I guess, it's quite hard to conceptualize what space is like.

We see the floating around.

It looks quite genteel, quite nice, really.

But

you've got a little demo for us, haven't you, to mimic what those first few days in space might feel like.

Now, I can't do this because I've got to maintain my integrity here and my dignity.

But Caroline, if you wouldn't mind being in our little project as our guinea pig, Damien, can you talk us through what you'd like to do?

So when you go to space, it's just such a peculiar sensation.

When you pull this fundamental vector, gravity, away from us, we've evolved over the last four billion years to depend on 1G.

You pull that away.

And one of the organs that really struggles with this is your brain.

You know, you've got the best brain in the world, of course, here on sea level.

On Earth, you go to space, you pull the gravity away, and it causes all sorts of problems with the neurovestibular apparatus.

So how you basically process information.

There's no up, there's no down, there's no sidewards.

You're just floating around.

So what we're going to do is just do a mini practical where we're going to recreate the space brain in brackets, watch out, you might feel a bit sick, in order to cause that neurovestibular perturbation, if you like.

So we're going to get you on a chair.

We're going to pull a 2G.

We're going to spin you you around.

We don't want any visual input, so I want your eyes closed.

And then we're going to do a cognitive function task.

So bit of mental gymnastics and just think that you're in charge of a multi-billion dollar craft.

So you've got to make the right decisions at the right time.

So no pressure, Caroline.

Pressure is on.

Okay.

We do have a spare chair.

We have tested.

It is spinny.

So when you're ready.

Okay, so you could, in theory, you should be able to pull up to 3G.

Now, astronauts are experiencing up to 5G.

Now, for you to pull 3G in that chair, I'm going to have to spin you like crazy.

So we're not going to do 3G, okay?

But we're going to spin you.

round and round and round.

Your eyes are going to be closed, and then you're going to come rushing over to me here, and we've got a little pegboard challenge.

The aim of the game is to try to get the pegs in there as quickly as possible.

Now, you should be able to do this in under 60 seconds, okay?

Now, we're going to cause confusion for the brain.

So, shut your eyes.

Three, two, one, spin.

Oh, gosh, I feel like I'm going to fly off.

Keep it going, keep it going.

A few more seconds.

I definitely feel dizzy, and I haven't even opened my eyes yet.

Okay, now open your eyes.

Oh,

shuffle over to me.

Just come over a little bit.

How are you feeling?

Incredibly dizzy.

Take a seat and go for it.

You've got to definitely put the kegs in the holes.

As quickly as you can.

And by the way, with just one hand, so no touching, Caroline.

Oh, dear.

Oh, everything is spinning.

Oh, no.

This is really not going well.

I'm going to give you 10 more seconds, Caroline.

10 more seconds.

I'm not even halfway, Ben.

That's me being lenient.

Okay.

You're really concentrating there.

Ah, you'll be there all day if not.

Damien,

how did our what are we astronaut do?

Thanks, Caroline.

How did you do?

Caroline, Caroline did a fabulous job.

I mean, we obviously set her up there for failure.

There's no question about that.

But So in space,

Butch and Sunny, for example, when they're coming back to Earth after nine months, they spent nine months.

So about every month, 1% of their bones and muscles are going to wither away, accelerated aging.

So they're exercising up to two and a half hours a day just to try to...

counteract that.

So the brain, as you come in, you'll be pulling up to 5G during re-entry.

You probably pulled a couple of G at most there on the spinning chair.

So you had what we call space legs and you had space brain.

So what are space legs and what's space brain?

Well as you're spinning there, the semicirculatory canals in the ears, there's a fluid there and that whooshes around and it provides information that the brain can then process.

As you're spinning there, when you stop spinning, when you stop pulling G, effectively you open your eyes, that fluid is still swishing around and it's giving conflicting information to the brain.

And that triggers this feeling of being sick.

I don't know if you felt a little bit nauseous there.

So nauseous.

I still feel a tiny bit nauseous.

Okay, so it takes a couple of days.

We call it gravity sickness.

So when Butch and Sonny, you know, they hit 1G, don't forget they've been up there for nine months and a little bit longer without any gravity.

So as they hit Earth, they're going to suffer with what's called space brain.

They're going to feel a bit sick.

It's going to take a few days to recover.

But they've also got space legs.

