Math is not just in the numbers on a cash register or at a football game. It’s in bathroom-tiling patterns, the shapes of clouds and trees, the arrangement of a flower’s petals, a ball’s path in a pinball game, the knots you tie in your shoelaces—and even in the way you lace your shoes (see “How to Lace Like an Ace”).

There’s math in the spiral pattern at the center of a flower.

Kenneth Peterson

Ron Eglash has gone even farther. He’s found math in beadwork, basket weaving, Navajo rugs, modern music, and even cornrow hairstyles. Eglash is a professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y.

The best way to get students excited about math, Eglash says, is to apply it to things that they care about.

With this goal in mind, he has created computer programs that reveal mathematical principles in everything from graffiti art and the architecture of African villages to Native American beadwork and Puerto Rican music. As students create and experiment, they learn math in a way that makes sense to them.

“Kids already know the mathematics, but they know it in a form that isn’t recognized in school,” Eglash says. “We’re getting kids to take something they already know in their hearts and hands and to use computers to translate that into the kind of math their schools understand.”

Fractal factor

Eglash first noticed the link between culture and math when he saw photographs of Africa taken from airplanes. Huts in many villages, he noted, are built in circles of circles of circles, or in rectangles of rectangles of rectangles.

The walls, fences, buildings, and rooms of an African village sometimes have a pattern that repeats itself. In this illustration, notice that the smallest rectangles (blue) are miniature copies of the red rectangles, which are themselves miniature copies

In math, a pattern that repeats itself on different scales is called a fractal. In a fractal object, each smaller structure is a miniature copy of the larger form.

Fractals often appear in nature. A tree, for instance, has branches that split into branches that split into more branches, and so on.

The rules that underlie fractals are simple. But the resulting patterns can be complex (see “Creating a Fractal Snowflake,” below).

The people who live in fractal-based villages in Africa use math to reflect spiritual concepts, Eglash says. They believe that life is a never-ending cycle and that our ancestors are always with us. Repeating patterns can also represent the desire for unending health or wealth.

The pattern on this African (Fulani) wedding blanket has details that repeat parts of the overall design, but on smaller scales.

Courtesy of Ron Eglash

Eglash found fractals not only in village design but also in African sculptures, textiles, and other art forms.

Four points

Math and culture work together in other places, Eglash says.

Many Native American groups, for instance, find meaning in four points that mirror each other, whether there be four directions, winds, colors, or mountains. Such four-point symmetry appears in these people’s beadwork, tepee construction, buffalo-hide drum decorations, sand paintings, and more.

This beadwork pattern was created on a square grid.

Courtesy of Ron Eglash

In the eyes of a mathematician, these patterns belong to something called the Cartesian coordinate system. The images fit onto graphs with an x-axis and a y-axis, where each point on the graph is given by two numbers, or coordinates. And there are sets of rules, called algorithms, that tell you how draw these shapes step by step on graph paper (or a computer screen).

Using Eglash’s Virtual Bead Loom program, you can experiment with the Cartesian coordinate system to make your own beautiful works of art. You can also try the Graffiti Grapher, Navajo Rug Weaver, and Alaskan Basket Weaver, all based on the same concept.

Drumbeats and cornrows

Among Eglash’s other creations is a program called Rhythm Wheels. It challenges kids to figure out when two repeating sets of drumbeats, each going at its own pace, will meet. As they work with this program, kids learn about fractions and finding the least common denominator.

Cornrow Curves, another program, teaches transformational geometry. Students work with repeating patterns and changes in scale to create new hairstyles.

Ron Eglash’s software can be used to create cornrow hairstyle designs.

Rensselaer/Eglash

Eglash can’t look anywhere without seeing a math lesson just waiting to be taught. His newest program, still under construction, uses a break-dancing robot to explain angles involved in three-dimensional movement around an axis.

Eglash’s math programs are popular with students. According to recent studies, a group of mostly minority kids felt better about computers after using them. And a group of mostly Latin American students improved their math grades after using the tools.

Math appreciation

In Native American communities, elders appreciate the lessons, too, because kids learn about the history of their people.

In fact, each of Eglash’s programs includes information about the culture, history, and math involved.

With Eglash’s computer program, it’s possible to create a weaving pattern (right) that looks like the one used to make a real basket (left).

