Kids Science Newsletter OCTOBER 2012
Nature can be unbelievably powerful. A major earthquake can topple huge buildings and bring down entire mountainsides. At Niagara Falls, more than 500,000 gallons (1,892,705 liters) of water crash down 18 stories into the Niagara River every second—enough to fill nearly 50 Olympic-size swimming pools in a minute! And everyone knows about hurricanes, blizzards, avalanches, forest fires, floods, tidal waves, and even thunderstorms. But if you thought Mother Nature didn’t have many surprises up her sleeve, think again. N ature has a load of other powers that, while less well-known, can only be described as, well, freaky.
The Mother of All Tornadoes
The fastest wind speed ever recorded—318 miles an hour (511 kilometers an hour)—occurred during a tornado near Oklahoma City in 1999. Scientists classify tornadoes by the damage they can do. A tornado with wind speeds of 70 miles an hour can sweep away entire houses and hurl cars through the air like missiles. But a tornado with wind speeds of more than 300 miles an hour has the power to derail train cars, tear grass from the ground, and even rip pavement from the street.
Dodge Balls
About 1,000 years ago hundreds of people were mysteriously killed in the Himalaya. A recent investigation concluded that they were caught in a hailstorm that dropped chunks of ice the size of baseballs on the victims’ heads at more than 100 miles an hour (160 kilometers an hour). Hail is formed in storms when raindrops are carried into extremely cold areas of the atmosphere by powerful vertical winds. The longer the tiny specks of ice bounce around in the wind, the bigger they become. When the clumps of ice grow too big for the wind to hold up, they fall to the ground as hail.
Light Show
Vast glowing rings, called auroras, often appear far above the North and South Poles. These rings can be more than 12,000 miles (19,312 kilometers) around. People who live near polar regions see the auroras as giant curtains of shimmering light in a variety of colors. This beautiful effect occurs when charged particles, shot past the Earth by the sun at more than a million miles an hour
(1,609,344,000 kilometers an hour), are caught in the Earth’s magnetic field and funneled to the Poles. When these particles hit gases in our atmosphere, the gases give off light. People in the far northern and southern regions can enjoy the greatest natural light shows on Earth.
It’s Raining Frogs!
Small frogs rained on a town in Serbia, sending residents running for cover. “There were thousands of them,” a villager told a local newspaper. “I thought maybe a plane carrying frogs had exploded in midair,” said another resident. Had the town gone crazy? Probably not. Scientists believe that waterspouts and tornadoes can suck up the surfaces and lakes, marshes, and other bodies of water. When they do, they can take frogs and fish along for the ride. The tornadoes can then drop them miles away.
Flaming Twisters
As if tornadoes aren’t dangerous enough, one kind is made of fire. Wildfires are so powerful they can create their own weather. As these fires burn, they consume huge quantities of oxygen. The intense heat causes the air to rise. When fresh air swoops in and replaces it, strong winds are produced. Sometimes this self-created weather, or microweather, causes swirling tornadoes of fire. These flame-throwing tornadoes, called fire whirls, can be 50 feet (15 meters) wide and grow as tall as a 40-story building.
Gas Attack
When a volcano erupts, a glowing sea of molten lava often flows down its sides, destroying everything in its path. A lava flow is unbelievably dangerous. But a volcano can produce something even deadlier: a pyroclastic flow, which is a cloud of gas and rock that can reach temperatures above 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit (537 degrees Celsius). The flow crashes down the side of a volcano like an avalanche. While most people can easily move out of the way of most lava flows, they can’t escape a pyroclastic flow so easily. These flows typically reach speeds of more than 50 miles an hour (80 kilometers an hour).
Scientists Help Giant Pandas Raise Twins
Question of the Month Do you know what is the fastest flying insect? (answer at the bottom of the page)
Snowball Factory
You head outside after a snowstorm and see dozens of log- or drum-shaped snowballs. These rare creations are called snow rollers, and Mother Nature makes them all by herself. Snow rollers form when wet snow falls on ground that is icy, so snow won’t stick to it. Pushed by strong winds, the snow rolls into logs. Maybe this is nature’s way of saying it’s time for a snowball fight.