And I'm sure you've seen when astronauts come back to Earth, they're literally carried out of that craft.

Well, I think if we didn't have a huge appreciation for astronauts before, we definitely do now.

Thanks, Damien, and safe travels to Sunny and Butch.

People continue

and discourage Sacramento with

With markets changing and living costs rising, finding a reliable place to grow your money matters now more than ever.

With the Wealth Front Cash Account, your uninvested money earns a 3.75%

APY, which is higher than the average savings rate.

There are no account fees or minimums, and you also get free instant withdrawals to eligible accounts 24-7.

So you always have access to your money when you need it.

And when you're ready to invest, you can transfer your cash to one of Wealthfront's expert built portfolios in just minutes.

More than 1 million people already use Wealthfront to save and build long-term wealth with confidence.

Get started today at WealthFront.com.

Cash account offered by Wealthfront Brokerage LLC, member FINRA SIPC.

Wealthfront Brokerage is not a bank.

Annual percentage yield on deposits as of September 26, 2025 is representative, subject to change and requires no minimum.

The cash account is not a bank account.

Funds are swept to program banks where they earn the variable APY.

Caroline, how are you feeling?

Has the room stopped spinning?

The room stopped spinning, but I still feel a little bit sick.

Like I've just been on a long windy car journey.

I'll take that as good news, fine.

You've been looking into the big science stories of the week.

What have you got this week for me?

So last week, Marnie left listeners waiting to hear if the Athena lander had successfully touched down on the moon.

So about half an hour after broadcast, Athena did land, but, on its side and in a crater.

And because it landed on its side, its solar panels are facing the wrong direction, so they aren't picking up any sun and Athena can't recharge.

It was officially declared dead on Friday.

That's quite a sad story.

It's quite a sad story.

So what was Athena meant to do?

So it was going to spend 10 days exploring the lunar surface and searching for evidence of ice.

It's part of NASA's longer-term goal to land the first woman and the first person of colour on the moon in 2027.

I really hope this is something that can be pursued and carried on.

I've got a bright ending.

Go.

So Athena landing is still a scientific first.

It touched down further south than any other lunar lander has done before, in an area that's known to be incredibly difficult to land in.

And some of the instruments on board did turn on briefly, So we might get some valuable information about the chemistry in the area.

So it might not all be lost.

But the top line is: the Athena lander is dead and can no longer see the moon.

However, we can see a special moon tonight.

Well, the early hours of tomorrow.

I have to say that is a stellar link there.

Thank you, Stella.

Took me a second line.

Thanks.

So between the hours of 4 and 6 a.m., there will be a partial lunar eclipse here in the UK.

So So this is Friday morning/slash tonight.

Okay.

For those of us, and I'm included in that group, what happens during a lunar eclipse?

So we normally see the moon because it's lit up by sunlight, right?

And a lunar eclipse happens when the Earth sits exactly between the Sun and the Moon and it blocks sunlight from reaching the Moon's surface.

And that would make you think that the Moon would go dark, right?

Because you've got the Earth sitting between the two, blocking light from the Sun to the Moon.

Yeah, so you can't see it.

You'd think.

But actually the moon glows red.

Why and how does it glow red?

Interesting physics.

Basically not all the light is completely blocked because some sunlight passes through the earth's atmosphere which scatters shorter wavelengths of light so that's sort of blues and green lights but longer wavelengths of light like red do reach the moon lighting it up red it's the same effect that makes sunsets red so how and where do we best see this so here in the uk you want to be facing west it's best to be as far away from light pollution as possible.

And obviously, you have to cross your fingers that there's no clouds.

So I'm going to be setting myself a very early alarm for tomorrow morning.

Well, if you're up at 4 a.m.

tomorrow morning, head to your nearest field and look west, is all I can say.

What's your next pick?

So as our listeners have probably heard, on Monday there was a collision between a cargo ship and an oil tanker in the North Sea off the coast of East Yorkshire.

And scientists are working very hard to minimise the damage that this collision will cause to the surrounding environment.

You say oil tanker there, but this wasn't carrying what we typically imagine.

So it wasn't crude oil or diesel.

No, interestingly, it was carrying 220,000 barrels of jet fuel.

Unfortunately, some of that has leaked as part of the collision.

And jet fuel is a toxic substance and it can be lethal to marine life and birds if it's ingested.

There's been a bit of confusion and controversy around the container ship.