Courtesy of Ron Eglash

Once parents and grandparents consider schoolwork to be culturally valuable, they become more likely to encourage their kids to study, says Jim Barta. He’s a professor at Utah State University in Logan.

“Parents say, ‘Wow, I wish I’d had teachers that taught me math that way. I might have liked it!’” Barta says.

Ultimately, mixing math with culture could do more than help kids learn. It could also help them understand each other better.

“Culture is usually a barrier to math,” Eglash says. “We are using math as a bridge to culture.”

Creating a Fractal Snowflake

You will need:

• pencil
• ruler
• sheet of paper
• protractor for measuring angles to draw triangles

What to do:

• Draw an equilateral triangle with each side measuring 9 centimeters (above left). (Remember, each angle of an equilateral triangle measures 60°.
• Divide each 9-centimeter side into three equal parts, each measuring 3 centimeters. At the middle of each side, add an equilateral triangle one-third the size of the original, facing outward. Because each side of the original triangle 9 centimeters, the new, smaller triangles will have 3-centimeter sides. When you examine the outer edge of your diagram, you should see a six-pointed star made up of 12 line segments (above middle).
• At the middle of each segment of the star, add a triangle one-ninth the size of the original triangle. The new triangle will have sides 1 centimeter in length, so divide each 3-centimeter segment into thirds, and use the middle third to form a new triangle (above right).
• Going one set further, you create a shape that begins to resemble a snowflake (below).

If you were to continue the process by endlessly adding smaller and smaller triangles to every new side, you would produce a fractal object that mathematicians call the von Koch snowflake curve, named after a Swedish mathematician, Niels Fabian Helge von Koch.

Going Deeper:

Additional Information

Questions about the Article

Word Find: Math World

Researchers now say that marks on fossil tusks suggest that male mastodons fought violent battles with each other at a certain time every year of their adult lives.

“American mastodons were not just docile herbivores that whiled away their time in forests and meadows,” says Daniel C. Fisher, a paleontologist at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. “They were very aggressive animals.”

Male mastodons had curved tusks that could have been damaged in competitions for mates.

R. Thom/University of Michigan

Mastodons lived in North America between 4 million and 10,000 years ago. In 1999, paleontologists in Hyde Park, N.Y., dug up long, curved mastodon tusks that dated back 11,480 years.

When Fisher looked at the undersides of the tusks, he noticed rows of shallow grooves, or pits, that were spaced at regular intervals. Then, he cut a tusk into slices and looked at them under a microscope. A closer look showed that the layer of tooth, called dentin, was damaged in the areas underneath the pits, as well.

This mastodon tusk shows rows of pits (indicated by arrows) that reflect damage at a certain time of the year, every year.

Daniel C. Fisher

Like the tusks of elephants, mastodon tusks were made of ivory, and they grew throughout an animal’s life. The cells that form new ivory lie at the base of the tusk where dentin meets the hard outer layer of the tooth, called cementum.

Based on the position of the grooves and the chemical composition of the tusks, the researchers concluded that the injuries happened between the middle of spring and summer. The damage appeared every year of the animal’s life after the age of 20.

In battle, a male mastodon would sometimes dip its head down and then swing it back up so that the tips of its tusks would stab the neck or skull of its foe. This type of blow could be fatal to the other guy, but the impact could also jam the attacker’s tusks back into their sockets. That jamming, Fisher says, could have caused the odd pattern of scars.

A mastodon fossil found in Indiana has similar markings, Fisher says, but the damage appears only after every 2 or 3 years of growth during the mastodon’s adult life. People lived alongside mastodons in the area. Fisher suspects that hunting may have reduced the number of males and the number of fights.

Fisher’s hypothesis makes sense, other scientists say, but questions still remain. Modern elephants, for example, fight with their tusks, but they don’t develop the same kind of tusk damage.

It’ll take a bit more sleuthing to truly understand the lives of the magnificent mastodons.—E. Sohn

Going Deeper:

Perkins, Sid. 2006. Mastodons in musth: Tusks may chronicle battles between males. Science News 170(Oct. 28):276-277. Available at http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20061028/fob3.asp .

You can learn more about mastodons at www.museum.state.il.us/exhibits/larson/mammut.html (Illinois State Museum), www.sdnhm.org/exhibits/mystery/fg_mastodon.html (San Diego Natural History Museum), and en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastodon (Wikipedia).

