Innehållsförteckning för May/June 2021 från Muse: The magazine of science, culture, and smart laughs for kids and children

Horsing Around I am the Scottish-Irish princess Hannah. I live in the castle of Freswick and have a unicorn-dog hybrid and a rabid little brother. If I’m being honest, I think that you should do an issue about . . . (drumroll, please) . . . horses! I think my horse, Sir Cuddles McGlitterpants, would like that very much. I would appreciate it, too. Thank you very much. I love Muse, and if you don’t publish this, I will send my rabid little brother and an army of his little friends to demolish Muse HQ. —HANNAH N. / California Everyone seems to have a pet but me. I want a dorm pet at the very least. Hmmm, what should we name it? —O Dragons Three He’ll Send to Thee I…

When Elexis Blake was an 8-month-old baby, her grandmother noticed something unusual. Elexis didn’t seem to notice sounds, like a dog barking. “She shook a jar full of pennies behind my head,” says Elexis, now 25. “I didn’t turn. But I was very interested in the jar when she showed it to me.” Her family took Elexis to an audiologist (a medical specialist who can test for hearing problems). The audiologist told her parents that she was profoundly deaf in both ears. When Are Hearing Problems Diagnosed? Most babies get a hearing check soon after they are born. If the test detects hearing problems, parents are told to visit an audiologist for more tests. When Elexis had her first hearing test, the doctor may have thought that her results would…

Twin ear tubes divide the sounds to the left and right, like stereo headphones, making the sounds easier to understand. The ear tubes are angled slightly forward to align with the doctor’s ear canals. Sound waves travel along the tube by bouncing off its walls—a process called multiple reflection. Flexible ear-tips transfer the sound into the doctor’s ears and block background noise. Listening with a stethoscope is called “ascultation.” The narrow tubing attached to the chest piece traps these vibrations, funneling the sound waves along. Squeezing the sounds makes them louder. A binaural spring may squeeze the ear tubes together, so they press on the doctor’s ears and don’t fall out. The chest piece includes two “resonators:” » the diaphragm—a thin, stretched membrane, like a drum—to hear higher-frequency sounds »…

R2-D2’S VOICE. A blaster firing. Vader’s heavy breathing. Sound designer Ben Burtt created the legendary sounds for the Star Wars films. Burtt faced the task of using the objects of this world to create the sounds of another, completely alien world. He was guided in his choices by the story of the films. “The story is essentially about good and evil,” he says, “so I designed sounds that reflected that. Imperial ships and weapons tended to be shrieking and howling, frightening and ominous. Rebel spaceships, locations, and weapons, on the other hand, sounded less threatening, less sleek, and more organic.” Burtt found many of the sounds that he used in unexpected places. When he wanted to create the sound of spaceships, he visited a NASA rocket testing facility to record…

Constructed over 4,000 years ago, this astonishing structure is among the greatest surviving works of prehistoric engineering and architecture. To construct its enormous circles, immense slabs of stone weighing upwards of 50 tons were first quarried from solid rock and then transported for miles, to be raised into place on a flat, grassy plain. Each stone was precisely aligned, and builders chiseled a complex joining system into the rocks to mount the horizontal stones on top of the vertical ones. Why? Among its many possible uses, Stonehenge may have served as a kind of astronomical observatory. The rising sun seems to align with important parts of the monument at key points throughout the year. This could have helped ancient people track the seasons to better manage farming and other activities.…

REWRITING HISTORY Women Hunt, Too SOME GROUPS OF PEOPLE TODAY RELY ON HUNTING AND GATHERING FOR THEIR FOOD.IN THOSE GROUPS, the hunters are usually men. Researchers thought the same thing was true in the distant past. But the discovery of a prehistoric female hunter shows it wasn’t always the case. In the Andes Mountains in South America, scientists found a burial site that’s about 9,000 years old. An ancient human had been buried with a lot of their stuff. That stuff included many stone tools for hunting animals, as well as tools for dealing with animals’ meat and skins. Surprisingly, the human skeleton was female. The researchers took a closer look at other sites where ancient humans had been buried with hunting tools. They found evidence that several of these…

Start by imagining a sound that might exist at Mnemosyne, the world of Parallel U. What would you hear when Cate fires up her rocket boots? What would it sound like when the characters jump from one dimension to another? Might a certain set of tones accompany Ms. Acorn when she appears in a room? Then gather noise-making materials that are already around the house. Think of zippers, pots and pans, the swish or crinkle of paper. You might find useful items in the recycling bin—an empty cardboard box or a plastic container. Now take a page out of Ben Burtt’s sound design playbook. Experiment with ways to make just the right sound for the character, object, or action you’ve imagined. How can the sound help tell the story? Be…

THE YEAR: 1841 THE PLACE: Exposition de L’Industrie Belge (The Belgium Industrial Fair) Adolphe Sax stands over the wreckage, running a hand down his thick beard. His prototype is ruined. It was no accident. A boot kick from some rival competitor had dented and deformed the delicate metal. The massive brass instrument with a clarinet-like mouthpiece would have blown the judges away. Now it can’t even make a sound. Furious, even after his other instruments win second prize, Adolphe storms out of the fair. I’ll go to Paris, he thinks. I’ll win bigger prizes. I’ll show them all . . . STEP 1 Survive Childhood. Seems like a no-brainer, but for the oldest son of Charles and Maria Sax, this was no easy task. Antoine-Joseph was born on November 6,…

He focuses on diseases of the ears, nose, and throat, a specialty called otolaryngology (oh-toelare-un-gah-luh-jee). His elementary school teachers might be surprised to know of his success! “I was a mischievous child,” he said. “I was easily distracted and was held back a year in school.” Francis grew up in Jamaica. Two of his aunts were nurses. “When I was 12, I decided I wanted to be a doctor,” he says. “I knew I had to study. Fortunately, I discovered I loved the sciences.” He also liked to read. Some of his favorite books were about brothers who solved mysteries. “I loved the idea that people can work as a team and solve problems,” he says. Francis completed high school at 16 and traveled to the United States for college.…

“Proportions,” Adolphe Sax once said, “. . . are the laws which lay down an instrument’s shape, and give it its sound, its quality of tone.” This was a new way of thinking that set him apart from other manufacturers. To understand how the shape of an instrument affects the sound it emits, it’s important to recognize that each sound we hear is actually a collection of many different harmonics, or frequencies. Here’s a simple way of thinking about it: picture the color red. If we mix white into it, the color becomes lighter. If we mix in black, it becomes darker. Sound works in much the same way. Only instead of black and white, sound uses higher and lower frequencies to create the “color” of the sound. Musicians call…

Trevor Cox is a professor of acoustic engineering at the University of Salford in the United Kingdom. He engineers systems to make sound better. And he studies how the structures we build affect the sounds we make inside them. His work has investigated the acoustics of one very ancient and famous structure. Located about 90 miles (145 km) west of London, England’s Stonehenge is one of the world’s most fascinating monuments. WE HEAR ALL KINDS OF AMAZING THEORIES ABOUT STONEHENGE. WHAT INSPIRED YOU TO STUDY THE POSSIBILITY THAT ITS DESIGN MIGHT INFLUENCE WHAT PEOPLE ONCE HEARD INSIDE IT? I’m fascinated by the idea of reconstructing sounds from the past. After all, there are no recordings, so this is a real challenge to explore. We study the acoustics of modern buildings,…