The Express Tribune hi five - December 23

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stic g one pla wer a n li c y c e at r to po know th energy Did you n save enough PAGE 2 a bottle c for six hours? lb e light bu n Giraff o o ll a B ke a w to ma o h n r a Le PAGE 4 l and unusua e h t f o dose GE 5 r weekly s the globe PA u o y t e s G om acro funny fr rent ’ in diffe u o y e v y ‘I lo ow to sa 6 h n r a e E L es PAG languag

Chief Wizard: Zarrar Khuhro Master Storyteller: Ameer Hamza Knowledge Navigator: Dilaira Mondegarian Creativity Analysts: Maha Haider, Jamal Khurshid, Samra Aamir, Amna Iqbal, Essa Malik, M.Suhaib, Tariq Gillani, Kiran Shahid, Faizan Dawood, Umar Waqas

THE HE EXPR EXPRESS X PR XPR R ES ESS E SS S S TR TRIB TRI TRIBUNE, RIB R RI IIB BU BUNE UN UNE, UNE NE, NE N E, D DE DEC DECEMBER EC E C EMB EMBE EM MBE M B R 23, 2 3, 23 3, 2 20 2012 012 12 12

Hi light

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Plastic is like an annoying brother or sister: You can love it and hate it at the same time! On the plus side, plastic is lightweight, strong and cheap.

It can be hard or squishy, big or small, thick or thin. It’s the perfect material for food wrappers, eyeglasses, soda bottles, picture frames, dishes, keyboards, telephones and so much more. On the down side, plastic contains chemicals that can harm the environment. These chemicals also threaten the health of animals, including humans.

Now you must be wondering: how much damage could a plastic bag do? Well it rained a lot this year in the Indian city of Mumbai. It rained so much that the whole city was flooded... all because of discarded plastic bags!

These bags are very thin and in a strong wind can fly away from garbage bins and land in the drains, where they block the flow of water. Fortunately the people of Mumbai learned a valuable lesson and banned thin plastic bags!

Did you know that the amount of petrol used to make one plastic bag would drive a car about 11 metres? There’s another problem.

Plastic is made to be thrown away but in fact it lasts for a really, really long time. How long? Well it takes 500 to 1000 years for plastic to degrade, which means that the water bottle you threw away a few days ago will start decomposing when your great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandchildren are born!

Now the problem is that even if we stopped using plastics today, they would remain with us for many generations. And it’s piling up. Landfills and garbage dumps are full of it. There are even mounds of garbage in the oceans that cover thousands of kilometres.

Did you know that 8% of the world’s oil is used for making plastic? Imagine a water bottle filled a quarter of the way up with oil. That’s about how much oil was needed to produce the bottle!

Plastic bottle recycling can help — instead of going out with the trash, plastic bottles can be turned into items like carpeting or cozy fleece clothing. Unfortunately, not every plastic bottle or bag is recycled, most of it is sent to landfills. Or, even worse, they end up as trash on the land and in rivers, lakes, and the ocean.

One of the most serious threats to our oceans is plastics pollution. Approximately one billion seabirds and mammals die each year by ingesting plastic bags.

Plastic is also swept away by ocean currents, landing in small swirling vortexes. The biggest one is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, the largest ocean garbage site in the world. It’s a huge island, made up of garbage!

How big is it? It’s almost the size of Pakistan! These floating garbage sites are impossible to fully clean up.

Water is good for you, so keep drinking it. But think about how often you use water bottles, and see if you can make a change. Try carrying water in a refillable steel container instead of plastic. And yes, you can make a difference. Remember this: recycling one plastic bottle can save enough energy to power a light bulb for six hours!

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Hi Light

3 Plant a deciduous (leafy) tree that loses its leaves in fall on the south side of your home. Its shade will cool your house in the summer.

After the tree’s leaves fall, sunlight will help warm your house in winter. Trees help clean the air we breathe. They produce oxygen and reduce carbon dioxide.

When you visit a park or beach, be sure you deposit your trash in containers.

Participate in cleanup days at a beach or park. Never litter and keep the waterways clean.

Turn off the water while showering and brushing teeth. Most people let the water run while soaping up or brushing, but that wastes water. Run the water to get your towel and body or toothbrush wet, and then wash or brush with the water off. It saves water AND time because you end up focusing on getting clean and getting out of there!

Don’t kill that spider! There are an estimated 40,000 species of spiders, and they all eat insects.

They’re an important part of the food web and provide natural pest control.

What would you like to see in Hi Five?

Send an email to hifive@tribune.com.pk and let us know!

THE EXPRESS TRIBUNE, DECEMBER 23, 2012

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Recycled Notepads Turn brown paper, paper bags and any other paper scraps into cute and useful notepads and scribble pads.