Scientists have long wondered what makes these super-social insects tick. Now, they have some important clues. A group of researchers has recently decoded the genome, or entire set of genes, of the western honeybee.

A honeybee visits an aster.

Zachary Huang

Genes are made of the molecule DNA, which is like an organism’s operating manual. By looking at what genes an animal has and what they do, scientists can learn a lot about the biology behind its behavior.

The new work is especially exciting because it’s the first time that researchers have decoded the genome of a creature with a queen-and-worker society.

“The sequencing of the honeybee genome is unquestionably a historic event,” says Ben Oldroyd, a bee specialist at the University of Sydney in Australia.

A western honeybee worker tends larvae, one of the social behaviors that makes the insect’s DNA code so intriguing to biologists.

Ryszard Maleszka

In addition to honeybees, geneticists have so far unraveled the genomes of four other insect species: malaria mosquitoes, silkworms, and two types of fruit flies. New comparisons among the groups have revealed a number of surprises.

Honeybees, for instance, have 170 genes for sensing smells. Fruit flies have only 60. Apparently, it helps to have a good sniffer when you live a bee’s life.

Compared to fruit flies and malaria mosquitoes, on the other hand, honeybees have far fewer genes to support their immune systems, which defend against disease. That’s surprising because animals that live in groups tend to encounter more diseases.

Honeybee genes share some traits with the genes of vertebrates (animals with backbones). For example, both honeybees and vertebrates, including you and me, use the same kind of genes for establishing body rhythms that depend on the time of day. They also have similar genes for switching other genes on and off.

A worker bee tends larvae.

Jeff Pettis, USDA-ARS Bee Research Lab

Bees have small, simple brains, but they’re able to learn and remember far more than you might expect. The decoding of the honeybee genome might help explain these amazing behaviors.

The new work might also help scientists breed stronger bees. Over the last 20 years, tiny pests have arrived that kill a lot of honeybees. Up to one third of commercial honeybees in the United States have disappeared.

That’s a problem for us, too. Honeybees carry pollen around so that plants can make a lot of the food we eat, from apples to zucchini.—E. Sohn

Going Deeper:

Milius, Susan. 2006. Genome buzz: Honeybee DNA raises social questions. Science News 170(Oct. 28):275. Available at http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20061028/fob1.asp .

You can learn more about the western honeybee at www.gpnc.org/honeybee.htm (Great Plains Nature Center) and en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_honeybee (Wikipedia).

For information about the honeybee genome, go to www.news.uiuc.edu/news/06/1025robinson.html (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) and www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/genome/guide/bee/ (National Institutes of Health).

Sohn, Emily. 2005. Bee heat cooks invaders. Science News for Kids (Sept. 28). Available at http://www.sciencenewsforkids.org/articles/20050928/Note2.asp .

______. 2005. Copybees. Science News for Kids (Sept. 7). Available at http://www.sciencenewsforkids.org/articles/20050907/Note3.asp .

_____. 2005. Little bee brains that could. Science News for Kids (April 6). Available at http://www.sciencenewsforkids.org/articles/20050406/Note2.asp .

______. 2003. Childhood chills give bees six left feet. Science News for Kids (May 28). Available at http://www.sciencenewsforkids.org/articles/20030528/Note2.asp .

Science project idea: Test honeybee memory. See www.hometrainingtools.com/articles/bee-memory-experiment.html (Home Training Tools).
For information on genomics projects, go to www.sciencebuddies.org/mentoring/project_ideas/
home_Genom.shtml?from=Home (Science Buddies).

But that’s just what a type of gazelle does to beat the desert heat.

Sand gazelles live in the deserts of the Saudi Arabian peninsula.

Courtesy of Stéphane Ostrowski

Sand gazelles live in the deserts of Saudi Arabia. These animals allow their livers to shrink by up to 30 percent—all in an effort to conserve water.

It’s one of many unusual adaptations that animals make to survive in some of the hottest, driest places on Earth.

Saving water

How can the size of an animal’s liver affect water conservation?

It has to do with the cell structure of the liver and its energy needs, says Joe Williams. He’s a biologist at Ohio State University and one of the authors of a recent study of sand gazelles.

The cells that make up the liver are packed with objects called mitochondria. The mitochondria change food into energy for growth and other functions in living things. This process requires oxygen, and the oxygen comes from air that animals breathe.

