Innholdsfortegnelse for September 2023 i Ask Science and Arts Magazine for Kids and Children

Ice Age Meatball Do you eat meatballs on your spaghetti? Would you eat one if it was made out of woolly mammoth? This photo shows a sight not seen in at least 10,000 years—a mammoth meatball. But it didn’t come from a real mammoth. Mammoths are extinct. Instead, the meatball comes from a company that grows meat in the lab. To make it, food engineers used woolly mammoth DNA to grow muscle cells in a special machine. One day, this kind of meat could be an option for people who want to eat burgers without harming animals. You won’t see mammoth meatballs in stores anytime soon, though: the engineers only made one. Too Much Toad? Cane toads are big, with an appetite to match. But in a park in Australia,…

September 8, 4023 Eureka! After years of fruitless searching, I have unearthed the jumbled remains of a huge and fearsome idol, a giant statue of the trickster god Nol Ittering. I will carefully excavate each artifact and piece the remains together. Then, we will once again gaze upon the face our ancestors adored and feared! The first artifact. I admit I am puzzled. Is it a helmet worn by the men and women who guarded this sacred place? We shall see. The bared teeth of the idol! How many sacrifices disappeared into its gaping mouth, never to be seen again? I shudder to look upon Nol Ittering’s all-seeing eyes. Another mystery. Perhaps these ancient chimes played tinkling music to please the god? I have uncovered the noble steed of the…

Pirate Stash? One dark night in 1795, the story goes, a local teen saw lights on Oak Island. Later he found a rope and pulley hanging from a tree, with disturbed earth under it. He wondered, what if the pulley was left by pirates, burying treasure? With a couple of friends, he dug up some rocks, planks, and coconut matting, used as packing material in old ships. Pirate rumors soon drew more treasure seekers. They dug under that old tree with shovels and picks. As the pit got bigger, so did the stories. When diggers hit hollow spots that flooded, they said pirates must have booby-trapped them to foil thieves. One dig found a buried stone covered in scratches, which they decoded as a message promising riches. The stone later…

Coin Toss If you dig up a pot of buried coins, here’s a fun trick to play with them. No matter whose head is on them, it will let you guess heads or tails of a hidden coin every time. You will need • Some coins, any kind (around 5 or 10)• A pal The trick Have your friend toss some coins up so they land randomly on a table. Now for your secret part: In your head, count how many coins are heads-up. You don’t have to remember the number, just whether it is odd or even. Keep this to yourself. (Odd numbers are every other number starting with 1: 1, 3, 5, 7, .... Even numbers are 2, 4, 6, 8, ....) Now turn your back and tell…

Some people are called pack rats because they are collectors and savers. But real pack rats are curious rodents with big ears and bulging, black eyes. Adults are about a foot long, including tail. Pack rats are wood rats, but because they are such collectors, they’re commonly called pack rats. A pack rat never stops collecting! It’s always shopping for anything that looks interesting to add to the pile of clutter it stores in its nest. The rat will pick up nearly anything that it can carry in its mouth—nails, needles, pins, pens, clippers, zippers, coins, cans, glass, brass, bones, and stones. The contents of an average desert pack rat nest can easily fill an oversized trash bag. Night Patrol One night before going to sleep, a camper laid his…

about Treasure Ask: Tell me about gems! Pirate Pete: Gems are those big colored things in sparkly jewelry. Ask: Where can I get some? Pete: I used to steal them from treasure ships. But people shoot at you! It’s really dangerous! Then I thought, why go to all that trouble when you can just get them right out of the earth? So I became a geologist. Ask: Do you have a treasure map? Pete: The best kind! It’s made of rocks! Gems form deep under the earth, where it’s hot and crushing enough to melt minerals (the ingredients of rocks) into lovely hard gems. Then over millions of years, Earth scrunches up mountains or squeezes up magma, and brings the gems up to where I—I mean, we—can get at them.…

In our March issue we challenged you to find a face hiding in plain sight. Thanks to all you pareidolistic prodigies for sharing a world of smiles! Dear Avery, I like you because you are so cute! You keep very good track of all your acorns for winter. What’s the most you ever collected? What do you do with your leftovers? Are you going to plant them in spring? I can help.Sincerely, James, Canada Dear James, Last year I collected 1014, not counting the ones I ate while counting. I like to bury my acorns in lots of different holes. Handy for snacking, and also takes care of leftovers—any I don’t eat are already planted! Yes, we squirrels are pretty sharp.Regards, Avery Dear Elvis, I love poetry! My other obsession…