Do we know what was in that now?

Yeah, so on Monday, it was said that it was carrying sodium cyanide, which is a chemical that's used for extracting gold and silver.

And like it sounds, it can be really toxic for marine life.

But on Tuesday, Ernst Russ, the owners of the cargo ship, said that the sodium cyanide containers were actually empty.

So that's good news.

And we don't yet know what else the ship was carrying.

So that's a bit of a TBC.

The priority is to keep the vessels afloat to reduce further chemicals entering the water.

And as well as jet fuel to worry about.

There's, of course, the fuel that was powering the boat and the oil tanker, so that could leak if not managed properly.

And if that happens, that could actually have worse environmental impacts than the jet fuel, as it's heavier and stays in the surrounding environment for longer.

In terms of clearing up the jet fuel that's already leaked, there are a variety of different methods that might be used.

Options include things like inflatable tubes called booms, which can be floated on the surface of the water, and they're hundreds of meters long and they sort of literally block the fuel from spreading further.

Teams might also use these mechanical devices called skimmers which float on the surface and pump oil into storage units.

All of this is of course very important because leaking oil can have huge environmental impacts.

Okay, I've got to admit I want to lighten the mood just a little bit now Caroline.

Final story.

Well, good news is I've got another science theme joke for you, Ben.

You ready?

Absolutely.

Crack on.

Okay, so there are ten types of people in this world.

Those who understand binary and those who don't.

Haha, haha.

Glad you laughed.

You've got to give me a laugh.

Come on.

I think it might be that spinning.

So, Ben, in your work as an evolutionary biologist, do you use jokes much?

All the time, I'm hilarious.

Really?

Yeah.

Who knew?

Well, that's interesting because from my experience, scientists can be a bit reluctant to use humour when describing their work.

And I think it might be because they worry jokes can make you seem less authoritative.

And interestingly, a new study from the University of of Georgia has looked into whether or not this is actually true.

So researchers showed some participants tweets or posts on X from a fictional scientist called Dr.

Jamie Devon.

So some posts used no humour, some used satire or anthropomorphism, others used a combination of those two.

And after seeing the posts, participants were asked how funny they found the posts, how likable they thought the scientist was, and how legitimate they thought the content was.

And interestingly, the researchers found that the funnier posts made the scientists more likable and the content seem more legitimate.

But it can have the opposite effect if your joke is judged not to be funny, so no pressure.

Noted, be funny, tell good jokes.

I've been WhatsApping a few of my co-scientists for their favourite jokes, so I'm going to leave you with a few of my favourites.

First up, Steve Baxhall.

See you next week.

Two wind turbines are standing in a field and one says, what's your favourite kind of music?

And the other says, I'm a massive metal fan.

Why do squirrels swing on their backs to keep their nuts dry?

So there you are, Steve Baxhall, zoologist, comedian.

I'm Professor Terry King, and I'm the director of the Maelner Centre for Evolution at the University of Bath.

And this is a Canadian joke from my childhood.

What is a Canadian ghost's favourite food?

Boutine.

Sorry, complete dad joke.

My name is Jamal Khalili, and I'm an Emeritus Professor of Physics at the University of Surrey.

Einstein tells us that we can travel through time.

So here's my favourite time travel joke.

I time traveled to the past and killed my grandfather before he'd met my grandmother.

I didn't disappear.

That's when I learnt I was adopted.

I then did it again.

That's when I learnt I was a psychopath.

I thank you.

You've been listening to BBC Inside Science with me, Professor Ben Garrett.

The producers were Sophie Ormiston and Jerry Holt.

Technical production was by Rhys Morris.

The show was made in Cardiff by BBC Wales and West.

To discover more fascinating science content, head to bbc.co.uk, search for BBC Inside Science, and follow the links to the Open University.

It's time your hard-earned money works harder for you.

With the Wealthfront Cash account, your uninvested cash earns a 3.75% APY, which is higher than the the average savings rate.

No account fees, no minimums, and free instant withdrawals to eligible accounts anytime.

Join over a million people who trust Wealthfront to build wealth at wealthfront.com.

Cash account offered by Wealthfront Brokerage LLC, member FINRA SIPC, and is not a bank.

APY on deposits as of September 26, 2025 is representative, subject to change, and requires no minimum.

Funds are swept to program banks where they earn the variable APY.