ISSN 2399 -2840
THE AWESOME SCIENCE MAGAZINE FOR KIDS!
Create rainforest weather
AMAZON
ADVENTURE Explore the world’s biggest rainforest Which rainforest animal are you? Take the quiz! Make rainforest friendly chocolate ice cream
COOL C APYBAR A S WHIZZPOPBANG.COM ISSUE 109
EXPERIMENTS PUZZLES AMAZING FACTS SCIENCE NEWS
WELCOME!
With our backpacks and cameras at the ready, we’re off to the Amazon!
Emmi
WHIZZ POP BANG is made by:
Ever dreamt of exploring th e Ama zon rainforest? In this adve nturous edition of Whizz Pop Bang you can create your own we at he r jar , go on a minibeast safari and make a 3D mode l of th e lush Ama zon jungle, complet e with cute cut-out animals. Plus, find out which rainforest animal you are in our silly science quiz!
Editor-in-Chief: Jenny Inglis Editor: Tammy Osborne Assistant Editor: Tara Pardo Designer: Rachael Fisher Illustrator: Clive Goodyer Staff writer: Joanna Tubbs Contributors: Sarah Bearchell, Anna Claybourne, Joe Inglis and Owen Inglis
EXPERT SCIENCE ADVISERS I’ve made yummy rainforest-friendly ice cream!
hello@whizzpopbang.com
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The search for extraterrestrial life
How radio telescopes work
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Welcome to WHIZZ POP BANG – the magazine bursting with enticing articles, mind-boggling facts and hands-on experiments to get your child hooked on science! Whizz Pop Bang is a gender-neutral magazine with plenty of inspirational male and female scientists and content that appeals to all children.
The magazine is ideal for home educators and it’s linked to the National Curriculum too, for use in schools. Whizz Pop Bang will help with literacy development as well. Transform science teaching in your school with our hands-on science and reading resources. Our downloadable lesson packs link fun science experiments and reading with key curriculum topics for years 2-6. Subscribe at whizzpopbang.com/schools
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All experiments have been tried and tested by our team. The activities should be done under close adult supervision and are done at your own risk. Launchpad Publishing Ltd cannot accept liability for damage done.
Indicates content linked to the National Curriculum
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As well as our writers, we also have a team of science advisers who help to ensure that our content is accurate, up-to-date and relevant. Our advisers include: palaeontologist Steve Brusatte; molecular microbiologist Matt Hutchings; robotics engineer Abbie Hutty; mechanical engineer Aimee Morgans; GP Dr Cathy Scott; astronomer Mark Thompson; physicist Dr Jess Wade; child psychologist Dr Naira Wilson. To find out more, go to whizzpopbang.com/about
CONTENTS THE AMAZING AMAZON!
©
Create rainforest weather in a jar, go on a minibeast safari, and make ice cream!
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com ck.
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ANIMAL ANTICS
Get to know the friendliest animals of the Amazon – cool capybaras!
SILLY SCIENCE
Which rainforest animal are you? Take our fun quiz!
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EMMI’S ECO CLUB
Make a fragrant perfume using sweet-smelling rose petals.
PULLOUT
Craft a model of the Amazon jungle, complete with all the layers of the rainforest.
©C OU
INTERVIEW WITH A SCIENCE HERO
E NG LA
/S
hu
t te
Maria Jimena Valderrama Avella is an explorer and vet who studies Amazon river dolphins.
rsr ock .com
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HOW STUFF WORKS
Find out why a compass needle always points north!
TEN AWESOMELY AMAZING…
…Amazon plants, from rubber trees and cannonball trees to stinky corpse flowers!
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MY AMAZING LIFE
© CC BY-SA
Read about Charles Darwin’s amazing voyage of discovery to South America.
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Rh o od
n de
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ite s
I’d love to see pictures of your experiments! Send them to Y@whizzpopbang.com and ask an adult to tag us on social media @whizzpopbangmag
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Sh o rst te
Atom
S
Read about some cool things kids have done, from digging up a T. rex to inventing a new pooper scooper!
ut
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AWESOME NEWS AND AMAZING FACTS
4
Y’S WONDER CLUB
Ask our robot, Y, your burning science questions and share all of your adventures in science with the club.
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QUIZ POP BANG AND COMPETITION
Test your knowledge with our super-duper science quiz and win an animal kit!
JOKES AND ANSWERS
Laugh out loud at some awesome jokes and find the answers to all of our quizzes, puzzles and riddles.
SPECTACULAR SCIENCE
Take a look at the prehistoric-looking, water-loving green iguana.
FIND THE SCIENCE EQUIPMENT Hidden on each double page is a piece of science equipment. Tick each one to find the complete kit!
The
By Anna Claybourne
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It also has the world’s biggest river and an incredible array of wildlife.