The catch? “Every time you exhale, you lose water,” Williams says.

The body keeps the inside of the lungs moist, he explains. But every exhalation picks up some of this water as vapor and carries it out of the body—something you can feel if you exhale into your hands a few times.

A sand gazelle can shrink its liver to conserve water.

Courtesy of Stéphane Ostrowski

Williams and his coworkers suggest that by shrinking their livers during times of extreme water shortages, sand gazelles decrease the number of active mitochondria.

As a result, these animals “breathe less often and, over time, lose less water,” he says.

Every drop

Other mammals conserve water by using it as efficiently as possible. To do this, they squeeze out every drop available to them and recycle it in their bodies.

The kangaroo rat, which lives in the desert of southeastern Arizona, is so good at conserving water that it doesn’t have to drink at all. It gets all the water it needs from eating seeds.

Kangaroo rats get all the water they need from seeds.

Photo by George Harrison, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service

All seeds have a certain amount of free water, and kangaroo rats have adapted to preserve as much of this water as possible, says Yar Petryszyn. He’s curator of mammals at the University of Arizona department of ecology and evolutionary biology.

“You’d have the same source of water if you ate only seeds, but you wouldn’t even begin to be able to survive” with so little water, Petryszyn says. People “lose too much water in other ways—breathing, sweating to keep cool, processing waste.”

A mammal’s kidneys contain long tubes through which liquid waste passes on its way out of the body as urine. The tubes allow an animal to extract water for reuse.

A kangaroo rat’s kidneys help it conserve water.

National Park Service

It turns out that a kangaroo rat’s kidney tube is about five times as long as the same structure in other rodents, Petryszyn says.

The tube’s greater length gives it much more surface area. As a result, the animal can reabsorb greater amounts of water and put that water back into its bloodstream, Petryszyn explains.

Kangaroo rats save a lot of water this way. Because the rats reabsorb so much water, the urine they expel is highly concentrated.

Seed storage

Kangaroo rats and their desert cousins, pocket mice, share another feature that helps them survive in the desert: external cheek pouches that they use to temporarily store their food.

Like kangaroo rats, pocket mice don’t need to drink water.

National Park Service

Other rodents, such as hamsters and mice, have internal cheek pouches for storing food. When they’re out foraging and find a seed, they simply open their mouths and tuck it in.

“Kangaroo rats can’t afford to do that because they would lose a lot of water if they had to open their mouths in the dry desert air every time they found a seed,” Petryszyn says.

To get an idea of what he means just try talking for an hour, without drinking anything, to see how quickly your mouth dries out.

Kangaroo rats and pocket mice stuff seeds in their external cheek pouches. They can do this with their mouths closed. Once the rats return to their nests, they can empty the pouches, again without opening their mouths.

As a second water-saving feature, these animals have structures in their nostrils that reabsorb water vapor from the warm air they exhale, Petryszyn says.

Bird care

The sand grouse might take the prize for the most dedicated parenting among desert animals, Williams says.

This small bird flies from 50 to 60 kilometers (30 to 37 miles) to the nearest river, where it soaks its chest feathers in the water.

When the sand grouse returns to its nest, it allows its nestlings to “suckle” the water from the feathers. “The feathers are designed like a sponge,” Williams says. “Even though water evaporates on outside feathers, there’s water left on the inside.”

Why is water so important to survival for animals? Wouldn’t desert animals have an easier time if their bodies didn’t depend on water?

“Every cell is about 80 percent water, and every chemical reaction important to life requires water,” Williams says. “Life just doesn’t exist without it.”

Going Deeper:

Additional Information

Questions about the Article

Word Find: Desert Life

This new, ring-shaped invisibility device is 1 centimeter tall and about the size of a drink coaster.

David Schurig et al./Science

When a person “sees” an object, his or her eye senses many different waves of visible light as they bounce off the object. The eye and brain then work together to organize these sensations and reconstruct the object’s original shape.

So, to make an object invisible, scientists have to keep waves from bouncing off it. And they have to make sure the object casts no shadow. Otherwise, the absence of reflected light on one side would give the object away.

Invisibility isn’t possible yet with waves of light that the human eye can see. But it is now possible with microwaves.