: d e d e e n s ie l p p u S

Instructions: Decide on the size of your notebook and cut a piece of cardboard as the backing. Use this to cut out a number of pages for your notebook.

You can mix and match papers and textures or stick to one kind. Stack them up with the cardboard underneath, bang them gently onto a hard surface so that they lie true, and then put them flat on a table or counter with the top edge protruding slightly over the edge. Weigh the stack down with a heavy book but leave the top edge uncovered.

• A pile of scrap paper • Scissors • Scrap cardboard • White glue

Paint along the top of the stack with the glue, making sure that all the pages come into contact with some glue (a finger comes in handy for this). Leave to dry.

The notepads are now ready to use, but you may prefer to embellish them a little — especially if you intend to give them as gifts. Try painting on an extra thin layer of glue and dipping into glitter. Use a small piece of ribbon or braid along the top edge, stick on buttons and bows, or just use an attractive piece of gift wrap as the top page and finish by adding a further, folded strip of the same paper to neaten. The possibilities are endless and you will have fun experimenting.

Remember kids, always get permission from your parents before you start.

It’s always a good idea to have a helper nearby.

How to make a Balloon Giraffe!

Giraffe’s are magnificent creatures and balloons are fun toys! If you put them together, you get a magnificently fun balloon animal!

ToffeeTV.com’s Talea Zafar shows you how to make a giraffe out of a balloon!

Supplies needed: • Slim Balloons • Hand Pump 1

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How to make it: • Pump air into the slim balloon and leave about an inch worth of space at the end. Go ahead and tie the knot.

• We’ll start from the end that has the knot. Leave about an inch from the knot, and make a loop. Then twist this loop into place as shown in the image. This will help you to make the giraffe’s ears and the nose.

• Next we need to make the long neck of the giraffe and his 4 legs.

To do this, leave a few inches for his neck, and then make 3-inch loop for his legs. Once again, twist this loop into place. Repeat the same about 2 inches further down the balloon.

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• When you make the second pair of legs, you’ll notice that the giraffe’s tail will also appear automatically.

Enjoy your balloon giraffe!!

Always be sure that you keep the balloons away from your face so even if they do burst, you won’t get hurt.

Want to watch other fun activities like this? Log onto toffeetv.com!

THE EXPRESS TRIBUNE, DECEMBER 23, 2012

World wide weird Get your weekly dose of the unusual and funny from across the globe!

Stylish get-away

A historic sea fort has undergone a £3 million (Rs477 million) transformation to become an unlikely luxury retreat.

The 134-year-old Spitbank Fort, in the middle of the Solent, boasts of 15ft thick granite walls. It stands a mile out to sea, and the only way to reach the £350-a-night (Rs55,661) hotel is via taxi boat. It was built in the Victorian era to repel a possible invasion by the French navy.

The unique destination boasts nine rooms, a Crow’s Nest bar, hot tub, sun deck, gaming table and a restaurant. There’s even a firepit where visitors can sit on cool winter evenings to watch sailing boats, cruise liners or warships floating by.

Many of the original features have been kept intact and incorporated into the new design, with gun ports transformed into bedroom windows and gunpowder rooms enlisted as cosy snugs.

Mark Watts, general manager of the hotel, said: “It was an empty shell when we bought it in 2010. It has been used for various things in the past but we had this plan to turn it into a luxury hotel in the middle of the Solent. We’ve been open for five months now and we’ve had an amazing response.” SOURCE: WEB.ORANGE.CO.UK

A drop in the ocean A ‘free fall’ lifeboat set a new world record — after being launched from a height of 201ft into the water.

The new vessel has been designed with huge container ships and drilling platforms in mind, so that workers can be dropped to safety in the event of an emergency.

The GES50 MK III lifeboat has been designed to fall from a height of 154ft.

However, for its test run it plunged from the top of a crane, giving it a much greater height to ensure it was safe.

The successful test means the lifeboat has now passed safety regulations and it will soon be used worldwide.

The 50ft long boat has a separate compartment for the engine that is sealed and waterproof to prevent any damage.

It has been designed to always land upright, is fully equipped with seatbelts, and has the capacity to hold 70 people who can climb on-board in just one and a half minutes.

For the test, sandbags weighing 220lbs were strapped to each seat and the boat was filled with instruments to measure factors such as G-force levels.

The lifeboats are set to be used worldwide, with companies in Australia, the UK and Norway already placing orders.

The drop took place in Arendal in Norway and designers behind lifeboat production company Norsafe said they were delighted it was a success. SOURCE: WEB.ORANGE.CO.UK

Fire your senses

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Get your taste buds ready! A new spicy variety of peanut butter — six times hotter than the world’s hottest chilli — is to be sold in Britain.

