In explaining the worlds of science and sports, three Peninsula teens have done an outstanding job.

Nominated by their peers for their accomplishments, two Redwood City twin brothers and a Palo Alto teen are in the running for top awards in selective competitions.

Alex Morgan, 14, of Redwood City, has reached the finals in a contest for “best young football blogger” — part of an annual British competition for international soccer writers. Two years ago, he won the title with his Football Every Day blog — when he was 12. Sitting in the press box with professional sportswriters, Alex covers the Earthquakes and pro soccer tournaments. He also reports on soccer worldwide and maintains a stable of young, enthusiastic soccer bloggers.

Since January 2013, he’s published 1,702 articles on Football Every Day — and yes, he writes every day.

His twin brother, Aaron, has been named one of 30 semifinalists in the Breakthrough Junior Challenge, a fledgling competition that asks teens to create a brief, engaging video explaining a scientific concept. Aaron’s video offers a succinct and entertaining explanation of an 18th-century formula that underlies the technology of YouTube, photo-sharing and the online music industry.

Like Alex, he’s a freshman at Menlo School in Atherton.

While the twins’ interests diverge, they also help each other out. Aaron serves as photographer for his brother’s blog. Alex donned sunglasses to play a cool pop star in Aaron’s video.

Another Breakthrough semifinalist, Alan Huang, 17, a senior at Palo Alto High, created a video explaining the startling idea that scientists may one day control human brains — through optogenetics, a nascent technology that harnesses light to manipulate cells in living tissue.

A gene from the common green algae that’s taking over his fish tank, Alan explains in his video, can be inserted into a mouse brain and enable scientists to manipulate neurons by using light — with the tantalizing eventual possibility of finding treatments for Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and other fatal diseases.

The most challenging part of making the short video was learning the subject, Alan said. “It took 1½ years to fully grasp it, and then to compress it into video in under 5 minutes was pretty hard.”

The Breakthrough contest is intended to inspire students from ages 13 to 18 to think creatively about fundamental concepts in the life sciences, physics and mathematics. Selected from more than 6,000-plus submissions, the finalists were first reviewed by fellow applicants, then culled by a panel of judges from Khan Academy. Videos were evaluated on the ability to communicate complex scientific ideas in engaging, illuminating and imaginative ways.

Now, to propel them into the finals, young videographers are hoping for a boost from their online audience, via “likes” on the Breakthrough page. Voting ends at 11:59 p.m. Wednesday.

Twelve of the 30 Breakthrough semifinalists are Americans, all competing for the top prize of $250,000, plus $100,000 for a science lab at their school and $50,000 for their science teacher.

At 14, Aaron is the youngest of 12 Americans to place in the second year of the contest, a spinoff of the Breakthrough science prize. The junior contest is backed by Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and his physician wife Priscilla Chan, and entrepreneur and physicist Yuri Milner and his wife Julia Milner.

The Challenge offered Aaron a chance to combine two passions: filmmaking and science. Although he worked just over a week on his video, he’s an experienced videographer and blogger. He’s posted every weekday for 21 months on Video Shakedown, which proclaims it’s about culture, science and awesomeness. He also has another site, Fast Forward, covering science and technology.

For the competition, Aaron chose the Fourier Transform, widely employed today to shrink files for web transmission. “File compression is a super applicable and pretty complex topic,” he said. Explaining it in a video is “a good way to pull the curtains away and show what’s happening behind the scenes.”

Aaron taught himself video production, watching and taking online courses. Home-schooled by their mother, Gwen Morgan, until this year, the twins had latitude to explore technology, create blogs and study what fascinated them.

Brother Alex has been blogging about soccer for 21 months, attracting 400,000 page views.

“It really blows your mind, once you’ve created the platform, just how how-reaching it can be,” Alex said. He’s had blog readers from India, Gibraltar, the Isle of Man, Fiji — “wherever there’s internet,” he said.

He won a press pass to Earthquakes games after a national journalist, struck with his knowledge and maturity, introduced him.

When he started covering games for his Quakes Talk blog, “He immediately impressed us with how professional he was, even though he was 13 at time,” said Jake Pisani, the Earthquakes media relations manager. “His writing is excellent. When you read his stuff, you don’t know it’s from someone who hasn’t finished high school.”

Actually, when he began, Alex hadn’t even started high school.

He has interviewed local and international soccer luminaries: Quakes star Chris Wondolowski and head coach Dominic Kinnear, of course, but also Liverpool’s head coach, Jürgen Klopp, and U.S. national team head coach, Jurgen Klinsmann.

More than that, he’s constantly honing his craft.

“If you don’t try to stay ahead of what everybody else is doing to improve quality or content, you are going to become irrelevant,” Alex said.

He was named by viewers one of 10 finalists for the Football Blogging Awards; voting for the winner has ended.

In the Morgan household, the anxiety has risen somewhat.

“With two awards at same time, it’s definitely exciting,” said their dad, Paul Morgan.

When Alex showed up in England for the Football Blogging Awards two years ago — on his 13th birthday, as it happened — he astonished everyone, who had expected an older teen to win the “best young blogger” award. He’s hoping to fly to Manchester again for the ceremony later this month.

But while he’s navigating an adult world, Alex still is reminded of his age.

“I’m probably the only journalist who has their mom texting them at a game,” he said: “‘Get out here, I’m waiting in the car.’”

To see and vote on the Breakthrough Junior Challenge semifinalists’ videos, go to http://bayareane.ws/2fb8CTO.

To see the Football Blogging Awards and to vote, go to http://bayareane.ws/2fNdss8.