Table of contents for Issue 195 in How It Works

TOTAL CONTROL SOUP MAKER £129.99 (APPROX. $170) MORPHYRICHARDS.CO.UK Making soup may never be easier than when using this soup maker by Morphy Richards. From crunchy vegetables to velvet-smooth broths, there are nine individual settings to create a wealth of soups, broths and sauces. Simply put your ingredients into the 1.6-litre container, choose a cooking setting and let the soup maker chop, blend and cook them into a delicious meal. The soup maker’s smart response technology will also automatically adjust cooking times based on the quantity of your ingredients. CUISINART VERTICAL WAFFLE MAKER $59.95 (APPROX. £46) CUISINART.COM A Belgian waffle is a thing of culinary beauty, and with this Cuisinart creation, making them at home is foolproof. By simply adding batter into the spout of the vertical waffle maker to the…

Despite its name, morning sickness can occur at any time of day during pregnancy. However, for many pregnant people, it can feel worse during the morning. The symptoms involve feelings of nausea, being sick or both, and commonly start around four weeks after conception. It’s likely to ease or stop completely between weeks 12 and 20. Although it’s an unpleasant addition to the early weeks of pregnancy, morning sickness usually doesn’t harm a person or their child. But some cases are much more extreme. Severe vomiting during pregnancy, called hyperemesis gravidarum (HG), is more dangerous as it can cause dehydration and malnourishment. The cause of morning sickness comes down to multiple biological changes occurring at once. An influx of pregnancy hormones, blood pressure fluctuations and physical changes to the body…

In the inky blackness of interstellar space, a cloud of gas and dust sits motionless. It has remained that way for billions of years, occasionally jostled by the weak gravitational ripples of events in its galactic neighbourhood. More time passes and nothing much continues to occur. But eventually a much larger ripple passes through the cloud – a shock wave caused by a distant supernova, perhaps, or a collision with another gas cloud. This disturbance pushes the material together, and it begins to contract under its own gravity. The dust in the cloud, which mostly comprises hydrogen and helium atoms, begins to clump together, orbiting around itself. It pulls in more and more material from the cloud, otherwise known as a nebula. As these clumps grow larger, the pressure of…

Acid rain is the broad term used to describe precipitation that is more acidic than normal. Typically, rainfall has a pH of 5.6 – anything below that level is considered acid rain. Of course, clouds aren’t in control of the pH of their precipitation – just like the rest of the natural world, it’s impacted by pollution emitted by cars and industry. The two main gas pollutants responsible for acid rain are sulphur dioxide (SO2), released as a byproduct of the fossil fuel industry, and nitrogen oxides (NOX) from vehicle exhausts. When these gases drift into the atmosphere, they interact with sunlight and water vapour to form sulphuric acid and nitric acid mists. Under warm temperatures, the clouds of acid mist remain as vapour. However, when temperatures cool, the vapour…

We’ve all driven past fields and seen tractors and combine harvesters, but those machines have been ploughing their own furrows for decades, and now they’re a bit old-fashioned. These days, forward-thinking farmers turn to robots to plant, manage and harvest crops and look after livestock. It’s no surprise when you consider the challenges facing farmers. A growing global population demands more food, climate change makes it harder to deliver predictable harvests and rising costs mean farmers need to keep operations efficient. Early farming robots in the 1950s and 1960s were very basic. As computers developed in the 1980s, robots started performing more complex tasks like crop monitoring and harvesting, and by the 1990s they were using early artificial intelligence (AI) and machine vision technology to identify and pick fruit and…

