Innholdsfortegnelse for January 2019 i Ask Science and Arts Magazine for Kids and Children

YUMMY MONEY The Maya were an ancient people who lived in what’s now Mexico and Central America. They built pyramids and wrote with pictures. The Maya didn’t use money. Instead, they traded things they made for things they needed. But one researcher thinks that for the Maya, chocolate was a kind of money. The Maya loved to drink hot chocolate, made from ground-up cacao beans. Mayan art often shows people drinking cocoa. And Mayan pictures also show people using cacao beans to pay taxes and buy things, a lot like coins. Money you can drink! Kangaroo Face-Off What’s a kangaroo’s favorite food? You can tell from its face shape. Like dogs, different kangaroo species have differently shaped faces. Some have long snouts. Others have flatter faces. To find out why,…

You can’t ask a dog if he can hear a whistle, and you won’t get a cat to read an eye chart. So how do we know how they sense the world? The first clues come from observing how animals act. If your dog whimpers at thunder, you can be pretty sure she hears it. Researchers also give animals tests. They might train some dogs to expect a treat if they push the button that’s a different color. Can the dogs pick a green button next to two red ones? If not, they may not be able to tell red from green. Scientists also study animals’ bodies. They can count the odor sensors in a dog’s nose. And the more sensors, the better it can smell. Finally, researchers can study…

Here are some ways you can make your own house more bird-safe: • Move indoor plants away from the windows so birds don’t try to land in them. • Place bird feeders well away from windows, or right next to them, so birds land before they hit the window. • Use tape, decals, pieces of paper, or soap to make visible marks on your windows. Space them about a hand-width apart. • If you find an injured bird, handle it as little as possible. Put it in a shoebox or paper bag somewhere away from heat, pets, and loud noises. Call your local wildlife hospital for help!…

A young seal pokes its head out of the water, not noticing the dim gray shape below. The jaws of the great white shark open wide, bristling with teeth. Seconds before impact, the shark’s eyes roll back in their sockets for protection. It is now blind, but faint electrical signals from the frantic seal mean that the shark’s meal is assured. How do sharks fix on their prey with such accuracy, even in murky water? Like so much about sharks, this talent was a puzzle—until one shark’s strange attraction to a light gave a vital clue. The Shark’s Secret Let’s back up a few years. In 1678, an Italian named Stephano Lorenzini noticed odd rows of holes on the faces of sharks. The holes led to small jelly-filled tubes. He…

On the first warm day of spring, a bumblebee queen crawls out of her winter burrow. The sun shines. A gentle breeze ruffles her hairs. A Blue-Yellow World Hungry after her long winter sleep, the first thing on the bumblebee’s mind is food. She lifts off—buzzzzzzzzzzz. She uses her five eyes to search for flowers. Three tiny eyes see only light and dark. Two larger eyes are made up of many small panes, or lenses. Each sees a tiny bit of the world, a single pixel. The bee’s brain puts them together to make a fuzzy picture. There are flowers ahead, but they don’t look the same to the bumblebee as they do to people. Bees can see greens, blues, and yellows, but they don’t see red. So a red…

Have you ever been eye to eye with a dragonfly? Insect eyes look very different from your eyes. And they see differently, too. In some ways, insects can’t see as well as we can. But in other ways they can see much better. Now, roboticists are building insect-eye cameras to help drones fly around things without running into them, just like dragonflies do. Look Out for That Tree Drones are small flying robots that do many useful jobs. They can fly over dangerous areas to see what’s going on. They can take pictures from above. They can carry tools or medicine. And drones are also a lot of fun to play with. If you’ve ever played with a drone, you know that they can be tricky to steer. Wind can…

Humans, sadly, have a pretty poor sense of smell. In fact, most animals have much sharper noses than we do. So humans often train animals to do sniffing jobs. Trained dogs and rats can smell out everything from explosives to sickness. Pigs are also talented sniffers. They are used to hunt for truffles, a yummy mushroom that grows underground. Byt putting animals on smell duty has some problems. Animals are expensive to train. They get tired and bored. They need human handlers. Could we make an electronic nose that could do the job? Many researchers are working on it. They make sensors out of materials that change when they meet dangerous chemicals. This triggers a signal on a screen or sounds an alarm. One lab at the Georgia Institute of…

It’s a clear, sunny day. You’re strolling to lunch at your new school when—WHAM!—you run smack into a glass door. The glass was so clean you didn’t even realize it was there! Luckily, people don’t walk very fast, so bumping into a glass door is more embarrassing than painful. But birds fly fast. If they fly into a glass window, they can be badly injured or even killed. We don’t know exactly how many birds die each year from crashing into glass, but it’s a lot. So why do birds run into glass? Do they have trouble seeing it? And is there anything we could do to help? Scientists, inventors, and architects are all looking for answers. Window? What Window? When birds fly into glass, it’s not because they can’t…

Some researchers are experimenting with ways to use actual dragonflies as drones. They have figured out how to steer the insects using a small backpack that the dragonfly wears. This sends signals to specially modified nerves in the dragonfly’s muscles. Pulses of light activate the muscles, so the dragonfly flies any direction the controller wants. Dragonflies are too small to carry much, but someday they might be fitted with tiny cameras.…

Dear Marvin, I wrote a poem about a raccoon: His nose is blackHe wears a maskAnd slinks along the sides.When we see him, we forgetThrough the dark he hides. Also I know a prank you can play on Plush. Put brown slime in her bed! Yuuna T., age 7 Dear Yuuna, That’s a great poem! Elvis will be jealous. We wear masks so no one notices when we slime their beds. Wish me luck! Slinkily, Marvin Dear Whatson, I really like to play games. Do you like pool? Because I do. What is your favorite game? I like pool. Games always and forever, Billy A., Michigan Dear Billy, I mostly enjoy quiet games, like Scrabble, Othello, and chess. Around here, games of pool have too much shouting and climbing on…