Science magazine for children: Packed with science stories, science facts, science features, and other science learning resources for children. Discover the known, the unknown, and little-known facts in our science articles. Learn the how and why of everyday things and explore rare and exotic living species.
358 items in this section. Displaying page 18 of 36
How do Human Cannonballs Fly?
Even been to a circus where they featured a human cannonball? A person enters a huge cannon and when the fuse is lit, he comes shooting out with a bang, flying in the air before landing on a net! My god! I thought that was the most horrifying thing I had ever seen. What a crazy thing to do. How does he do it without being blown to pieces, I would wonder. How do Human Cannonballs Fly?...
Everything is made of something
How do you make tea? Simple, put a teaspoon of tea into a boiling cup of water. Strain the water, pour some milk and sugar to taste and the tea is ready! Interestingly, everything that we prepare has a recipe and is made up of simpler ingredients. For example, what is sugar made of? It is made of sugar molecules, which in turn, are made up of atoms. The atom is the building block of all substances....
Why do Aircrafts Have a Black Box?
Often, after an air disaster, we hear about the black box in the news. The black box does not play any part in making an aircraft fly but it serves an important function. It is basically an electronic device used by investigators to discover the cause of a crash and may be, prevent others. Why do Aircrafts Have a Black Box? [Illustration by Shiju George] The black box can be inserted or removed from an aircraft....
What were the Voyager Missions?
Imagine a journey that takes you a billion kilometres away from earth, to the edge of the solar system, from where you can look back over your shoulder and see our sun as just another star in the sky. We are not talking about a science fiction movie but the Voyager space mission. On August 20, 1977, the Voyager 2 spacecraft was launched. Close on its heels, the Voyager 1 was launched on September 5, 1977....
Can Frog Fly?
You must have seen frogs that jump, but have you seen frogs that can fly? Actually not fly, but glide. One member of the treefrog family which is found in Malaya can fly. It flies not for adventure, but to catch its prey. It is called Wallace’s Treefrog and is more equipped to chase flying insects than other frogs. Flying or gliding tree frog (Agalychnis spurrelli) is an endangered amphibian. IT lives in Amazon rain forest of Ecuador Colombia Panama and Costa Rica....
How do Chameleons Latch on to Prey Using Just Their Tongue?
Have you ever seen a chameleon flick its tongue at a fly? Well, this small reptile with a foot long body has an extremely long tongue. Its nearly three-fourths the length of its body! A chameleon can launch its tongue out at targets up to two body lengths away. It flicks its tongue and can snap its prey in 1/25th of a second! This is faster than you can blink your eye! Once the tongue makes contact with a prey, the prey gets attached to the sticky tongue like glue....
How Will our Sun Die?
Everything that is born must die. Not only living beings, but inanimate objects like stars too. The birth of a star The universe has massive clouds of hydrogen floating around. Sometimes, these clouds come together and form very dense and huge balls of hydrogen gas. As the clouds come close, their temperature increases. This is called a proto-star (original star). The increase in temperature triggers off nuclear reactions at the core of the star. Nuclear reactions inside the star occur when the nucleus of two hydrogen atoms fuse to produce a helium atom....
Why is Snow White?
I am sure like my two kids, all of seven and three years, you too may find the cold in Delhi a bit too extreme. It is cold and clammy and some days it is foggy making it dangerous to drive. Some days I would like them to be adequately muffled up in warm winter clothing, while they feel quite comfortable running around in a sweater and shorts! But most days it was grumble, grumble, grumble!...
What are the Various Jazz Styles?
Jazz originated from the American South in the 18th century as a form of music sung by African slaves employed in the many plantations. Jazz music was influenced by different cultures from a combination of African folk music and rhythms to Caribbean and black American music. Various styles of playing evolved in the 19th and 20th centuries as musicians started to improvise. This was because early musicians did not have formal training in Western classical music and those that did began to introduce European harmonies and forms into Jazz and made the pattern of music uneven....
All Human History is Just 10 Seconds Old!
Look at the dial of a clock. Imagine that the 12 hours showing on the dial are equal to earth’s history of four-and-a-half billion years. Now, this is how the earth’s evolution happened… We know very little about what happened in the first three hours of the earth’s existence. The first signs of life appeared in the form of bacteria when the earth was four hours old. Then came the first vertebrates (animals with skeletons). They were born when the earth was 10 hours and 35 minutes old....