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PUT S P U L L EHYE TO T TEST
ard o b b a ine m i Cl mb er o c a est v r ha
Experiment with monster trucks!
Make y own graou r bb e r
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E M E R T X E ES N I H C A M
WHIZZPOPBANG.COM ISSUE 95
EXPERIMENTS PUZZLES AMAZING FACTS SCIENCE NEWS
When you want to move a monster load, you need a monster machine! Let’s jump behind the wheels of the world’s biggest vehicles, on and off the road. By Isabel Thom
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Monster trucks are the pop stars of the machine world. They have shiny good looks and famous names. They even perform to packed arenas at their own shows and festivals. A monster truck is a special version of a road vehicle, with boosted suspension, powerful engines and supersized tyres. These features turn them into off-road vehicles that can tackle almost ANY terrain – from a line of cars to carrying out a 360° back flip!
Watch Brianna Mahon perform a wheelie and flip in her monster truck ‘Whiplash’. bit.ly/3MkdwNG
Most monster trucks are based on pick-up trucks, but any vehicle can be turned into a monster truck, from a limousine to a school bus.
The largest monster truck ever built was called Bigfoot 5. Its tyres are each three metres tall, one and a half times the height of a door!
Which part of a monster truck is the sleepiest? The wheels – they are always tyred!
MAKE A MUNCH-STER TRUCK!
Mighty machines look complicated, but they are made up of just SIX simple machines. Simple machines are devices that make work easier. They do this by changing the direction or size of a force, or the amount of effort needed to do a job. Machines that combine two or more simple machines are known as
To an engineer, everything is a potential machine. Try making a monster truck usin g sliced vegetables for wheels. How big can the wheels get? Send your photos to Y@whizzp opbang.com to join our monster truck parade.
compound machines.
Yo u will need
mall cardboard box S Scissors Sticky tape Paper drinking straws Wooden skewers
couple of different A fruits or vegetables, such as carrots, potatoes, aubergines or apples
What you do 1. Cut two pieces of drinking straw, each a little shorter than the width of your box, and stick them underneath the box. 2. Cut two lengths of wooden skewer, 2 cm longer than the drinking straws. Feed the skewers through the drinking straws to make axles. 3. Ask an adult to cut four thick slices of carrot (or a similarly shaped vegetable). Push them on to the ends of the wooden skewers to make wheels. 4. Try rolling your monster truck down a slope (or inclined plane in engineering-speak!).
Make and test your vehicle in a clean kitchen, and you can cook the vegetables afterwards for a monster snack!
Find the names of the six simple machines in the grid. Check your answers on page 34. Lever Wheel and axle Inclined plane
Wedge Pulley Screw
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5. Swap the carrots for slices of a larger fruit or vegetable. How does changing the size of the wheels change the movement of the truck?
A wheel and axle is a simple machine. The wheel turns at the same speed as the axle speed, but it has a much bigger diameter. This means the outside of the wheel rolls across the ground. It is much easier to roll something than to drag it. Larger wheels multiply the pushing or pulling force, making a vehicle even easier to roll. Larger wheels also make a vehicle more stable.
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HOW STUFF
WORKS
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Some of the biggest monster machines are found on farms, and they don’t get much bigger than these crop-guzzling beasts. Here’s how they work… At the front of the combine harvester is the header bar, which gathers and cuts the crops. These units are super-wide – up to 20 metres on the biggest machines – and have to be detached from the combine harvester and towed behind when moving between fields as they are too wide to go down most roads.
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As the combine harvester drives through the field, the PICKUP REEL on the header rotates.
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Combine Harvesters
Horizontal bars called BATS push the crops down.
Below the pickup reel is the cutter bar. This row of sharp blades moves from side to side and cuts off the stems of the crops near the ground (a bit like a super-powerful hedge trimmer).
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The cut crops are fed in towards the centre of the header bar by rotating screws or augers, which pull the stems along as the spiral blades turn around.
When they reach the centre, the cut crops are fed onto a conveyor system called the strand feederhouse, which lifts them up and into the main body of the combine harvester.
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In the final stage of cleaning the grain, powerful fans blow air through the sieves to remove any dust and fine particles.
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Using another rotating screw, the clean grain is lifted up and into the grain tank where it is stored. The largest combine harvesters can store more than 10 tonnes of grain before they need to unload it.
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When the grain tank is full, the combine harvester drives along next to a tractor and trailer and the grain is lifted out of the tank and into the trailer using the grain elevator.
30 acres The area of corn fields a modern combine harvester can process in one hour. That’s about 15 football pitches!
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The crops then enter the threshing drum where a spinning cylinder with steel bars attached breaks the crops apart, separating the grains from the stems or straw.
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The grain is separated from the chaff (the inedible seed casing that protects the grain) and any remaining bits of straw by a series of giant sieves which only allow the grain to pass through. This process is known as winnowing.
The straw carries on through the machine, pushed along by mechanical straw walkers which also shake out the last bits of grain before the straw is fired out the back of the combine harvester.
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Sensational Scientists
By Joanna Tubbs
Enedina Alves Marques
© Xandi / Wikimedia Commons
Meet hard-working, determined Enedina, who became the first Black woman to earn an engineering degree in Brazil.
M ARQU ES EN EDINA ALVE S 13 IN 19 WA S BORN IN BR AZ IL . , NÀ RA PA , CU RI TI BA
Enedina was born just 25 years after slavery was abolished in Brazil, and there was still a lot of discrimination against Black people. But Enedina let nothing get in the way of her dream of becoming an engineer.
When Enedina was a child, she lived with her mother and siblings in the home of police officer Major Domingos Nascimento Sobrinho. Her mother looked after the Sobrinho family’s home for more than 30 years. She taught Enedina the skills she would need to become a housekeeper too (including washing, sewing and knitting).
Major Domingos had a daughter, Isabel, who was the same age as Enedina, and he paid for them to go to school together. At this time, it was very difficult for Black people to go to school in Brazil, but Enedina and Isabel learned to read side by side. Later, Enedina trained to become a teacher and also worked as a housekeeper.
But she had a bigger dream: to become an engineer. She took some entrance exams and, in 1940, she enrolled on a course to become a civil engineer at the Federal University of Paranà. There were 33 people in her class: 32 men and one woman – Enedina! She continued working as a teacher and housekeeper, studying late at night. Some of the students and teachers thought she couldn’t, or shouldn’t, take the course – but she wouldn’t give up. In 1945, when she was 32, Enedina became the first Black female engineer in Brazil.
Once she was fully trained, Enedina was able to give up her teaching and housekeeping jobs and focus on using her new skills as an engineer. She first worked as an engineering assistant at the State Department of Transportation and Public Works, then moved on to some challenging and exciting projects for the Brazilian government’s hydroelectric power system. Her biggest achievement was the construction of a huge underground hydroelectric power plant, now called the Governador Pedro Viriato Parigot de Souza Plant.
A hydroelectric power plant uses the power of moving water to generate electricity. Enedina had to work very hard to earn the respect of other engineers and construction workers. But thanks to her excellent engineering skills and determination to succeed, she had a long and successful career.
Capybaras are giant semi-aquatic rodents native to South America. How many capybaras can you spot? Check your answer on page 34. When Enedina retired in 1962, she was guaranteed a large pension to reward her for her fantastic engineering work. After she died, a street and an institute for Black women were named in her honour. Her name was included on the Memorial à Mulher (Women's Memorial), a memorial to 54 pioneering Brazilian women.
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