Like visible light, microwaves are a form of radiant energy. They are part of the electromagnetic spectrum, which also includes radio waves, infrared light, ultraviolet rays, X rays, and gamma rays. The wavelengths of microwaves are shorter than those of radio waves but longer than those of visible light.

Microwaves bent by the walls of this 1-centimeter-tall invisibility device skip the center area and come out the other side on their original paths as if nothing had been in the way.

David Schurig et al./Science

The scientists’ new “invisibility device” is the size of a drink coaster and shaped like a ring. The ring is made of a special material with unusual abilities. When microwaves strike the ring, very few bounce off it. Instead, they pass through the ring, which bends the waves all the way around until they reach the opposite side. The waves then return to their original paths.

To a detector set up to receive microwaves on the other side of the ring, it looks as if the waves never changed their paths—as if there were no object in the way! So, the ring is effectively invisible.

When the researchers put a small copper loop inside the ring, it, too, is nearly invisible.

However, the cloaking device and anything inside it do cast a pale shadow. And the device works only for microwaves, not for visible light or any other kind of electromagnetic radiation.

So, Harry Potter’s invisibility cloak doesn’t have any real competition yet.—C. Gramling

Going Deeper:

Weiss, Peter. 2006. Vanishing actor: Physicists unveil first invisibility cloak. Science News 170(Oct. 21):261. Available at http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20061021/fob6.asp .

______. 2006. Out of sight. Science News 170(July 15):42-43. Available at http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20060715/bob9.asp .

Peterson, Ivars. 2004. Invisible man. Science News for Kids (July 28). Available at http://www.sciencenewsforkids.org/articles/20040728/SciFiZone.asp .

Science project idea:
Making glass objects disappear.
www.exploratorium.edu/snacks/disappearing_glass_rods.html (Exploratorium).

A crocodile’s heart may help it digest large, bony meals.

U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service

Like mammal and bird hearts, a crocodile’s heart is a muscle that pumps blood. One side of the heart sends blood that is full of oxygen out to most of the body. The other side pulls blood back toward the lungs to give it an oxygen refill.

But crocodile (and alligator) hearts have an extra valve that mammal and bird hearts don’t have. The extra valve is a flap that the animal can close in order to keep blood from flowing toward the lungs. This means that the blood goes right back into the body instead.

Although scientists have known about the crocodile heart’s extra valve for many years, they haven’t known what it was for. Some scientists thought that it might help crocodiles and alligators stay underwater longer, making them better, more deadly hunters.

Like that of a crocodile, an alligator heart may send blood to the animal’s stomach to help with digestion.

Ginger L. Corbin, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service

Now, scientists have a new idea about what a crocodile’s heart can do. By studying captive alligators, scientists discovered that the extra valve can reroute some of the blood normally pumped to its lungs to its stomach instead. This diversion lasts about the same amount of time that it takes an alligator to digest a big meal.

To see if the valve is really connected to digestion, the scientists used surgery to close the valve in some captive alligators but left it working in others. They then fed each alligator a meal of hamburger meat and an oxtail bone. Alligators with a working valve digested the tough meal quicker.

This X ray shows a bone in the stomach of an alligator. An alligator’s heart may help it digest this meal.

Colleen G. Farmer, University of Utah

Blood returning from the body to the heart has extra carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide is also a building block of stomach acid, which helps digest food. So, when blood rich with carbon dioxide goes to the stomach instead of the lungs, it can aid digestion.

Whether it helps alligators and crocodiles pursue their underwater prey or helps them digest it, the heart’s special valve does seem to give these hunters a leg up on the competition.—C. Gramling

Going Deeper:

Harder, Ben. 2006. Quirky cardiology: Crocs’ hearts may aid their digestion. Science News 170(Oct. 21):260-261. Available at http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20061021/fob5.asp .

Information about alligators and crocodiles can be found at www.sandiegozoo.org/animalbytes/t-crocodile.html (San Diego Zoo).

You can learn more about the American crocodile at www.kidsplanet.org/factsheets/american_crocodile.html (Defenders of Wildlife).

But when I was a kid, I never imagined that I would one day send messages using a computer that fits in my backpack. Your experience is probably very different.

