Innholdsfortegnelse for September 2015 i Ask Science and Arts Magazine for Kids and Children

UNCOVERING PRINCE CHARMING Archaeologists in France have discovered the tomb of an Iron Age prince who ruled nearly 2,500 years ago. The prince lies with his chariot, surrounded by a showy collection of grave goods—items for him to use in the afterlife. These include a bronze cauldron measuring over 3 feet (1 m) across, decorated with lion heads and Greek gods. Indeed, the tomb is filled with valuable objects from far-away Greece and Italy, brought by merchants who wanted to trade with the Celtic people living in France. Though they don’t yet know this Celtic prince’s name, archaeologists believe he must have been wealthy and powerful to have such a magnificent tomb. This Croc Rocked Scientists have discovered a new fossil crocodile, and it’s a doozy. Nine feet (three meters)…

If you look closely at a flower, you will see dusty yellow pollen and also a sticky stalk called a stigma. When a pollen grain lands on the stigma, it sends a long tube down to a pocket containing egg cells. When pollen joins with an egg cell, a seed forms. Plants, like most living things, have two copies of every plant-making instruction. Each pollen grain and each egg cell carry only one set of instructions. When egg and pollen combine, they make a seed with double instructions again—one set from each parent.…

A die has six sides, so when you roll it, each number has the same chance—1 in 6— of landing face up. But with two dice, the odds change. That’s because there are more ways of making some numbers than others. Out of the 36 different ways the two dice can land, there’s only one way to roll a “2,” but six ways to roll a “7.” So you’re six times more likely to roll a 7 than a 2. Remember that the next time you play Parcheesi. Figuring the Odds To figure out how likely something is to happen, mathematicians first count all the possible times it might happen (for example, all the school lunches you eat in a year). Then they look at how many times, on average,…

Dear Ask, I love your magazine! We just read about jesters and clowns in the April issue. You might want to know that my dad is a jester at Muncaster Castle in England! We stayed in the Fool’s Tower, home of the first Tom Fool. It was old. Talyn A., age 8, Virginia Dear Virginia, Wow, what’s it like to have a jester for a dad? Does he do funny things all the time? Or only at castles? Do you ever get tired of jokes? How did he become a jester? Can I be one when I grow up? I already have a funny coat. The Motley Horse, aka Zia Querido Elvis, Me gustaría saber? Donde nació la primera ave del mundo? Me llamo Jayro y soy alumno de primer…

DONG! DONG! DONG! The bells pealed early one summer morning in 1856. In the city of Brno, a dark-robed friar hurried to the garden of the Abbey of St. Thomas. Had his peas bloomed? He leaned down to check. Yes! A white flower! If not for his long robes, Brother Gregor Mendel might have danced a jig. These pea plants came from the seeds of purple-flowered plants. But as he’d predicted, some of the new plants bloomed white. How could seeds from purple-flowered plants grow white flowers? With the help of his peas, Gregor Mendel was about to crack the secret of heredity, how traits are passed from parents to children to grandchildren. Brother Gregor’s Garden It was an exciting time for science. In England, the naturalist Charles Darwin was…

The double instructions that Mendel discovered don’t just happen in peas. All animals and plants pass along traits in the same way—children inherit one set of instructions from each parent. Humans have about 20,000 of these little instructions, or genes. These determine everything from hair color to the shape of your toes. Some traits, such as skin color, are controlled by several instructions acting together. Since no one color instruction dominates, the skin tone of a child is often somewhere between the two parents—but the genes themselves don’t actually blend. In later experiments, Mendel also proved that sets of traits don’t “travel” together—the collection we get from each parent is pretty much random. And that’s a good thing. Variety keeps a species healthy.…

What does a meteorologist do? Meteorologists study the weather and try to predict what the weather will be. So when the forecast says a 40% chance of rain, what does that mean? A 40% chance of rain means we think that there’s about a 4 in 10 chance that it will rain at some point today, somewhere in your town. Though it might not rain on YOU. A 40% chance is another way of saying it is likely to happen 40 out of 100 times, which is the same as a 4 in 10 chance. It doesn’t mean that it is sure to rain on 40% of the town. It also doesn’t mean that it will rain for 40% of the day. Why do you talk in percents? When we’re…

Gregor Mendel: The Friar Who Grew Peas by Cheryl Bardoe If you want to read more about Gregor Mendel, this is a lovely book about his life, his garden, and his experiments. Being a gardening monk sounds like fun—reading about science, growing peas, and thinking about math! And then changing the world. Do You Feel Lucky? by Kjartan Poskitt Games of chance are mostly not about luck—they’re about playing sneaky tricks with numbers. If you’d like to get tricky too and be totally on top of the odds, this fun book will show you all the secrets. The author likes to draw funny cartoons and tell stories about snakes, aliens, and barbarians too. Part of the Murderous Maths series—I enjoy them all. That’s a Possibility! by Bruce Goldstone Is purple…

Mendel, originally named Johann, was a poor farmer’s son who loved science and math. He liked plants, but he didn’t want to farm. When he couldn’t afford to pay for college, a teacher suggested that he become an Augustinian friar—a member of a religious community, sworn to poverty, prayer, and service. The church took care of friars’ needs and paid for their education. Mendel took the name “Gregor” and joined the Abbey of St. Thomas, in what is now the city of Brno, in the Czech Republic. The friars of St. Thomas lived and studied together. Mendel grew peas and taught school. In his later years, Mendel led the abbey as its abbot.…

Raising a nest of young birds is a lot of work. Parent birds have to keep their eggs safe from predators, shelter the chicks from weather, and find enough food for all those hungry mouths. Different kinds of birds do these things in different ways. But they all face the same challenge: making sure that there’s a next generation of birds. The More, the Merrier The Gambel’s quail lives in the deserts of the American Southwest. These ground-dwelling birds usually lay 10 to 12 eggs at a time in a shallow nest. That’s a lot of tiny mouths to feed. Gambel’s quail chicks don’t need much attention. Just hours after hatching, they’re up and running. And they’d better be quick! These birds are a favorite prey of desert hunters like…

Your teacher asks everyone in your class for his or her birthday. One by one you hear the days: July 4, April 28, November 19 . . . . What are the chances that two or more kids share a birthday? A year has 365 days, and a birthday can fall on any one of those days. So you might think it’s unlikely you’ll get a match. But it turns out you don’t need a lot of kids to have a pretty good chance of two or more classmates having the same birthday. If your class has 23 or more, it’s more than 50% likely. Why is that? The key is that the chance of a match depends on how many pairs of students there are. Start with three people:…

Tired of the same old monsters? Why not use chance to mix things up a bit! For this month’s contest, roll a die three times, and use this handy random monster generator to get a head, body, and limbs for your creation. And why stop there? Roll for color, teeth, ears, and any other features you can think of! Draw us a picture of your chance creature, and we’ll unleash a crowd of the most unlikely in an upcoming issue of Ask. Contest Rules: 1. Your contest entry must be your very own work. Ideas and words should not be copied. 2. Be sure to include your name, age, and address on your entry. 3. Only one entry per person, please. 4. If you want your work returned, enclose a…