Innholdsfortegnelse for November/December 2018 i Muse: The magazine of science, culture, and smart laughs for kids and children

“I got to snorkel and see how important the reefs are to our ocean’s ecosystem.” Hi Jack. Wow, your trip sounds fun. Snorkeling is magical. I’m interested in the health of coral reefs too and recently found out that some sunscreens have safer ingredients for coral. Maybe other readers will have suggestions for books about coral bleaching or marine biology. Anyone? —WHATSI Diving into Marine Science Have any readers here ever wondered what our world would be like without coral reefs? I recently watched the documentary Chasing Coral, which talked about coral bleaching. I learned about this interesting topic and strongly feel that others need to learn about it. Also, I just went on a trip to Belize and stayed on Glover’s Reef. I got to snorkel and…

PIE MAKERS in the Midwest made a tasty achievement in the summer of 2018. Using 2,847 cherry pies, they set a world record for the largest pie chart made out of pie. The record was set at an annual cherry festival in Michigan. At one booth, visitors could sample six types of cherry pie and report which flavor they liked best. On the last day of the weeklong festival, the organizers tallied up the results. (The winner, with 35 percent of votes, was a sour cherry pie with a crumb topping.) Then the organizers gathered all the festival’s remaining pies. They arranged the pies in an open field in the shape of a giant pie chart showing the poll results. Each wedge in the pie chart was made of actual…

Our world is all about information. People are constantly measuring and observing. We measure the height of snow or the size of sunspots. We track giraffe herds or subway riders. We count customers or concert tickets or cheeseburgers. Then we collect those facts into groups called data. It’s a lot of data. Every day about 2.5 quintillion bytes of data are created. How much is that? Let’s say you buy the latest Star Wars movie on a Blu-ray (high-definition) disc. When the movie’s picture and sound files were stored on that disc, they became 25 gigabytes of data. So one Blu-ray movie equals 25,000,000,000 bytes. That already sounds like a lot of data. But you’d need 10 million Blu-ray movie discs to add up to 2.5 quintillion bytes. If you…

Scroll through social media, glance at an ad, watch the news, or pay attention to politics. You’ll see them. Graphs. Charts. Data visualizations. They’re everywhere. Data visualizations, graphs, and charts are pictures representing data or numbers. On the one hand, graphs can inform, explain, and enlighten. That’s especially true when they’re well-designed. On the other hand, they can misinform or mislead you. Fortunately, you can learn to spot tricks by becoming a data decoder. The Case of the Cut-Off Axis When Stephanie Evergreen sorted through her junk mail one day, something caught her eye. It was a postcard from an energy company. “I’ll never forget it,” says Evergreen, a data visualization expert and author. “They had included this bar graph of how much money a person would save by switching…

Map with symbols provides setting Main characters appear in text, pictures, and speech bubbles Action-packed opening rewards reader; tells what’s going on Penguins are charming. (Always add charm!) Make it personal. Wouldn’t you rather learn from a friend? Frames break your story into digestible bits Diagrams and doodles simplify concepts and processes Quotes Credit your sources with important ideas by placing their words in speech bubbles. What’s your point? Bring your little story to a conclusion in the simplest words possible. Cute illustrations Familiar objects offset hard new information. Cute t-shirt slogan It’s the lab’s actual slogan. It shows the importance of plankton. Fancy text focuses your eye on an important word and breaks up the serious info, making it more welcoming “Smelly” lines Cartoon stink helps me make my…

In May/June, Musers read the true story of mutually beneficial relationships among carnivorous plants, bugs, and other animals in Borneo. Making the leap from nonfiction to fiction, we invited readers to invent two imaginary creatures and to describe the creatures’ symbiotic relationship. Pretty soon our HQ looked more like an H-zoo. We admired each entry and have sent imaginary friend requests to these winners. PIXEI FLORA AND SILICA, THE CYBORG CENTAUR SCIENTIST —MALLORY M. / age 8 / California ATTABIT AND AERO DOMAN —HEATHER H. / age 12 / Colorado THE NEPTUNE FL YTRAP AND THE OGL Y-BOGLY —ALISA B. / age 10 / Tennessee…