Deep Sea Jacuzzis
Vents on the ocean floor, more than a mile (1.6 kilometers) below the surface, gush what looks like clouds of black smoke. They’re surrounded by a variety of freaky life forms never seen before the first vents were discovered about 30 years ago. These underwater hot springs, called hydrothermal vents, occur when water seeps through cracks in the ocean floor after being heated by magma inside the Earth. The scalding water can shoot back into the cold ocean at temperatures hotter than 700 degrees Fahrenheit (371 degrees Celsius), carrying a black or white stew of dissolved rock and chemicals. Amazingly, these vents support large communities of bizarre sea creatures. These life-forms rely on millions of bacteria inside them to turn poisonous chemicals rising from the seafloor into food.
Mystery Waves
Imagine you’re on an ocean liner when a wall of water ten stories tall races toward you like an unstoppable freight train. It’s not a tsunami, caused by an undersea earthquake. Tsunamis are tiny in the open ocean and become enormous—and deadly—as they approach the shore. No, what you’re witnessing at sea is a rogue wave, also called a freak wave. Scientists aren’t sure what causes these waves, but they do know they can appear without any warning in the open sea, even in the clearest of weather. As recently as 15 years ago these waves were thought to be a myth. But scientists now know they are very real—and very dangerous to even the largest ships.
Any human mother of multiples knows it’s hard to raise two or more children of the same age at the same time. And it’s true for other mammals, too. “Nearly half of all giant panda births in zoos and research stations result in twins,” Don Lindburg says. Lindburg is the leader of the giant panda research team at the San Diego Zoo. “Taking care of tiny infants is an awesome chore, and mother pandas usually can’t handle two,” Lindburg says. “Every newborn panda is important,” says Lindburg “After giant pandas have grown to adulthood, some of the captive-born bears could be released into the mountainous wilds,” he says. Those that mate and give birth to more cubs will help rebuild China’s perilously small population of wild pandas. At China’s Wolong facility, caregivers are helping make the mother’s situation more “bear-able.” They gently remove one of the twins, keeping it warm and well fed for a week before trading it for the cub’s brother or sister. The cubs continue to be swapped for months, until they can eat solid foods and no longer need to nurse. Bamboo, apples, carrots, and biscuits are added to the diet of mother’s milk when the cubs are about seven months old. By adulthood, the pandas will eat fresh stems, shoots, and leaves of wild bamboo plants. Fast Facts In five years female cubs will be mature enough to give birth to cubs of her own. Sixteen pandas were born in Wolong Nature Reserve in 2005.
Great Balls of Fire
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Answer to the question of the month The dragonfly is the fastest insect. It can fly more than 30 miles per hour. It beats its wings between 25 and 40 times per second as it travels through the air.
During a thunderstorm, a glowing ball the size of your head suddenly appears. It hovers a few feet above the ground, drops down, dances across the yard, and then darts up into the air before it fades away. This freaky phenomenon is ball lightning. Sometimes it disappears with a small explosion. Some scientists think that when normal lightning strikes the ground, it vaporizes a mineral called silicon found in soil. They think this silicon forms a kind of bubble that burns in the oxygen around it.
Experiment Magnetic Pick Up YOU WILL NEED A piece of paper A paper clip Thread Clear tape Scissors A strong magnet HERE’S HOW Cut a paper kite shape about three inches long and attach a paper clip to one corner. To the opposite corner, tape a piece of thread about eight inches long. Tape the other end of the thread to a flat surface. Use a strong magnet to pick up the paper clip and extend the string to full length. Hold the kite between your fingers and slowly move the magnet away from the paper clip. When you release the kite, it “flies,” unattached to the magnet.
Science Trivia Jelly fish are not really fish because they don’t have a backbone. They are underwater creatures with tentacles and a jellylike body shaped like a bowl turned upside down. The Portuguese man-of-war has tentacles that can be more than 100 feet long. The tentacles contain poison used to catch the prey they eat. If you brush against a Portuguese man-of-war while swimming it will release venom that will cause you a great deal of pain. Peanuts are upside down nuts! Nuts are really the seeds of a plant. Seeds normally grow toward the sun. The peanut’s seed pod instead of growing upward toward the sun grows downward into the soil where it ripens underground.