WHAT IS TECHNOLOGY? A GOOD QUESTION THAT’S WELL ANSWERED AUTHOR SARAH WALDEN ILLUSTRATOR KATIE REWSE PUBLISHER NOODLE JUICE PRICE £9.99 (APPROX. $13) RELEASE OUT NOW Technology has been in the background of human evolution since prehistoric times, but with the modern era and the dawn of the internet, the concept has been catapulted to the forefront of everything we do. So it’s easy to lose sight of what technology is exactly, how it should serve us and how we might avoid being slaves to our own ingenuity. What is Technology? is the latest in the Little Book Big Idea series from publisher Noodle Juice, which aims to define a subject using straightforward terms and lots of examples. With the opening page, technology is given a pithy, dictionary-style definition by author…

THINKING FOOD Dear HIW, What are some of the latest nutrition findings? Peter Doyle Scientists are always working to uncover more information about our health and the products that enter our bodies. When a new discovery is made, findings are based on the results of research, which generally needs to be followed up with further studies. Earlier this year, scientists discovered that eating more kiwi fruit can improve your mood in just a few days. It can be challenging to know which findings to trust as new discoveries are made. Although these findings weren’t known previously, they usually don’t change the bigger picture of foods that are deemed healthy and those that are detrimental to our health. Generally speaking, an emphasis on a wide range of balanced whole foods has…

DID YOU KNOW? The oldest possible age for humans is unknown – the current record is 122 years and 164 days 1 STRANGE RADIO BURSTS FROM DEEP SPACE Since 2007, scientists have been plagued by cosmic signals called fast radio bursts (FRBs). In just one-thousandth of a second, bursts of radio waves radiate from a source. These then travel through space and are picked up on Earth. FRB 20220610A, detected in 2022, travelled around 8 billion light years before it reached our planet. The first FRB was detected in 2001 by the Parkes Observatory in Australia, emanating from a nearby dwarf galaxy called the Small Magellanic Cloud. However, researchers didn’t discover the burst until 2007 while looking through archival data. Since then, around 1,000 have been detected, though their origins remain…

Astronomical telescopes are a bit like time machines – the more distant an object is, the further back in time we see it. That’s because photons of light, as well as radio waves and other forms of radiation, travel through the universe at a finite speed. On the face of it, this means that a sufficiently powerful telescope ought to be able to show us the very beginning of the universe – the Big Bang itself. Unfortunately, this isn’t the case, because in its earliest stages the universe was filled with an opaque, superhot plasma, not unlike the inside of a star. It was only when it had cooled to the point that ordinary atoms could exist that the universe became sufficiently transparent for us to see anything of it…

Humans have constructed bridges for thousands of years, helping establish trade routes across rivers and deep valleys to keep communities connected. Today’s modern bridges may be bigger and longer, using advanced building techniques and materials that weren’t available to ancient engineers, but they’re still constructed to make isolated islands and tricky terrain more accessible. Building record-breaking bridges is only possible with high-strength materials such as advanced steel alloys – low-alloy steel with a high strength-to-weight ratio and better corrosion resistance. Choosing this steel over alternatives allows for longer structures to be built with lower weight stress. And the corrosion resistance helps give a bridge longevity. Computer structural simulations that take into account variables such as the specific location, bridge length, shape and type of materials can be used to determine whether…

You wouldn’t guess it from the name, but the Hybrid Air Vehicles Airlander 10 is a unique piece of kit – a revolutionary hybrid airship that’s one of the world’s longest and largest aircraft. There’s another notable aspect about this aircraft: its shape. From certain angles it looks a bit rude, which is why it’s been nicknamed the ‘Flying Bum’. Go beyond the bum, though, and there’s a remarkable story about military projects, luxury travel and incredible technology. Airlander 10 began life in June 2010 when Hybrid Air Vehicles, a British company, won a contract with the US Army to develop a craft for long-range surveillance, communications and transport. As a hybrid airship, Airlander 10 met many of the US Army’s requirements. These craft combine conventional airship design – a…