CERTAIN ANTS in Southeast Asia have an unusual way of fighting back. When another bug bothers them, these ants explode. They cover the attacker in bright yellow, spicy-smelling goo. The fluid is toxic and tangles the attacker’s legs. The exploded ant dies—but its colony is a little safer. There are other types of exploding ants. But this is the first new exploding ant species that scientists have officially described since 1935. They named the species Colobopsis explodens. That’s a better name than what researchers called it until now: “yellow goo.” One of these stories is FALSE. Can you spot which one? The answer is on page 39.…

WE KNOW sloths as sleepy, slow-moving animals that climb in trees. But thousands of years ago, bear-sized giant sloths walked the Earth. Like woolly mammoths, these animals lived near prehistoric humans but are now extinct. Researchers discovered a set of ancient footprints in New Mexico belonging to some of these giant ground sloths. The prints were mixed together with footprints of humans—who may have been hunting them. The tracks are probably between 10,000 and 15,000 years old. The sloth prints zigzag around. In some places, the prints show an animal rearing up on its hind legs. And the human prints overlap the sloth prints. The researchers think this is the site of an ancient hunt or chase. But there’s another possible explanation: after sloths walked here, humans may have found…

A hurricane slams a coastal city with wind, rain, and waves. People are trapped on rooftops or cut off from food and water. But roads are blocked. Cell phone calls can’t get through. Those responding to an emergency need to know where the worst damage is. This helps them quickly repair the services that keep people safe. Have three hospitals lost power, or only two? Is one of them completely destroyed? Are the fire stations operating? Which nursing home, or sewage treatment plant, is under water? And which roads and bridges are still open for delivering precious electric generators, water, and other supplies? TIME AND PLACE These questions are all related to geography: where things are on the Earth, what shape they’re in, and how to reach them. Maps usually…

1. Who had a fever, Whatsi or Aarti? (Consider a fever anything over 100.4°F.) A Whatsi had a fever on days 1 and 2. B Aarti had a fever on days 5 and 6. C Neither Whatsi nor Aarti had a fever. D Both Whatsi and Aarti had a fever. 2. Why does it look like teens use YouTube at least twice as much as Instagram and Snapchat? A Because YouTube is awesome. B Because Snapchat is the worst. C Because the vertical axis starts at 60 instead of zero. 3. What is misleading about Figure 3 showing an increase in the number of zombie TV shows? (Note: these data are made up.) A The spacing on the horizontal axis is inconsistent. B The graph-makers didn’t specify if they also…

Carrie C. Wall has one of the best jobs ever. She’s a marine scientist who has studied sea lions in Alaska, tracked dolphins in the Gulf of Mexico, and dived deep underwater around the Great Barrier Reef in Australia. Today, Wall is leading the development of an archive for water column sonar data at the NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information. What does all that mean? I have no idea, but since she also happens to be my little sister, I thought I’d give her a call and find out exactly what she’s doing, and why it’s so important. HEY SIS. SO AN ARCHIVE FOR WATER COLUMN SONAR DATA. BREAK THAT DOWN FOR ME. WHAT DO YOU MEAN BY SONAR DATA? Sure! Basically, there are two ways sound can help…

Daniel Young is good at making connections between seemingly unconnected things. He’s studied many different subjects, such as music, psychology, graphic design, information technology, and languages. Currently, he’s a senior interaction designer at Google Switzerland. His job involves “making it easier and more enjoyable to buy things on Google.” But he’s also an artist whose creations connect art and data. That may sound complicated, but Young says his work is about making things simpler. DO YOU COMBINE ART AND DATA IN YOUR JOB AT GOOGLE? Yes. For the past five years I’ve worked as an interaction designer with Google. I draw the user interface—that’s what you actually see on a device screen. SO WHEN WE’RE SEARCHING ONLINE, YOU’RE THINKING ABOUT HOW THE PAGE LOOKS. WHAT LED TO YOUR INTEREST IN…

