Cars of the Future: Current Event 4

Nadia Tokovic 6B
25.10.2011

Cars of the Future

Stephen Ornes

http://www.sciencenewsforkids.org/2011/10/cars-of-the-future/

October 5 2011

Scientists and engineers all over the world are trying to make cars safer and smarter and to make cars use less energy. Also, scientists are trying to make cars more independent and friendlier.

A company called GM (Grand Motors) has produced small cars that can fit only two people to use up less space which might be useful in large cities. Because these cars are so small 2-3 cars can fit in one parking space. Also these small cars can park themselves and also if you click a button on your phone they can drive right to where you are.

Also recently Google produced a car where you just tell it the directions and it will drive you where ever you want.  Google wants to produce cars that have a lot of safety. Every year around the world there are about 1 million people who die from car accidents and 50 million people who get hurt from accidents so Google produced a car that has a camera that can spot other cars, pedestrians and obstacles to avoid crashing. Also these cars can go a very long way without stopping and can go on streets with a lot of turns.

 At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology a robotic companion for cars called AIDA was invented. It can talk and amuse the people in the car but also give directions to the driver.

Also the company called GM made cars that run on electricity to stop gas pollution which is the biggest problem from cars to our world.

This article is connected to our learning in class because in class we talked about scientists like Newton and Archimedes and their discoveries and inventions. This article talks about modern scientists and how they want to make future cars and what the discovered. I think the invention of these of the future is good for our society because if new cars like this are produced then they will be a lot more comfortable and will not pollute the Earth so much. And also maybe our streets will be a safer place and there will be less car accidents. I chose this article because I like reading about cars and new inventions of scientists. I found this article because I went to the grade 6 science site: http://mypsciencegrade6.blogspot.com/ and then I looked at the recourses tab and clicked on one and I found this great article! I learned a lot about future of cars and what scientists still need to work on for creating future cars. I agree that these are really good ideas that scientists discovered. I felt amazed while I was reading this article because it talked about so many unusual types of cars and what functions they have.

Drinking Water: Bottled or From the Tap?

Drinking Water: Bottled or From the Tap?

Written by: Catherine Clarke Fox

Source: http://kids.nationalgeographic.com/kids/stories/spacescience/water-bottle-pollution/

Usually, people think that the easiest thing to do is just buy a plastic bottle or two when they are thirsty. But, plastic bottles are a really big pollution for our Earth. In the United States people buy a lot of plastic bottles: up to 29 million a year and only every 6^th bottle is recycled. Using that much water bottles a million of cars can be kept going for 12 months. Plastic bottles are made of crude oil found deep underground. Imagine bottle filled up till a fourth of it; that is how much oil is needed to make a plastic bottle. People do not drink tap water anymore because they think bottled water is better but some scientists even think that the chemicals used to make a water bottle go into the water. Also, the government of USA makes sure that the tap water is clean. If only people realized how much pollution bottles make in the world maybe they would stop using them. But water bottles are very convenient so one way to solve this problem is recycling. From recycled plastic bottles a lot useful things can be made.

This article connects to what we are learning in science because in class we did a lot of experiments and most of them include a lot of plastic bottles so we need to learn to recycle them correctly. When I read this article because every day in a super market we see so much plastic bottles and there are not many recycling bins. I chose this article because I am very interested in ecological problems in the world and I maybe want to become an ecologist when I grow up. I found this article because when I was looking for interesting articles on http://kids.nationalgeographic.com/kids/ I saw this article and I thought it is interesting. I know it came from a reliable resource because the magazine of National Geographic Kids in published all over the world. I agree with the author that we should not buy so much bottled water but if we do we should recycle all of them not throw them in the trash can. I felt really sad because I remembered how many ugly water bottles were in the Sava River when I walked next to its shore in spring. But also I felt persuaded to recycle all the water bottles which I drink from. Which is why now I will tell all my relatives to only recycle water bottles and not throw them in a trash can. 

The Bats of Bracken Cave Current Event # 2

Nadia Tokovic

6B

03.10.2011

http://kids.nationalgeographic.com/kids/stories/animalsnature/bat-cave/

Amazing Bats of Bracken Cave

If you ever see a lot of bats in the sky you might think it was a miracle but at Bracken Cave it happens every night. If you stand in front of Bracken Cave in the evening you will see millions of bats pouring out of cracks in the cave to hunt in the night. They hunt for insects and bring them to the cave to feed their children. In the winter the cave is a quiet place because bats migrate up to a thousand miles south (to Mexico) but when they come back in spring the cave is full of noise again. After coming back to the cave female bat raise their young bats. But if there is so many bats (about 20 million) in the cave how do the small bats find their parents. Well, the answer is that the parent bats remember the smell of their little bats and follow it to know where their children are. In conclusion, I think this article was really interesting for me because I learned about the bats of Bracken Cave but what fascinated me was that in one night these bats can eat up to a ton of insects and mosquitoes which helps farmers a lot. 

This article connects to the unit we are studying because in class we did an experiment when we dropped raisins in fizzy water and the forces what kept the raisins floating and making them sink were gravity and buoyancy and the forces that make bats and generally birds fly is gravity and volatility. I think this article is good for our society because the bats of Bracken Cave eat a lot of insects which helps farmers to grow more good harvest. I chose this article because I like learning about animal lives and how animals impact the world. I found this article because I really like the National Geographic Kids magazines so I found their website and I decided to use an article from there for science. I think it came from a really reliable resource because the National Geographic Kids magazines are published all over the world and are really popular. I learned about bats lives reading this article but now I want to learn more because I think that bats are really interesting because: they can fly with a speed of 97 km per hour, fly as high a an airplane and even fly in colonies with up to 20 million bats in them. I did not even know that bats migrate in the winter! I find it really interesting how bats live. I agree with the author that bats are really interesting to learn about and that they are not scary at all. I felt amazed when I was reading this article because I did not know that there can live up to 20 million bats in a cave!