Skeletons are often associated with death as part of the body you rarely see during life. However, you might be surprised to learn that the skeleton is living tissue. Far more than stiff, biological scaffolding, the skeleton comes with its own network of blood vessels, cells, proteins and minerals, continuously transforming and self-repairing to keep your body strong and healthy. The bones that make up your skeleton connect to form shields around delicate organs. The skull seals up when a baby is three months old and its joints close to complete the brain’s armour. Meanwhile, the ribs cross over the heart and lungs like the bars of a cage and a string of vertebrae conceal your spinal cord. Bones also give the body structure. But the skeleton would fall limply…

Across the surface of the Moon, there are as many as 200 dark pits that lead to networks of lunar caves that formed billions of years ago. After a Mars-sized rock plummeted into the still-forming Earth around 4.6 billion years ago, pieces of rocky ejecta formed what we now know as the Moon. Up until around 2 billion years ago, our natural satellite was a much more turbulent place, facing constant meteorite bombardment and widespread volcanism. A consequence of this volcanic period was the formation of a network of lunar caves beneath the surface, which scientists have only recently discovered. Unlike the many different caves formed on Earth, the rock in the lunar caves hasn’t been carved by erosive forces such as wind and water. Instead, during its volcanic phase,…

PHYSICAL FIGHTERS KITTED-OUT CRUSTACEAN The boxer crab travels prepared when it ventures across the ocean floor. Well-armed to better its chances against a predatory attack, the crab wields two sea anemones on its front claws like boxing gloves. Carrying these sizable anemones with them acts as a deterrent to predators by making the crab look bigger and stronger. But on the occasion the crab is approached by an attacker, it will punch its claws outwards. The anemones have tentacles that can sting the predator and help keep the boxer crab safe. The anemones also benefit from this symbiotic relationship with the crab. They’re perfectly healthy and safe while held by the claws, and as the crab moves it drags the anemones along the seabed, enabling them to collect food particles…

Hydroelectric power meets around 15 per cent of the world’s electricity needs, supplying about a billion people with power – that’s comparable to 3.6 billon barrels of oil. The importance of hydropower will grow over the coming decade, with a huge number of major schemes currently under construction – as of February 2024, there are at least five in China alone. It means that although our reliance on fossil fuels is still significant – it’s a hard addiction to crack, after all – hydropower is helping us decrease our dependence. Power production is simply a process of converting energy from one form to another. In hydroelectric plants, it’s the ‘potential energy’ of water collected in a dam that eventually ends up as electricity. A pipe known as a penstock runs…

Could a solar flare cause mayhem for electronics here on Earth today? Definitely. When a coronal mass ejection (CME) from a solar flare reaches Earth, the fluctuating magnetic fields induce electrical currents in any long conductor. In oil and gas pipelines this can cause sparks that trigger fires and explosions at terminals and in power lines the surge can overload transformers. In 1989, a powerful flare knocked out the electricity grid for 6 million people in Québec, Canada. The largest flare ever recorded in 1859 gave telegraph operators electric shocks from the telegraph wires. If a similar flare occurred today – with our much more sensitive equipment – the damage could easily run into the billions. WHICH CULTURE BEGAN THE PRACTICE OF DRINKING TEA? According to legend, Chinese emperor Shennong…

IDENTICAL TWINS DON’T HAVE THE SAME FINGERPRINTS SOME CELLS IN YOUR BRAIN ARE CONSTANTLY EATING OTHER BRAIN CELLS 800 KILOGRAMS Just one of SpaceX’s Starlink satellites weighs almost a tonne 21 HOURS 600 million years ago, a day on Earth was three hours shorter than today -20.35 DECIBELS Microsoft’s anechoic chamber in Redmond, Washington, is the quietest place on Earth 24 HORSEPOWER A single horse actually has more than one horsepower 10 BILLION LIGHT YEARS If you stacked all the bacteria on Earth, it would stretch around our galaxy 20,000 times 15,000 YEARS Glass sponges are the longest living animal on Earth Cats experience the fear of missing out too, which is why they hate closed doors 1 IN 2,500 A large number of women don’t know they’re pregnant until they…