Indholdsfortegnelse for May/June 2024 i Muse: The magazine of science, culture, and smart laughs for kids and children

You may have heard about citizen science. But what is it, and why are some people, including scientists, so obsessed about it? Citizen science refers to any project where members of the public—everyday people—volunteer to help scientists. You may think of scientists as people who have all the answers. But, in reality, they’re often working on involved projects that they can’t complete alone. DAWN OF A GOOD IDEA Back in 1999, researchers at SETI (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) wanted to analyze data they had collected with radio telescopes. They didn’t have a computer powerful enough to do the job, so they asked volunteers to help by using their home computers. The project was a huge success. Soon other scientists began enlisting volunteers. Now, citizen scientists search satellite images for specks…

Sam Oliner was 12 years old when German soldiers, Nazis, swept through his Polish village. The Nazis ordered all Jews to quickly pack a few belongings and then moved them into a crowded, sealed-off neighborhood 10 miles (16 km) away. Two miserable months of near starvation passed. Then the Nazis came again at dawn. They yelled and pounded on Sam’s door. His stepmother told him, “Run away, my child, so that you will live!” Still in his pajamas, Sam ran and hid on the roof. From high up, he watched the soldiers load everyone else onto trucks and drive away. It was 1942, and World War II was tearing Europe, and his family, apart. “I Will Help” The next day, Sam snuck back down to their rooms. His mother had…

Helping other people is super nice—but also sometimes selfish. Today at lunch I may give you a handful of my pretzels, secretly hoping that tomorrow you’ll give me a bite of your chocolate bar. Or maybe I volunteer to play tuba for the school band knowing I’ll get to go on a cool trip. Helping others out feels great—but would it be as wonderful if I wasn’t going to benefit, too? Let’s ask the chimps. Chimpanzees are humans’ closest living relatives, and they’ve also been known to help one another. They sometimes hunt together, share food, or groom one another. But what if the favor won’t be returned or—worse yet—there’s an actual cost to helping out? Would a chimp still do it? THANKS, TAI Meet Tai. She’s a chimp who…

GRAB SOME FRIENDS AND SEE if you can solve this cooperative challenge! Before you start, make sure you have at least four people and an open, flat space outdoors. The story begins . . . Whoo whoo! A train whistle blares, louder and louder. You and your friends, Sonia, Max, and Jackson stop biking to watch the freight train pass. It zooms by, trailing car after car. Sonia’s pet rabbit Pocus pops his head out of her backpack to see too. “Wouldn’t it be cool to drive a train?” Sonia says. Max nods. Jackson takes binoculars out of his backpack—and waits for Sonia to tease him about all the random tools he always carries around. But just then, as the train rounds a bend up ahead, a door on one…

Q: Why do certain colors look good together, but others clash? —Mary Lynn W. A: First, imagine a rainbow. Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet, all laid out in a line. Now pull that rainbow into a circle, so that violet touches red. That circular rainbow is called a color wheel. Take a look at which colors are across from each other: Red and green, and blue and yellow. These pairs are called complementary colors. Something funny happens when you mix them together. Jay Neitz is a vision researcher at the University of Washington. He says if you shine a red light and a green light at the same spot, the mixture will look gray. The same goes for yellow and blue. “They cancel each other out,” Neitz says.…

I could hear the protests from the end of the hallway at Children’s Hospital Colorado. “No! NO!” Nico’s* leg had been amputated after an injury. Now he had an artificial leg. His therapists wanted him to try to walk. “No!” he shouted again. “It hurts!” Hathaway, a therapy dog, had met Nico during earlier visits. I’m Hathaway’s human partner. The dog took me to Nico’s wheelchair. “Would you like to take Hathaway for a walk?” I asked. Nico stopped crying. He forgot about the pain. Instead, he reached for the leash and stood up. With Hathaway beside him, Nico left the wheelchair behind and walked. Then, standing and balancing on his brand-new leg in the therapy gym, he played fetch with Hathaway, his Labrador retriever friend. A therapist shook her…

Your Tech MARKUS REHM can leap much farther than the length of your family car. He’s a world champion long jumper. But he only has one leg. He wears a device called a prosthesis in place of his missing leg. You’d think that a missing leg would cause problems—especially for an athlete. But the prosthesis Rehm wears is specially designed to propel him forward. It’s a lightweight, curved metal blade. Some call Rehm “Blade Jumper.” At a 2015 competition for athletes with disabilities, he sailed 27.6 feet (8.4 meters). That distance would have beaten the non-disabled gold medalists at the 2012 and 2016 summer Olympics. Rehm wanted to compete in the 2016 summer Olympics. But some thought his blade leg gave him an unfair advantage. And he couldn’t prove that…