“Kids are now living in a virtual world,” says psychologist Patricia Greenfield. She’s director of the Children’s Digital Media Center at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Scientists have begun to wonder whether the Internet is good or bad for kids.

iStockphoto

Nearly 90 percent of 12-to-17-year-olds in the United States use the Internet, according to one recent survey, and about half of these kids use it every day. They visit chat rooms and send e-mails. They post profiles on MySpace and go to Web sites to get information for homework.

As digital technology dominates the lives of young people more and more, scientists have begun to wonder: Is the Internet good or bad for kids?

“It’s impossible to answer that question because the Internet is so many things,” says Justine Cassell, a media expert at Northwestern University. “It’s networked computer games and news about politics and instant messaging and e-mails to your grandmother.”

To add to the uncertainty, more and more studies show that the online world can be helpful in some ways and dangerous in others. It can be both an educational resource, for example, and a hiding place for kidnappers.

“The bottom line,” Greenfield says, “is that the Internet is a very powerful tool that can be used equally for good or bad.”

Reasons to worry

Adults have plenty of reasons to worry about kids’ Internet use. In chat rooms, for instance, it’s easy to lie, and kids can get sucked into dangerous situations.

In chat rooms, kids can be sucked into dangerous situations.

iStockphoto

“In my first foray to a teen chat room, I started getting IMs [instant messages], and pretty much all of them were attempted cyber-pickups,” Greenfield says. “I’m old enough to be their grandmother!”

In searching for and visiting Web sites, kids can stumble across words and pictures that they may not be prepared for.

To help prevent that situation, in 2000, the U.S. Congress passed the Children’s Internet Protection Act, which requires schools and libraries to block offensive and obscene Web sites.

“That made me realize that this is a serious issue,” says education professor Zheng Yan of the University at Albany, New York. He began to do research on the problem. “I found that it’s not so simple” to solve, he now says.

Web confusion

More than anything, Yan’s research has pointed out how confusing the Internet can be for children, even when they think they know how it works.

“Many kids think the Internet is very simple,” Yan says. But in fact, “the Internet is one of the most complicated entities in the universe,” he cautions.

Without guidance from adults, young kids usually don’t know much about how the Internet works.

iStockphoto

To find out how much kids know about the technology, Yan interviewed more than 300 students in grades four through eight.

Some of the youngest students thought that the Internet is simply an icon on the screen. Others thought it existed within the computer itself.

It often wasn’t until age 10 or 11 that kids realized that the Internet is a network of millions of computers. It took another 2 or 3 years for them to understand, for example, that a stranger could see what they’d posted.

Understanding the technology helps kids understand how dangerous the Web can be, Yan says. It’s not enough simply to block obscene Web sites on school and library computers or to limit the number of hours kids spend online. It’s also important to teach children about the Internet and how it works. This way, kids can learn to protect themselves.

Making a difference

Learning about the Internet can also give young people the power to make a difference, Cassell says. With colleagues, she studied the Junior Summit, an online forum that originally took place in 1998.

The Internet is a vast resource, providing all sorts of information. But not all of that information is reliable or trustworthy.

iStockphoto.com

As part of the summit, more than 3,000 9-to-16-year-olds from 169 countries communicated through the Web. Then, they elected 100 representatives to spend a week in Boston. The participants met professors and industry leaders. The kids presented ideas to world leaders and the press about how to improve the lives of young people around the world.

“As I was designing the community and helping young people become involved, I became interested in what effect this community would have on their lives,” Cassell says. “I didn’t know what to expect because there hadn’t been anything like this in the past.”

After analyzing thousands of messages, her group found that the elected leaders posted more and longer messages than other kids did. They used “we” more than “I.” And they wrote more about the summit than they did about themselves.

These results, Cassell says, show that the Internet can help kids become involved in a community and learn how to pursue common goals as part of a group.

“They had excellent ideas,” she says, “and the ability to carry them out.”

Future technologies

As you grow up, new fashions, video games, and technologies will continue to challenge your imagination. Yet even as the world changes, kids will keep going to playgrounds, doing homework, and hanging out with friends.

Learning about new technologies helps make them more useful and less risky.

iStockphoto

“Every era of childhood is both different from the previous one and also fundamentally the same,” Cassell says.

Learning about new technologies, however, can go a long way toward making them more useful and less risky.

Going Deeper:

Additional Information

Questions about the Article

Word Find: Internet Kids

A swath of seafloor beneath the Pacific Ocean (outlined in orange) has little or no sediment. This area is about the size of the Mediterranean Sea.