WHY? Magnets have a magnetic field, an invisible force that attracts some kinds of metal. Metal objects within the magnetic field do not have to touch a magnet to be pulled by magnetism.
The Rock Cycle Igneous-Sedimentary-Metamorphic The rock cycle consists of igneous rocks, sedimentary rocks and metamorphic rocks. These groups of rocks are constantly changing from one group into another. The rocks in each of these families are changing due to tectonic plate movement as crustal plates collide, move apart or slip past each other. Igneous Rocks are a major group of rocks. All igneous rocks develop when molten rock cools and hardens. Find out about these igneous rocks in the links below that form when a volcano erupts: pyroclastic rocks, aa lava, welded tuff, ignimbrite, pyroclastic material, pahoehoe lava and basalt rocks.
Sedimentary rocks found in the rock cycle are varied and include three major groups: clastic rocks, organic rocks and chemical rocks. You will find information on clastic rocks, organic rocks, limestone caverns, salt domes and coal formation in the links below. The third group of rocks are metamorphic rocks. Metamorphic rocks form when igneous, sedimentary and metamorphic rocks recrystallize without melting. Limestone rocks that recrystallize into metamorphic rocks form marble. Shale, a clastic rock, can recrystallize into gneiss a high-grade metamorphic rock.
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Science Current Events Animals frolicking beneath Antarctica NASA took a two minute video beneath the Antarctic ice cap recently. Scientists expected to find some microscopic life 600 feet below the surface of the Antarctic ice cap and instead found two animals that appeared to be rolicking in the ocean during the short video. One was a 3-inch shrimplike animal and the other was a jellyfish. An Icelandic volcano begins erupting after 200 years A volcano on the island of Iceland began erupting. The volcano is near a glacier. It was feared the volcano could melt part of the glacier, which is the fifth largest in Iceland creating major flooding on the island. Iceland sets on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge and has a major volcanic eruption about once every 5 years. Methane bubblers up as permafrost melts Students at the University of Alaska were studying the methane bubbling up where the permafrost is melting in the Arctic on the Seward Peninsula. They took a cigarette lighter and started a fire as methane gases spewed out of a hole in the permafrost that had melted. What Causes Earthquakes? Have you ever wondered what causes earthquakes? Earthquakes are vibrations inside the Earth that follow the release of energy that has built up inside rocks. Rocks fracturing, volcanoes erupting, and manmade explosions can release the energy stored in the rocks because the crust of the Earth is in constant motion. This motion is usually so slow that we cannot feel the movement. Large pieces of the earth’s crust, called crustal plates or tectonic plates, are moving in different directions around the Earth at about the speed our fingernails grow. The Earth’s plates sometimes lock together and energy builds up in the rocks. The push pull of tectonic plates causes rocks to bend as the pressure increases the rocks. When enough energy has built up, the rocks will suddenly break apart. The released energy that was stored in the rocks creates a rapid shaking of the Earth. This rapid shaking of the Earth creates energy waves that travel through the Earth. The energy waves are called seismic waves by geologists. These waves traveling though the Earth are what we feel during an earthquake. What causes earthquakes are the rocks breaking apart and releasing energy. What we feel during an earthquake are the seismic waves produced when the rocks break and snap into a new position.
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Eggs-Periments: Bottled Egg First get permission to use kitchen equipment and eggs. YOU WILL NEED One peeled, hard-boiled egg Plastic or glass bottle with an opening slightly smaller than the egg Large bowl of hot water Large bowl of ice water HERE’S HOW Put the bottle in the bowl of hot water for about five minutes. Move the bottle to the bowl of ice water. Wet the egg and place it pointed side down in the bottle opening. As the air inside the bottle cools, the egg will slowly move into the bottle. To remove the egg, hold the bottle upside down so the egg is near the opening. Blow hard into the bottle with your mouth tight against the opening. Point the bottle away from you: The egg flies out! WHY? Hot air expands. Cold air contracts. When the air inside the bottle is heated, the molecules, or tiny air particles, inside the bottle spread out, increasing air pressure. As the air in the bottle cools, the air pressure decreases. The greater outside air pressure pushes the egg into the bottle. Blowing into the bottle raises the air pressure again. The air and the egg rush out of the bottle.