PEOPLE CAN save money on furniture by buying parts in a box to assemble at home. But it isn’t always easy to put together a bookshelf or a table correctly. Now engineers in Singapore have built a robot that can assemble a simple IKEA chair from a pile of scattered parts. A 3D camera takes pictures of the chair’s parts while they’re scattered on the floor. That lets the robot map out what it needs. It has two big arms with gripping fingers. Force sensors on the robot’s “wrists” allow it to hold parts delicately or to push them together strongly. Researchers programmed the robot with the sequence of steps for assembling the chair. The robot spent 11 minutes and 20 seconds planning what it would do, from picking up…

HUMPBACK WHALES are the sea’s most famous singers. But whales of another species might be even more impressive vocalists. We just never noticed it until now. Bowhead whales live in the Arctic, at the top of the world. Scientists there placed microphones underwater to record the whales’ calls. They heard bowhead whales singing many different songs. New songs frequently arose and then disappeared again, almost like trendy pop music. Over three years of recordings, the scientists heard 184 different songs. Male bowhead whales might sing to try to attract females. Or maybe they’re just waiting to be invited onto The Voice. That’s the news! Go to page 39 to see if you spotted the false story.…

“Artists can help us look at data differently and find alternative ways of thinking about it.” With these words, Nathalie Miebach explains why she creates art that symbolizes weather data. Her three-dimensional woven sculptures are not only beautiful; they are also scientifically accurate. Miebach’s works of art actually help viewers better understand weather patterns. Miebach trained as a sculptor at the Massachusetts College of Art in Boston. A lifelong learner, she has also taken several science courses. Miebach teaches art classes across the country, and her work has appeared in over 100 museum and gallery exhibitions. She likes to play around with the categories of art and science. By using artistic processes and materials, she makes us rethink the traditional ways scientists present information. At the same time, she pushes…

Q: How do mountains form? —Lili L., age 12, Colorado A: Most mountains form in places where tectonic plates collide, says Camilo Montes, a geologist at the University of the North in Barranquilla, Colombia. Tectonic plates are like puzzle pieces that fit together to make up the Earth’s crust. But they aren’t frozen in place, and they don’t lock together seamlessly like real jigsaw puzzle pieces do. Tectonic plates move around—albeit very slowly—and bump into each other. When two plates collide, one forces its way under the other. That process is called subduction. The places where it happens are known as subduction zones. They are hot spots for all sorts of geological activity, including earthquakes, volcanoes, and mountain building. Montes studies one particularly interesting subduction zone, around Panama. There, the…

Did you think you’d find math in an unruly quilt or crinkly bead creature? No? Think again. Geometry offers all sorts of mind-bending constructions to inspire artists. Mathematician and sculptor Helaman Ferguson created a wrinkly hyperbolic quilt with four pentagons meeting at each corner. What does that mean exactly? To better understand, start by thinking of triangles. If you draw any triangle on a sheet of paper and add up its three interior angles, the result is always 180 degrees. When you draw a triangle on a saddle-shaped surface, however, the angles add up to fewer than 180 degrees. Just as a flat surface is a piece of the infinite mathematical object known as the Euclidean plane, so a saddle-shaped surface is a tiny piece of what mathematicians call the…

YOU MAY have heard the saying “numbers never lie.” It seems reasonable enough. Generally, gathering data or statistics leads to the truth. If a baseball team manager needs to choose between two different players, he may compare numbers. Stats like batting average or on-base percentage measure players’ performance in games. So the manager can pick the player with the best performance. In all sorts of sports, numbers help build the best teams possible. And in business, numbers and statistics typically guide major decisions. Numbers usually represent reality in a way that instinct, emotions, and hunches cannot. But not always. Numbers may not lie, but people have been known to. And people are the ones responsible for gathering and analyzing numbers. During this process, people may lie on purpose. Or they…