The aptly named Instant Regret peanut butter is packed with capsaicin — the component that provides the heat within a chilli.

On the Scoville scale, which measures the heat of chilli peppers, the peanut butter boasts a whopping rating of 12,000,000.

To put this in perspective, the world’s hottest chilli — the Moruga Scorpion — rates at 2,000,000, as does the most legal variant of pepper spray.

The spread is not for the faint-hearted and even comes with a warning to users. It is not suitable for the elderly nor children.

So fiercely hot is the butter that the retailers, Firebox, had to persuade the factory to produce it.

Instant Regret creator Ben Redhead said: “During the tasting process we first laughed, but then we cried.

Measuring a mental 12 million SHU on the Scoville Scale, it’s probably not your everyday breakfast spread.”

SOURCE: WEB.ORANGE.CO.UK

Hook and bones Just when you think you will spend the afternoon fishing peacefully, the most unexpected thing happens.

An 11-year-old boy from Michigan. and his cousin, Andrew Gainariu, found a 13,000-year-old mastodon bone in a stream behind their backyard.

“I thought it was a rock at first, but a couple minutes later I looked more at it, and I didn’t think it was a dinosaur bone, but I wasn’t sure,” said Eric Stamatin. John Zawiskie, a geologist and a paleontologist at the Cranbrook Institute of Science confirmed in early November that what the kids discovered was not a rock at all, but an axis, a specialised second vertebra behind the skull in the spinal column of an American mastodon.

The mastodon, which is Michigan’s state fossil, is common to the geographic landscape, according to Zawiskie. He said more than 200 discoveries have been made in the southern half of Michigan over the past 150 years, usually by farmers or construction crews.

The large mammals became extinct because of nomadic hunters causing new stress for the population and a very abrupt climate change, dubbed the ‘Younger Dryas’ period, when temperatures reversed to glacial conditions. SOURCE: EDITION.CNN.COM

Exploding aquarium Ever dreamt of going for a swim and being surrounded by sharks? Well 15 people got to live their worst nightmare when a giant shark-filled aquarium burst open in China.

Horrified passers-by fled in panic when the 10-inch thick protective glass suddenly gave way, flooding the entrance of the Dongfang shopping mall in Shanghai.

Three lemon sharks and dozens of smaller fish and turtles perished when the 34 tonne tank shattered without warning, say police.

The tank had become a local landmark since it was installed two years ago and every week a diver would swim with the sharks, feeding them by hand.

“There was no warning. Just a loud crack and it went. I’ve never been so scared,” said one worker.

A police spokesman said: “There were lots of injuries caused by flying glass, some of them serious because the glass was so thick. We are investigating what caused this.” SOURCE: WEB.ORANGE.CO.UK

THE EXPRESS TRIBUNE, DECEMBER 23, 2012

Did you know?

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s n i g i r O d r o W Spick And Span Has your mother ever told you to clean up your room and to make sure that it is spick and span? Or maybe you’ve seen an advertisement about a new cleaning product on television, that promised to make the house spick and span. Have you wondered what that means? The phrase comes from two really old words: spick, which was a spike or nail and span, which meant “wood chip.” When a ship was polished and new, it was called “spick and span” meaning every nail and piece of wood was spotless. The phrase originally meant “brand new” but is now used to indicate cleanliness. Now you know!

How to say 'I love you' in different languages!

Afrikaans Aragonese Croatian Danish Dutch Esperanto Estonian Finnish Filipino French German Greenlandic Hungarian Iban Italian Japanese Javanese Korean Latin Malay Scots Spanish

: : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : :

Ek’s lief vir jou T’amo Volim te Jeg elsker dig Ik hou van je Mi amas vin Ma armastan sind Rakastan sinua Mahal Kita Je t’aime Ich liebe dich Asavakkit Szeretlek Aku sayau nuan?

Ti amo Daisuki desu Aku tresnasliramu Sarang hae Te amo Saya sayang kamu Ah loove ye Te amo

Cool facts You cannot snore and dream at the same time.

The following can be read forward and backwards: Do geese see God? A baby octopus is about the size of a flea when it is born.

A sheep, a duck and a rooster were the first passengers in a hot air balloon.

In Uganda, 50% of the population is under 15 years of age.

Recycling one glass jar saves enough energy to watch TV for 3 hours.

Catfish are the only animals that naturally have an odd number of whiskers.

The Pokemon Hitmonlee and Hitmonchan are based off of Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan.

The Titanic was the first ship to use the SOS signal.

About 8,000 Americans are injured by musical instruments each year.

THE EXPRESS TRIBUNE, DECEMBER 23, 2012

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Fun & games

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THE EXPRESS TRIBUNE, DECEMBER 23, 2012

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