Innholdsfortegnelse for January 2018 i Ask Science and Arts Magazine for Kids and Children

Have you ever wondered about the line in the song “Yankee Doodle” that goes, “stuck a feather in his hat and called it macaroni”? Is this just pure nonsense, or does it mean something? In the 1700s, it was fashionable for rich young Englishmen to travel to Italy to see the sights. There they often developed a taste for noodles. Back then, “macaroni” meant any kind of noodle. Pasta was rare outside Italy, so eating macaroni became a way to show off that you had traveled. And “macaroni” became a slang word for these fashionable young people and the silly fashions they followed.…

UNITES STATES Lizzie, America The yummiest dinner in the world is mac and cheese! I love how that creamy, yellow sauce gets inside all those little pasta tubes. My brother puts peas in his—some people are just strange. PERU Pedro, Peru There’s nothing more delicious than a bowl of hot tallarin saltado. First we stir-fry noodles—Chinese immigrants taught us how. Then we add peppers and tomatoes. MORDCCO Yasmin, Morocco Try some couscous with raisins and nuts! It looks like rice, but really it’s tiny beads of pasta. ITALY Paolo, Italy We have lots of fancy sauces—but I think pasta is best just buttered with Parmesan cheese. GREECE Aleka, Greece Pastichio is the best pasta dish EVER! It’s like lasagna, but the layers are macaroni instead of flat noodles. POLAND Jan,…

What You’ll Need •  1/2 cup flour (all-purpose or bread flour; bread flour makes chewier noodles)•  3 or 4 tablespoons water•  1/4 teaspoon salt•  Mixing bowl, rolling pin, pizza cutter or scissors•  Adult helper for cutting and boiling 1 Mix Mix flour, water, and salt in a bowl. Start with 2 tablespoons of water. If the dough is too dry, add a bit more water. If it’s too sticky, add a bit more flour. Once it’s well mixed, it should not stick to your hands too much. 2 Knead Sprinkle a little flour on your counter and knead the dough. Punch, fold, and stretch it until it’s smooth and springy. When it’s ready, it should feel a bit like well-chewed gum and spring back a bit when you poke it…

For this month’s contest, let the noodle muse inspire you to make a beautiful portrait of yourself or a pal entirely out of pasta (dry or cooked!). Send us a photo of your pasta portrait, and we’ll post a party of the most pastabulous 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, saying it’s your own work and that no one helped you, and that Ask has…

Fire ants can make amazing structures with their bodies. In a flood, they grab hold of each other and form a floating raft. To cross a gap, they can become a bridge. And they can create towers like this one, using a wall or a plant for support. Researchers watched ants building towers in the lab. They found that the towers constantly shifted as new ants climbed to the top and others left the bottom. The structures always had the same shape, a bit like the Eiffel Tower in Paris. That shape lets every ant in the tower hold the same amount of weight. The researchers think fire ants build these towers without knowing it. They don’t make a plan. They just climb on each other until they find a…

Pasta is often made from wheat flour, the ground-up seeds of wheat plants. Gluten is a mix of tangly proteins inside the seeds. It helps new plants grow. Gluten is also found in other grains, like barley and corn. Gluten is what makes pasta and bread dough stretchy and springy. When a chef kneads (mashes and stretches) dough, the tangly bits of gluten link up into a stretchy net. The net traps water and makes the dough chewy. The more gluten the flour has, the more stretchy it will get. The best pasta flour has lots of gluten. Why Can’t Some People Eat Gluten? Gluten is a natural part of wheat and is not usually harmful. But some people (about 1 in 130) suffer from a sickness called celiac disease.…

Shirataki: Clear, slippery noodles made from yam flour. Ramen: Springy wheat noodles, often served with broth, veggies, and meat in a big bowl. Misua: Very long, thin, pulled noodles. Rice noodles: Noodles made from rice flour come in all shapes and sizes, from long and thin to short and wide. Soba: Buckwheat noodles, often eaten cold with a tangy sauce. Udon: Thick, chewy wheat noodles, often found in soup. Glass noodles or bean thread: Clear, thin noodles made from mung bean or yam flour. La Mian: Hand-pulled noodles, made by stretching out the dough instead of rolling it.…

Children in Italy playfully suck in stringy spaghetti. In China, chopsticks grab fat noodles in sauce. The Japanese noisily slurp their soba. People all around the world have enjoyed noodles for thousands of years. But did you ever stop to think: who ate the very first noodle? To make noodles and other pasta, all you really need is flour and water. In fact the word pasta means “flour paste.” People first started growing wheat and making flour in the Middle East around 10,000 years ago. But no one had ever found a prehistoric noodle—until recently. Noodles East In 2002, scientists were digging in the ruins of an ancient Chinese city. They saw an upside-down clay bowl. When they lifted it, inside was a 4,000-year-old noodle! This very stale leftover was…

Maybe you’ve seen those square packets of dry, curly Japanese noodles in the supermarket. Maybe you’ve even eaten them. You can find fast-cooking ramen in grocery stores from the Arctic to the tropics. Where did it come from, and how is it different from other noodles? No-Wait Noodles In 1947, the country of Japan was recovering from World War II. Many people were out of work. Food was scarce. One day, a bank manager in Osaka named Momofuku Ando walked past a long line of shivering people. They were waiting at a noodle stand to buy bowls of noodles called ramen. A big bowl of ramen soup with fish and vegetables was a cheap and tasty meal. Ando never forgot the people standing outside in the cold, just for noodles.…