E. Roell

The rocks that form Earth’s surface beneath the oceans are usually covered with a thick layer made up of sand or dirt and the skeletons of tiny ocean creatures called plankton.

Plankton are microscopic plants that spend their lives drifting in the ocean. When they die, their skeletons sink to the seafloor. Some parts of the oceans contain abundant plankton, and their skeletons can eventually form a very thick layer on the ocean floor.

But one patch of ocean floor is missing this layer entirely. The patch, called the South Pacific Bare Zone, is about the size of the Mediterranean Sea. It’s located thousands of miles east of New Zealand.

Scientists found the bare zone using equipment that can detect different kinds of rocks and soils. The measurements showed that there was very little sediment, or accumulated particles, in this region.

Scientists were surprised by their discovery. But they came up with several reasons why this particular area would lack sediment.

The waters in this part of the ocean have low levels of nutrients, so there’s little food for plankton. As a result, there aren’t large quantities of plankton to die, fall to the bottom, and build up into a thick layer of sediment. Any skeletons that do reach the bottom tend to dissolve.

The bare zone is also far from any continents, which are a big source of windblown dust and other particles that drop into the sea. And it’s far from any major ocean currents, so Antarctic icebergs carrying material scraped from that continent don’t pass over the bare zone and drop sediment.

Researchers are excited by the discovery of the Pacific’s bare zone because this may be the one place on Earth where they can directly study seafloor materials that are normally hidden by sediment.—C. Gramling

Going Deeper:

Perkins, Sid. 2006. Nearly naked: Large swath of Pacific lacks seafloor sediment. Science News 170(Oct. 14):246. Available at http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20061014/fob7.asp .

Ramsayer, Kate. 2004. Deep drilling at sea. Science News for Kids (Sept. 8). Available at http://www.sciencenewsforkids.org/articles/20040908/Feature1.asp .

Scientists who spent years studying a colony of about 100 prairie dogs in Utah discovered that when it’s time to court females, males become too distracted to pay attention to anything else—including predators.

The Utah prairie dog is the rarest of five species of prairie dogs found in the United States.

iStockphoto

The mating season for Utah prairie dogs lasts only 17 days, and each female is ready to breed for only 5 hours once a year. This means that males don’t have much time to mate, so they tend to focus all their attention on breeding.

The researchers watched prairie dogs from sunup to sundown for several months each year for 10 years. When they arrived in 2005, they saw something new. A fox was hanging around trying to catch the prairie dogs.

Foxes are normally very shy around people. So, it’s unusual to catch sight of a fox hunting. This particular fox, however, must have gotten used to people, and the researchers had a front-row seat as it went after prairie dogs. The researchers also spied at least one goshawk—a bird that swoops out of the sky to snag prey—in the hunt.

In 4 months, the researchers observed these predators kill 26 prairie dogs. Many of the victims were adult males who were apparently too busy paying special attention to the females to avoid capture.

Predators often prey on the old and weak, the scientists say. But the prairie-dog study shows that, at certain times of the year, healthy adult males can be at risk, too.—C. Gramling

Going Deeper:

Milius, Susan. 2006. Courting costs: Male prairie dogs seem too busy mating to dodge predators. Science News 170(Oct. 14):245-246. Available at http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20061014/fob6.asp .

You can learn more about Utah prairie dogs at www.r6.fws.gov/species/mammals/utprairiedog/ (U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service), www.prairiedogcoalition.org/map/utah-prairie-dog.shtml (Prairie Dog Coalition), or www.nps.gov/archive/brca/utah_prairiedog.html (National Park Service).

The research is interesting, these students say. The competitions are exciting, and you can win prizes. Best of all, joining the science fair circuit is a great way to make friends.

“I like meeting kids who are also passionate about science,” says Peter Borden, now an 11th grader at Seacrest School in Naples, Fla.

The annual Intel International Science and Engineering Fair brings together nearly 1,500 students from around the world.

Intel

Peter, 15, traveled to Indianapolis last May to present his most recent discovery—that bacteria unexpectedly live at the upper edge of Earth’s atmosphere. He was one of nearly 1,500 high school students from 47 countries to compete at the 2006 Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF).

