Innehållsförteckning för January 2022 från Muse: The magazine of science, culture, and smart laughs for kids and children

Do You Hear the Turtles Sing? Hello! I am Lily, the very smart and kind queen of musicals, turtles, and math. Muse is AMAZING!!!!!!!!! I love science and math so much and that is what Muse is all about! I am so good at math that I skipped kindergarten and I’m in 8th grade math right now! Algebra is my favorite part of math. I love finding unknown numbers through a series of steps. I also love turtles A LOT. The turtles of my kingdom and I want you to know that the “TurtleCam” article in the January 2020 issue, “Mysteries of the Deep,” was awesome. They would also like you to know that they are slowly dying, through light pollution and plastic. Their queen cannot stop it alone, they…

COWS ARE DOMESTIC ANIMALS. Like dogs, cows were bred and evolved over many, many years of living and working with humans. The ancestors of dogs were wild wolves. The ancestors of cows were shaggy wild cattle called aurochs. But compared to aurochs, today’s cattle have peabrains. There are no wild aurochs living today, but scientists measured auroch skulls in museums to figure out how big their brains were. Compared to the size of their bodies, aurochs had larger brains than cows today. The scientists also found that the tamest types of cattle, like dairy cows, have the smallest brains of all.…

The first time a scientist spotted a bottle-nosed dolphin swimming with a piece of seaweed stuck across its face, she thought it was an accident. Maybe the dolphin had gotten tangled in some kelp and couldn’t shake it off. But then researchers discovered that many dolphins in a certain area of the ocean swim with seaweed on their faces. Usually, the seaweed is partially covering a dolphin’s eyes. Scientists think the dolphins do this on purpose by swimming straight through patches of seaweed. If a strand gets stuck, they leave it in place. This may shield their eyes from the bright sun as they swim at the ocean’s surface. It’s not the first time dolphins have been seen using tools. Some Australian dolphins carry sponges in their mouths to help…

In the spring of 1918, strange things were afoot in New York City’s Van Cortland Park. Rocks and trees were moving and calling out across the landscape. “I stumbled over a hump of grass, which squealed when I stepped on it, and rose before me,” wrote journalist Elene Foster in the New York Tribune. Foster wasn’t hallucinating. She was witnessing a specialized military unit in action. They were developing new techniques to protect American troops in World War I. ˜ e talking trees were members of the Women’s Reserve Camouflage Corps, volunteer camoufleurs trained in the new military science of camouflage. These words come from the French word camoufleur, which means to disguise. The women had learned camouflage techniques from Lieutenant H. Ledyard Towle, a U.S. Army officer and artist,…

Ever caught someone staring out into space and wondered what the heck they were looking at? To find out, you might follow their gaze, study their expression, or hey, just ask them, right? But now there’s an even better, more precise way: Observe what is being reflected on the surface of their eyes. Here’s how to try this out: Get close and look right into a friend’s eyes. You’ll see a curved reflection of your face, a nearby window, a bench, a tree, or whatever else might be in view. Among the many important things they do, eyes can act like little mirrors that reflect exactly what a person is looking at. So, you can learn a lot about what a person is looking at and what their surroundings are…

Geerat Vermeij is an accomplished scientist who studies shells and mollusks. He uses his findings to explain concepts of biology, evolution, and even human history. He’s an esteemed professor of geobiology—the study of life and earth sciences—and paleobiology—the study of fossils and plants—at the University of California, Davis. He’s also the author of six books. Vermeij lost his sight at the age of three, so he uses his sense of touch to investigate the shapes and features of the shells he loves. WHEN DID YOU BECOME INTERESTED IN SCIENCE? From the earliest age, I was interested in nature. I started collecting shells quite early on. I think the idea of spending my life in science happened in fourth grade. I told everyone. At first, I wanted to be somebody who…

Louis Braille lost his sight at the age of five. By 1824, when he was only 15, he had invented braille, an alphabet of raised dots that made it possible for the visually impaired to read by touch. Braille learned night writing in school but found it too complicated. He wanted a less demanding system, so he set out to create one himself. He simplified Charles Barbier’s system (see below right), cutting the number of dots in half. He also chose to represent letters instead of phonemes. This greatly reduced the total number of characters, as there are more individual sounds in a language like French than there are letters in the Roman alphabet. Barbier’s night writing had symbols for 36 individual phonemes; the Roman alphabet has only 26 letters.…

