Innehållsförteckning för Jul/Aug 2022 från What on Earth! Magazine

PHOTOS SWIM BUDDIES! Antar is a golden retriever that lives on board a boat in Egypt and loves to go swimming. As Alex Mustard, the photographer who took the picture, says: ‘We were in deep water but Antar was totally relaxed. He was not at all interested in the people around him, and only wanted to get close to the dolphin!’ CITY IN THE CLOUDS These tall buildings look as if they're floating in the sky. But they are actually standing on a cloud-covered mountain in Seoul, South Korea. HOP, SKIP AND A JUMP! Around 100 rabbits took part in this athletics contest for bunnies in Kromeriz, Poland. Competition events included the obstacle race (below), long jump and sprint (or should that be hop?). THE CRYSTAL MAZE Up to 12…

Café wall illusion Look at the lines running horizontally across this pattern. Are they straight or angled? The lines appear to be angled towards each other. In fact, they are all parallel. Use a ruler to check! The illusion is created by the arrangement of yellow tiles between the horizontal lines. This jagged pattern fools your brain. Adelson Checker Shadow Compare the squares labelled 1 and 2. On the left, 2 appears to be a lighter colour. On the right, the grey line shows that the two squares are in fact exactly the same colour! The shadow cast by the apple fools your brain into making square 2 appear lighter than it really is. Ebbinghaus illusion Look at the red circles in the middle of these patterns. Which is bigger?…

To start any investigation of the unseen world around us, a great first step is to get hold of a magnifying glass. Take this useful little tool with you in your pocket when you go out for a walk. Look closely through it and a world of miniature creatures will be revealed right before your eyes! But even with a magnifying glass, we can only see a tiny part of the world we live in. All around us are even smaller animals than the magnifying glass reveals. To find these creatures, we can use a more powerful tool: a microscope, which is pictured on the right. The number and variety of microscopic animals is almost unbelievable. Some of them you might know already. But others will be a complete surprise.…

Did great white sharks cause the end of megalodons? The megalodon – a prehistoric animal that swam in the Earth's oceans between 23 million and 3.6 million years ago before becoming extinct – was the largest shark that ever lived. As you can see from the illustration below, a megalodon was an enormous creature. It grew to lengths of more than 18 metres – which is more than three times longer than a great white shark – and could weigh as much as 60 tonnes, which is more than seven African elephants! However, size isn't everything, and a new scientific study suggests that great white sharks could have been partially responsible for megalodon becoming extinct. Scientists have for a long time debated what caused these giant prehistoric sharks to die…

An expert in dog psychology called Professor Stanley Coren created a series of tests to measure the intelligence of different breeds of dog. Coren's tests investigated three kinds of doggy intelligence. First, a dog's ability to perform tasks it was bred for, such as herding animals and fetching objects. Second, a dog's ability to solve problems on its own, such as retrieving food placed beneath an upturned bowl. Third, a dog's obedience in following instructions from humans. Overall, these are the dog breeds that came top of the class.* *The three breeds of dog that received the lowest scores on Coren's tests were the English bulldog, Basenji and Afghan hound.…

Things in Space Earth has two motions. First, it is orbiting, or revolving, around the Sun. We call this speed Earth's orbital speed. But Earth is also spinning in place like a giant top. The spinning motion is called rotation, and it's why we have day and night. This speed is called rotational speed. Because Earth is shaped like a ball, the rotational speed is different depending on where you are standing on the planet. At either pole your rotational speed would be almost nothing because you would basically be spinning in place. At the equator, though, you would be whipping along at about 1,670 kph. Top Speeds From the super-fast to the super-slow, Earth is full of animals and vehicles going places at different speeds. Speed of Sound Sound…

Question: How does Sat-Nav always know where you are? From Max, age 10 Answer A Sat-Nav or Satellite Navigation - system uses satellites orbiting Earth to calculate the geographic location of an electronic receiver (which could be a smartphone or the Sat-Nav device in a car). The best-known Sat-Nav system is the Global Positioning System (GPS). It was developed in the United States in the 1980s and 90s. Today, GPS consists of 31 satellites, with each satellite sending out radio signals broadcasting its location and the time. An electronic receiver in a Sat-Nav device combines the information in the radio signals from at least four of these satellites to work out its current location. It can then show where you are on a map. Question: who created the Nazca lines…

Using shadows to amuse and entertain our friends and families is probably one of the oldest forms of human entertainment. In fact, there are records of shadow puppets being used in artistic performances in China and India more than 2,000 years ago. You can create your own amazing shadow show right now, in your bedroom. All you need is a strong source of light (a bedside lamp is ideal), a white or light-coloured wall to act as your screen and – you guessed it! – your hands. First, turn on the lamp and point its beam of light so that it is projected onto the wall. Next, turn off all the other lights in the room and close the curtains or blinds. The beam of light should appear big and…

2013 After surviving an attack by an extremist group called the Taliban for speaking out against their denying girls in Pakistan an education, Malala Yousafzai was invited to give a speech at the UN on July 12th about the power of learning. It is now known as Malala Day. 1957 On July 6th, Althea Gibson became the first black player to win a tennis championship at Wimbledon, the world's oldest major tournament. Gibson's victory in the women's singles helped to pave the way for other great black tennis champions, including sisters Venus and Serena Williams. 1913 On July 10th, the highest recorded temperature on Earth, 56.7°C, was measured at the appropriately named Furnace Creek, USA. 1913 Patented on July 8th, the Erector Set, a LEGO-style building kit, was known as…

This month: tales of the Vikings, Normans and more! Focus the camera of a smartphone or tablet on this QR code to listen to an audio recording of the author reading this book extract. One of the joys of zooming out to connect together the dots of the past is that every so often you see interesting patterns. Here's a perfect example. Over millions of years, the tectonic plates of rock that form the Earth's crust went through a cycle of converging into one giant supercontinent and then splitting into small fragments. Well, zoom out over hundreds of years of human history and you'll see a similar cycle. Empires form and split apart. Then new empires form and split apart again. That splitting apart is exactly what happened in Europe…

SHOW WHAT YOU KNOW (If you read the whole magazine, these should be a breeze!) 1 A golden retriever called Finley holds a world record for fitting the most tennis balls in his mouth at once. Finley managed… 2 The painting by Italian artist Leonardo da Vinci that was famously stolen from the Louvre art gallery in Paris in 1913 is called… 3 In a day, a cow can produce enough wind to fill… 4 The black hole at the centre of our galaxy, the Milky Way, is called… 5 There is enough energy in a bolt of lightning to boil… 6 Some people used to believe that kissing a donkey helped to take away the pain of… 7 The hottest recorded temperature in history, of 56.6°C, was measured in…

Q What is the name for a fear of giants? A A fee-fi-phobia! Q How do you stop a dog barking in the back seat of a car? A Put it in the front seat! Q What type of cheese is made backwards? A Edam! Q What is yours but everyone else uses more than you do? A Your name! Q What is a bird's favourite type of TV programme? A Duck-umentaries! Q What grades did the pirate get at school? A High Cs! Q Why didn't the Sun go to university? A Because it already had 15 million degrees! Q What do you need to enter a haunted house? A A spoo-key! rs Q Who invented fractions? A Henry the Eighth! Q Why do cows lie down when it's…