Of these 1,500 kids, Peter belonged to a group of 31 students who had previously competed in the Discovery Channel Young Scientist Challenge (DCYSC). The DCYSC brings together 40 of the nation’s top middle school science fair winners each year for an action-packed, team competition.

Both DCYSC and ISEF are organized by Science Service, a nonprofit organization that publishes Science News magazine and Science News for Kids.

Getting there

In order to qualify for ISEF, high school students must work their way through as many as four local, state, and regional fairs, placing at or near the top of each. It’s a rigorous process, but Peter and his colleagues say that their DCYSC experience helped them get there.

Peter Borden of Naples, Fla., presented his research on bacteria in the upper atmosphere at the 2006 ISEF.

V. Miller

Perhaps most useful of all, they say, DCYSC makes a big deal out of communication. This competition doesn’t reward participants simply for the results of their research. Its prizes go to students who can also speak clearly, even when talking about challenging fields, such as astrophysics or molecular biology.

“I used to talk with complex words,” Peter says. “Now that I’ve been to DCYSC, I know I have to talk to people in their terms.”

Noise makers

Joanna Guy, a 10th grader at Southern Garrett High School in Oakland, Md., has honed both her communications skills and her research skills as a result of competing in science fairs. She’s also gained self-confidence.

Talking to the judges, she says, entails “telling them about the project and why it’s important. You don’t have to be afraid of them.”

Speaking clearly is important. When Joanna explained her research to me, she got straight to the point.

“I think our country needs to decrease its dependence on foreign oil,” she says.

Joanna believes that wind turbines could be a great way to produce energy (see “Power of the Wind”). But some people have argued that windmills kill too many bats and birds to be worth the investment.

Joanna Guy discovered that loud noises can keep birds away from feeders. She presented her research at this year’s ISEF.

V. Miller

Joanna designed an experiment that she hoped would help resolve this disagreement. She hung bird feeders in her backyard. Then, she used a machine called the Bird-X Critter Blaster Pro to blast loud, annoying sounds into the air. At other times, she played a device that emitted ultrasonic signals.

Joanna found that the birds ate far fewer seeds when the audible sounds were blaring than when she played the ultrasonic device or no sound at all. The blasting noise evidently disturbed the birds more.

Windmills that scream, Joanna proposes, could create energy in an environment-friendly and animal-friendly way. Their noise would keep the birds away. She plans next to investigate other possible bird deterrents, such as infrasound or strobe lights.

A single idea

For some kids, a single idea sparks a project that lasts for years. These students begin presenting their research at DCYSC, and then continue with presentations on the same topic at ISEF. That happened to Kelydra Welcker (see “Pollution Detective”) with mosquitoes and environmental toxins and Erica David (see “Snow Traps”) with snow.

Liz Baker of Tucson, Ariz., who’s now in college, was a DCYSC competitor who participated in ISEF four times. Unlike Kelydra and Erica, Liz focused on different subjects throughout the years. But in 2006, she returned to a project that she’d started in seventh grade.

Liz Baker with her “Wishing Tree” project at the 2006 ISEF.

V. Miller

When she began the work, the new millennium had just started. At the time, the media were producing reports about how self-centered and shopping-focused people in the United States had become.

“I didn’t believe it,” says Liz, 17. “I wanted to either prove them wrong or give the media validation.”

The best way to find out what really matters to people, Liz thought, is to learn more about their deepest dreams. So, she turned a huge pine tree in her front yard into a “Wishing Tree.” Her street is famous for its Christmas decorations, so over the holiday season, she asked people stopping by to write down their wishes and hang the anonymous notes on the tree.

She did this for 6 years. She collected 29,095 wishes.

When Liz analyzed the notes that people had posted, she found some interesting trends. She could even track fads: For example, people expressed fewer wishes for scooters as iPods became more popular.

She also noticed a shift after the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001. That year, people made selfish wishes only 40 percent of the time, compared with 70 percent the year before.

Even though selfish wishes rebounded in the following years, Liz was happy to see that a significant number of wishes had nothing to do with toys, gadgets, or other stuff.

“It gives me hope that people wish for love, peace, health, and happiness,” she says.

Keep trying

During their work, Liz and the other young researchers learned that all scientists experience setbacks. The number-one rule, these participants now know, is to never give up.

“Keep entering,” Liz says. “Keep trying!”

Going Deeper:

Additional Information

Questions about the Article

Word Find: Science Fairs