English caricaturist James Gillray had a knack for creating lively and influential caricatures of political figures during the French Revolution. His main target: Napoléon Bonaparte. Gillray drew Napoléon many times, often caricaturing the French general as extremely short and hotheaded. The most famous of his works, “Plumb-Pudding in Danger,” shows England’s prim and proper prime minister, William Pitt, dining with a stunted and sloppy Napoléon. The two men are carving up a globe that represents a dessert called plum pudding. Another one of Gillray’s caricatures shows King George III scrutinizing a pint-size Napoléon and declaring him among the most “pernicious, little-odious-reptiles that nature ever suffer’d to crawl upon the surface of the Earth.” In reality, Napoléon’s height was average for the time, around 5’6” or 5’7”. But Gillray’s images have…

Electronics that people wear on their bodies can do various jobs. There are simple watches that tell time and smart watches that deliver emails. There are Fitbits that count steps and monitors that make sure people with diabetes are healthy. But all these devices need batteries. Researchers are working on a new way to power electronics. They built small square patches that stick to a person’s fingertips. While the person sleeps, the patches collect tiny drops of sweat from the fingertip skin. Technology within each patch can convert a chemical in the sweat into electricity. The patches can also collect energy from a person squeezing two fingertips together. Eventually, this technology could power new kinds of wearable electronics—no batteries required. One of these stories is FALSE. Can you spot which…

Parrots called sulfur-crested cockatoos have learned how to open the lids of garbage bins so they can eat the food inside. First, a cockatoo bites the front of a lid and lifts it up. Holding the edge of the lid in its beak, it shuffles along the rim of the garbage can toward the back hinge. This pushes the lid up wide enough to flip open. Scientists found that this habit has been spreading between cockatoos in the suburbs of Sydney. The birds learn it from watching one another. This is a kind of bird culture, the researchers say. (Maybe next they’ll start teaching each other TikTok dances.)…

Look at the photo on the top. Now look at the photo underneath it. Now look back at the first photo. Go back and forth between the two photos, and decide whether they are the same. If they’re different, what’s different about them? These photos are different, in many ways—11, to be exact. In the photo on the bottom, the helmet on the person to the left has changed to green and a motor has been added to the white boat in the foreground. (For the remaining nine differences, see the photo on page 46.) Some people manage to pick out a couple differences very quickly, but most people don’t. Psychologists call this inability to spot change “change blindness.” Studies show that when we look at a scene, we easily…

Animals have evolved to be excellent camoufleurs and can teach us lots of tricks. Whether for protection or to sneak up on prey, they hide themselves in various ways: Concealing coloration resembles an animal’s natural habitat or background. For example, white-tailed deer have brownish coats that blend in well with fields and woodlands Disruptive coloration is typically a pattern (like spots or stripes) that visually “breaks up” an animal’s figure, making it difficult o see as just one thing. It can be useful to both predators (like leopards) or prey (zebras). Mimicry is when an animal has coloring very similar to a different, dangerous animal. Many harmless butterflies look almost exactly like bad tasting poisonous butterflies Or they have spots on their wings that look like a…

Goggles are great for protecting eyes. When people need eye protection, we can grab goggles, but birds have built-in, go-everywhere goggles called nictitating membranes. The animals have upper and lower eyelids that open and close vertically, but their nictitating membranes open and close horizontally. These membranes, a kind of third eyelid, are translucent so birds can still see when the membranes are closed. “Nictitating” comes from the Latin word nictare, which means “to blink.” The blinking of the membrane happens so fast it takes a high-speed camera to capture the moment when the membrane covers the eye. Most birds have keen eyesight—from two to eight times better than humans. Their sharp vision helps them search for food and watch for predators. So, protecting their eyes is critical. In the “blink…

What do you think about when you wait at a crosswalk? What about browsing the internet? Chances are, if you’re not visually impaired, you don’t think much about these everyday activities as you’re doing them. But for blind and low-vision people, these sorts of things can be dif cult if the people designing them don’t take steps to make them accessible. About 90 percent of people who are “legally blind” have some sight—they can make out some amount of light or movement. But their vision isn’t good enough to allow them to interact with the world in the same ways as seeing people. They might use a seeing-eye dog or white cane to get around, or use a text reader to help them access written material. Audio descriptions of scenes…

