Indholdsfortegnelse for October 2024 i What on Earth! Magazine

Where do YOU read your magazine? Over the summer, we challenged readers to send in photos of the wild and wonderful places where they enjoy reading What on Earth! Magazine. As you can see, we received some fantastic photos! Whether it's shooting down a waterslide or reclining on a giant deckchair, our readers clearly know how to read the magazine in style! Everyone featured in this issue will win a book voucher to spend on… more amazing things to read! To see a gallery of all the brilliant entries, go to: whatonearth.co.uk/photos…

The giant Stonehenge stone that came from Scotland! Scientists studying Stonehenge, a large and ancient circle of stones found in Salisbury, UK, have made an exciting new discovery. The altar stone found at the centre was transported some 750 kilometres or more from north-east Scotland! Nobody is quite sure how or why Stonehenge was built. It is thought that it was constructed over 1,500 years, beginning about 5,100 years ago. The huge stones have mostly been traced to nearby areas in England, around 25 kilometres away. Others are from Wales, about 280 kilometres away. By testing rock samples, scientists worked out that the altar stone had come from Scotland. They are still not sure how the 6-tonne stone was transported, but they think it may have been by boat. ALTAR…

Languages often borrow words from each other as people from different places meet and their cultures mix. These words are called ‘loanwords'. For example, the words ‘pizza' and ‘spaghetti' are originally Italian words that are now also used in English. However, transporting words from one language to another sometimes changes them a bit, because of the differences in grammar or sounds or other linguistic factors. Can you decode each of the loanwords on the right back into the original English words they have been borrowed from? Here's an example to get you started: the Hindi loanword ‘botal' is adapted from the English word ‘bottle'. Good luck! DECODING LOANWORDS! Can you work out which familiar English words were adapted into the languages below? Write your answers on the lines and then…

HOW WE CREATED THIS MAP To calculate what area all the people in the world would take up if they were standing side by side, we first had to decide how closely they would be standing to each other. We decided that five people would fit standing together in 1 square metre. Next we took the global human population (8.17 billion) and divided it by 5 to work out how many square metres all those people would fill up. You can see what this looks like on the map below! 2.51 billion All the people born in the 21st century so far would fit onto the Isle of Man! DID YOU KNOW? According to the United Nations, the global human population is predicted to peak in the mid-2080s at around…

ORIGIN STORY Dracula is perhaps the best-known vampire story, and the character of Dracula has made appearances in books, films and even modern cartoons such as Hotel Transylvania. He originally comes from a book published by the Irish author Bram Stoker in 1897. While nobody is quite sure how Stoker came up with the idea, most experts think he was inspired by the real-life prince Vlad III of Transylvania, also known as Vlad the Impaler. Vlad was a very bad man indeed, who killed his enemies by driving stakes through them. In the book Dracula, the vampire is finally killed with a wooden stake. A BREIF HISTORY OF VAMPIRES Many cultures throughout history have told stories about people returning from the grave, which became the vampire stories of today. But…

ANIMALS 1 Which of the following four words is also used as a collective name for a group of bats? a. A swoop b. A flutter c. A cave d. A colony 2 Approximately how long does it take a sloth to digest a single leaf? a. A day b. A week c. A month d. Three months 3 Which substance makes up around 95 per cent of a jellyfish's body? a. Muscle b. Jelly c. Water d. Rubber 4 In Disney's popular animated movie The Lion King, what type of animal is Pumbaa? a. Wild boar b. Warthog c. Wildebeest d. Weasel HUMAN BODY 1 If all the blood vessels in an adult's body were laid out end-to-end, approximately how far would they stretch? a. 10,000 km b. 50,000 km c. 75,000 km d. 100,000 km 2 Whereabouts on your body would you find…

ORIGIN STORY Frankenstein (or, more properly, Frankenstein's monster) has been featured in many books, comics, films and television shows. But do you know where he got his start? You might be surprised to discover that this fabulously famous monster comes from a book written in 1816 by a teenage girl! Author Mary Shelley was just 19 when she came up with the story during a writing competition on holiday with her friends. BASED ON A TRUE STORY? The book Frankenstein is about a scientist who gives life to a human-like creature. In some depictions, the monster is made of dead bodies brought back to life by being electrocuted. You might think that this is all completely made up, but it was actually based on scientific discussions of the time. In…

When you think of chocolate, you might imagine unwrapping a chocolate bar or licking an ice cream before it melts. But the first people to eat chocolate didn't have sweet treats or ice cream or even sugar or milk! If you're a chocolate lover, you'll want to thank the ancient Mesoamericans. Mesoamerica is a historical region that stretched from what is now the southern part of North America through to what is now Central America. Researchers think some of the very first chocolate eaters were ancient Mesoamericans in what is now southern Mexico in about 1500 BCE. They somehow figured out an amazing thing: if you 1) save the seeds embedded in the white flesh of the cacao fruit, 2) ferment them for four to ten days to allow the…

14.5 million The price in pounds of the world's most expensive new car in 2019, the Bugatti La Voiture Noire. Only one was ever built. 180,000 The cost in pounds of one of the world's most expensive speeding tickets.** 371 The longest distance in kilometres driven by a car tipped up on its side and balancing on two wheels. The record-breaking stunt was pulled offby Italian Michele Pilia in 2009. 304.5 The top speed in miles per hour of the world's fastest road car, the Bugatti Chiron Super Sport 300+. 30,000 The number of individual parts found in the average car. 4,890,993 The number of kilometres travelled by Irv Gordon in his 1966 Volvo P1800S, the longest total distance driven by a single car. 1885 The year that German engineer…