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Amazing Amazon
The Amazon is the world’s biggest rainforest. It’s home to over 300 BILLION trees – that’s nearly 40 trees for every person on the planet!
Peru
The Amazon rainforest covers most of the northern part of South America.
Bolivia Brazil
Atlantic Ocean
Record-breaking river! The Amazon River flows from the Andes mountains in the west to the Atlantic Ocean in the east. It collects rain from a huge area, with over 1,000 other rivers and streams flowing into it. It’s not the longest river in the world (that’s the Nile in Africa) – but it is the biggest, carrying the most water into the sea every second.
The Amazon is the world’s deepest river.
W idest point:
Where it meets the sea, the Amazon is 240 km wide.
Answer on page 34
Flow:
Carries about 200 million litres of water into the sea every SECOND!
Length:
About 6,400 km
HELPING THE PLANET
As well as providing countless wild creatures with a habitat (place to live), the Amazon rainforest helps the Earth to stay healthy. Trees take in a lot of carbon dioxide gas from the air, as they need it to grow. They give out oxygen, which humans and other animals need to breathe.
Thanks trees!
RAINFOREST WEATHER IN A JAR Yo u will need
heatproof glass jar with a A metal lid, such as a jam jar Ice cubes Boiling water H airspray
What you do 1. Place the lid in a freezer for an hour.
What do you call a tired rainforest? The Pyjamazon!
Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, which traps heat in the atmosphere and adds to global warming. So by soaking it up, all those trees help to keep the planet cool too.
Thanks trees!
2. Ask an adult to pour boiling water into the jar until it’s about a third full. 3. Put the lid upside down on top and put a few ice cubes on it. (Don’t touch the hot jar!) 4. Wait one minute, then ask an adult to lift the lid and quickly squirt a bit of hairspray into the jar. 5. Replace the lid, wait another minute, then take it off.
You should find
WHAT ’S THE WEATHER LIKE?
The clue’s in the name! The Amazon rainforest is hot, humid and wet – it rains almost every day! Afterwards, the water evaporates in the heat, and the trees release water from their leaves, creating more clouds and more rain!
Clouds rise from the jar! When water is warmed it evaporates, turning into water vapour. When the cold lid cools the vapour down, it condenses, turning back into liquid. The liquid forms tiny droplets around the hairspray particles, and you see them as a cloud. The same thing happens in a rainforest, as water evaporates, rises and cools, forming droplets around specks of dust in the air. When enough water droplets stick together, they get big enough to fall to the ground as raindrops.
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g.. in z a m A ly e m o s e w A 0 1
A L P N O Z AMA
m is home to around This incredible ecosyste ful plant species… 40,000 weird and wonder
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Although this looks like it belongs in a crumble, Brazilian giant rhubarb isn’t closely related to rhubarb. This enormous plant has flower spikes that are 1 m long and leaves can grow bigger than 3 m wide.
2
Did you know that rubber comes from trees? Milky sap called latex is harvested from the trunks of rubber trees. It’s mixed with chemicals, then used to make things like tyres.
3
5
Chewing a flower bud from the
toothache plant is said to have a
numbing effect, so it’s used as a traditional medicine for sore mouths. It’s also known as the electric daisy and buzz buttons!
4
Giant water lilies have leaves, or lily pads, that can grow up to 3 m wide and support weights of up to 200 kg – that’s the weight of a lion! The flowers start to open at night and take two days to open fully.
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The cannonball tree produces up to a thousand beautifully scented flowers per tree as well as fruit that look like – you guessed it – cannonballs! They smell awful and are often fed to pigs and chickens.
6 L ANTS Sometimes, the host tree rots away, leaving a hollow core.
7
Bromeliads are a family of plants with swirls of leaves at the top that collect water. There are thousands of species of bromeliad in the Amazon, and pineapples are the best known.
After germinating high in the rainforest canopy, the seeds of strangler figs grow long roots down to the ground, wrapping around a host tree, while the plant grows upwards.
8
The enormous
corpse flower
has the biggest flower in the world – and it smells like rotting flesh. It might sound disgusting, but flies love it!
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This weird-looking fruit hides a tasty surprise – cacao beans, which are the main ingredient in chocolate! The cacao tree’s flowers are unusually pollinated by midges.
The seed pods of the kapok tree produce fluff that feels like cotton wool and it is used for filling things like mattresses, pillows and teddy bears! © 1. Alexey Stiop / Shutterstock.com, 2. structuresxx / Shutterstock.com, 3. Yui Yuize / Shutterstock.com, 4. slowmotiongli / Shutterstock.com, 5. Vanessa Volk / Shutterstock.com, 6. Sonia Vapaus / Shutterstock.com, 7. Bellamaree / Shutterstock.com and Olrut / Shutterstock.com, 8. CC BY-SA 4.0 / Rhododendrites, 9. CC BY-SA 3.0 / H. Zell, 10. FRRN / Shutterstock.com.
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