The invention of spectacles brought the world into focus, but the story of specs is not as clear as you might expect. Eyeglasses developed over time, and their origin story holds some surprises. What are the greatest breakthroughs humans have made since inventing the wheel? In 2013, The Atlantic magazine posed this question to a panel of experts, including scientists, entrepreneurs, engineers, and historians. When the publication’s editors combined their answers into a master list, eyeglasses came in at number five, behind only modern electronics, penicillin, electricity, and the printing press. If you disagree with that ranking, try this quick experiment: Rub a bit of soap on a piece of glass and hold the glass in front of your eyes. Or if you wear glasses or contacts, remove them. Now…

MOST PEOPLE WHO SEE FEEL LOST AND HELPLESS WHEN EVERYTHING IS DARK. They would want their vision back if they ever lost it. In many fables and stories, a blind person miraculously sees the world again, or for the first time. In real life, could this miracle actually happen? Several new technologies can treat or reverse certain forms of vision loss. But none of these technologies is perfect. Most come with risks and restore only glimpses of light and shadow. How do they work? And how do people with vision loss feel about these so-called “cures”? Bionic Eyes As of 2002, people with vision loss can get an implant that hacks their visual system. The device captures sights and sends them to the brain. During surgery, a doctor puts a…

DECADES AGO, A WORKER BUILDING A BRIDGE IN CHINA DUG UP A WEIRD-LOOKING HUMAN SKULL. To keep it safe, he hid it in a well. Eighty-five years later, the man’s family recovered the secret skull, which they handed over to scientists. The skull is more than 140,000 years old. Researchers think it belonged to an ancient relative of humans that’s never been discovered before. They named this relative Homo longi, or “Dragon Man.” Other scientists aren’t so sure about Dragon Man. They think the skull might have come from a different human relative called a Denisovan. Either way, they’re all glad the ancient head came out of hiding.…

Our eyes act like a camera. They capture images from the world around us. The images can be individual objects or the features of the setting we are located in. Our eyes also help us to identify the vivid color of an object—a rose or an apple, for instance—from the surrounding background. Looking at the rose, we can guess how far it is from us. Our eyes can also discern the texture and other features of the flower. We do all this automatically, without thinking about it. More Than a Camera But a neuroscientist will explain that a human eye is more than a camera. It not only captures images but also transmits and interprets these images. An eye is a complicated organ with a deceptively simple structure. Some organisms…

In October, a group of blind teens gathered in Salt Lake City to make some thermite reactions—that is, some fireballs! They measured ingredients and assembled three aluminum cans for the experiment. A device called Sci-Voice Talking LabQuest 2 helped them audibly keep track of their measurements. Then—outside, under the supervision of several scientists—they set off three fireballs on different surfaces: concrete, a steel plate, and a pile of sand. Instruments measured the heat transfer the fireballs sent through each surface and read the rising temperatures aloud. That data was embossed on paper so the students could feel the graph to notice how dramatically each experiment affected the temperature of each surface. Students could also feel the residual heat and touch the cooled-down stony waste, called slag. By examining the results…

Q Why does your snot start dripping in the cold? —Maia K., age 10 A: Inside your nose, it’s always summertime—warm and very humid, says Andrew Lane. He’s an ear, nose, and throat doctor and the director of the Sinus Center at Johns Hopkins University. Even in winter, the air passing from your lungs to your nostrils is toasty and packed with moisture, like a cloud that’s about to shower you with rain. But things change when that air meets cold weather. In cold, dry air, your nose makes more snot just to stay comfortably wet. But there’s another reason for the drip. Cold air can’t hold as much moisture as warm air. So as your exhaled breath cools down, it has to let go of some of the water…

—It’s a rabbit. —No, it’s a duck flying. See the wings? —That is very clearly a snail-eyed alien from Greeb. —It’s a dog! —It’s not a dog. It’s a kangaroo. Look at its snout, it’s obvious. —It’s a side view of a snail-eyed Greebian. —That’s definitely a moose. —It’s a spider holding on to an old branch! —Hmm… another Greebian. This is getting a little worrying. Is this some kind of warning? —Would you please stop rambling about aliens from Greeb? —Yeah, where do you get this st—Ahhh! What’s that?! —I hate to tell you guys: I told you so……