‘The Evergreen’: Can honey make computers faster and cleaner?

By Mia Estrada (OPB), Jenn Chávez (OPB) and Jes Burns (OPB)
July 29, 2024 1 p.m.
In this video still, a honey bear glows ominously.  Researchers at Washington State University Vancouver are developing computer components made of honey to cut back to e-waste.

In this video still, a honey bear glows ominously. Researchers at Washington State University Vancouver are developing computer components made of honey to cut back to e-waste.

Dan Evans / OPB

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Honey may be one of the weirder things you’ll see in a science lab. But researchers at Washington State University Vancouver say honey is key to what they’re working on: faster, cleaner computers.

OPB’s science reporter Jes Burns learned about their research — including the effort to make computer chips work more like human brains — and gives us an inside look. You can check out Jes’s full coverage of this story in her recent episode of “All Science. No Fiction.”

Listen to all episodes of The Evergreen podcast here.

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