Innholdsfortegnelse for November/December 2016 i Ask Science and Arts Magazine for Kids and Children

In the 1700s, English people wanted lots of sugar to sweeten tea and cocoa and cakes. But some people felt that cheap sugar did not justify slavery. In 1792, they started a campaign to get shoppers to stop buying slave-made sugar and switch to sugar grown by free farmers in India. They wrote about the horrors of plantations and advertised their cause with sugar bowls like this one. Their work helped convince the British government to outlaw the slave trade in 1807 and abolish slavery throughout its empire in 1837.…

Sugar is sweet, but not everything that’s sweet is sugar. Sweeteners such as aspartame, saccharin, and sucralose are artificial molecules made in labs. Another non-sugar sweetener, called stevia, comes from a plant. The secret of these sweeteners is that they are way, way, way sweeter than sugar. That means it only takes a few grains to sweeten your food, instead of several teaspoons. (Most of that colorful packet is filled with edible filler.) Since there’s so little of it in the food, it doesn’t add extra energy that gets stored as fat. For people with diabetes or trying to lose weight, non-sugar sweeteners can help, but they aren’t perfect. Some doctors think that a sweet taste with no energy rush might actually confuse the body and make us crave more…

Dear Bot, Can you see the future? Will there be a robot that will take a picture of the big red spot on Jupiter? Do you know everything? I think that you are cool. Paloma A., age 7, New York Dear Paloma, I think the future will be full of robots! You will be happy to know we are already on the job; the Juno robot spacecraft is currently orbiting Jupiter and taking lots of pictures of the Great Red Spot. But that’s all I know. Check with NASA. Jovially, Bot Dear Marvin, I have a great trick for you to play on Plush. Hang a string on the ceiling and put a fake bat on the string. Plush will be sooooooooo scared when she sees it. She will laugh…

Look, our bees have been busy. Sweet honey, and wax for candles too! Maybe this will go all the way to Rome, to make delicacies for the rich folks—honey ham, dates in honey, baklava... Gift of the Bees In ancient times, the sweetest tastes people knew were fruit and-sometimes, if they were lucky-a little honey. Honeybees make honey from the sweet, sugary nectar of flowers. As the bees fly from flower to flower, they sip a little nectar from each. They suck it in and out to make it thicker. Then they fly back to the hive and spit the nectar into a little wax cell of the honeycomb. Many more bees add their nectar. Other bees beat their wings to fan air over the comb. As the…

From chocolate cookies to crisp, juicy apples, we humans are sweet on sugar. And that’s only natural. All plants and animals need sugar to live. It’s the fuel that powers our cells. So it’s not surprising we’re hard-wired to crave the sweet stuff. Building Sweet “Sugar” is the name for many different sweet-tasting molecules. They’re all made of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen atoms. There are three basic sugar building blocks, or “simple sugars.” These are called fructose, glucose, and galactose. All of the simple sugars can be found in plants. Fructose is what makes fruits taste sweet, for example. Combining these simple sugars makes other kinds of sugar. The most common is sucrose, also called table sugar. The sugar your family keeps in the kitchen for baking, or in the…

In upstate New York, a long winter has given way to spring. The weather is warming up, and flowers are in bloom. But there’s still one thing missing to make it summer. You put up the special bottle feeder, fill it with sugar water, and wait and watch. Then, one day… there! With a quick buzz of wings, a tiny creature zooms in, seems to hang in mid-air, and sips from the spout. It’s a ruby-throated hummingbird! They’re back! There are many species of hummingbirds, small birds with long bills and a distinctive flying style. As they hover in front of flowers, their wings beat so fast they look like a blur. Hummingbirds live mostly on nectar, a sugary syrup found deep inside flowers. Sipping sugar all day long gives…

Chocolate, caramels, lollipops, beets... the world is full of delicious sweets. But there’s always room for more! For this month’s contest, make up an entirely new kind of candy that you think would be extremely excellent. Then draw an advertisement to tell everyone about your new creation. Send us your ad, and we’ll sample some of the most succulent 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 self-addressed, stamped envelope. 5. Your entry must be signed or emailed by a parent or legal guardian,…

Before Europeans came, North America had no honeybees. But some native American peoples figured out how to get sugar from trees instead. In the early spring they cut gashes into the bark of a sugar maple tree. Then they caught the sap in a bucket, left it out to freeze, and broke off the watery ice. At the bottom was a sweet brown liquid—maple syrup. They may have learned this trick by tasting the sweet icicles of frozen sap that formed on broken branches.…

“Added sugar” is any kind of sugar that doesn’t start out in your food. By 2018, food makers will have to tell you how much sugar they add to your snack. Even if you read the list of ingredients, it can be hard to spot! Look for anything with “sugar” in the name (date sugar, brown sugar, palm sugar). But some are sneaky. See if you can find any of these in your kitchen or lunch box—they’re all different names for sugar. Agave Barley malt Cane juice Caramel Carob syrup Corn syrup Dextrose Fructose Fruit juice Fruit nectar Glucose Golden syrup Grape juice concentrate High-fructose corn syrup Honey Lactose Maltodextrin Maltose Maple syrup Molasses Muscovado Nectar Refiner’s syrup Rice syrup Saccharose Sorghum syrup Sucrose Syrup Treacle…

Have you ever looked at the world through a lollipop? When cooked and cooled on a smooth surface, sugar forms a hard, transparent sheet—sugar glass. That’s how clear lollipops and hard candies are made. Sugar glass isn’t just good eating. It also has a secret life in action movies—as stunt glass. Real glass breaks into sharp shards that would be very dangerous to actors. So for dramatic scenes that call for smashing into windows or mirrors, movies use glass made of sugar. Sugar is softer than glass and doesn’t have such sharp edges, so it’s much safer. And to clean up, you just need some water, or some lucky ants. Another fun use for sugar glass is to make edible sculptures. Long ago, sultans and kings sometimes decorated their dinner…