Table of contents for Issue 198 in How It Works

Most people would agree that humans have a powerful influence on both our environment and the global climate, and that it’s mostly a negative one. In the last decade, we’ve been inundated with so many warnings and updated predictions of what our planet might be like for our children and grandchildren if certain temperature thresholds are exceeded, that it’s hard to imagine what the future holds for the human race. We’ve crunched a lot of data from climate scientists and environmentalists to bring you a picture of what the world could look like in 2125. It’s not an especially pretty picture, but it’s not necessarily our fate if we can change our habits and the way we live as a species. Enjoy the issue! FOR EXCLUSIVE HIW NEWS AND OFFERS,…

CIRCUITMESS STEM BOX FROM $84 (APPROX. £66.30) PER BOX CIRCUITMESS.COM If you’ve got a passion for microcomputers, robotics and electronics, then this innovative subscription box might be for you. Each month, a new STEM project will arrive at your door and have you assembling handheld gaming consoles, autonomous robots and model Mars rovers. Designed for young engineers aged 11 and above, the build-it-yourself projects aren’t only enjoyable to construct, but also teach you the science behind different devices, such as the wireless communication needed to build the Chatter DIY communication device. MUD AND BLOOM GARDENING BOX FROM £8.95 (APPROX. $11.35) PER MONTH MUDANDBLOOM.COM For young gardeners, the Mud and Bloom subscription box is a great way to get out into nature and grow new and exciting plants. Each box comes…

If you’ve ever dropped a ceramic vase or chipped a teacup, you’ll know the restorative powers of super glue. This adhesive is made from cyanoacrylate, an acrylic resin that bonds to a surface, otherwise known as ‘curing’. Many other glue types, such as PVA glue, form these bonds through evaporation drying. As the glue dries and the water is lost, the remaining polyvinyl acetate (PVA) latex forms bonds between two surfaces. Super glue, on the other hand, needs water to form bonds. Luckily, the amount of water it needs to cure is so minute that it’s found on pretty much every surface thanks to air humidity. When water vapour comes into contact with cyanoacrylate, the pair join forces to create a webbing of long cyanoacrylate polymer chains. These chains are…

Within all living cells are molecules called ribonucleic acid (RNA), a molecular cousin to deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA). However, RNA is much smaller and serves a slightly different function. While DNA stores the genetic blueprints for the entire body, RNA builds specific proteins to help individual cells function and support the overall organism. There are two different types of RNA, which are either ‘coding’ or ‘non-coding’. Coding RNA, called messenger RNA (mRNA), are molecules that encode for new proteins to be made. To do this, RNA presents a sequence of building blocks called nucleoids to a molecular machine called a ribosome. The ribosome reads the code and prints out amino acids that come together to form a protein. Non-coding RNA, on the other hand, are more like the cell’s protein police,…

This month, we’re giving you the chance to win a pair of Tri 2 Multi-Sport Bone-Conduction Headphones and Charging Case from H20 Audio. Waterproof and durable, these headphones are designed to accompany you in sporting activities such as swimming, running, biking and surfing WORTH OVER £170 For your chance to win, answer the following question: How old is planet Earth? A: 4,000 YEARS B: 400,000 YEARS C: 4.5 BILLION YEARS Enter online at howitworksdaily.com and one lucky entrant will win! Terms and Conditions: Competition closes at 00:00 GMT on 30 January 2025. By taking part in this competition you agree to be bound by these terms and conditions and the Competition Rules: futuretcs.com. Entries must be received by 00:00 GMT on 30/01/2025. Open to all UK residents aged 18 years…

Sudoku Complete the grid so that each row, column and 3x3 box contains the numbers 1 to 9 EASY MEDIUM HARD Word search Find the following words LANTERN EARTH SUNKEN ANTARCTIC SQUID PIANO SUPERGLUE SENSOR DATA SEASON BRAIN CHINESE What is it? Hint: A water stalactite A Spot the difference See if you can find all six changes between the images below Answers Find the solutions to last issue’s puzzle pages Q1 PROTEINS Q2 ETHIOPIA Q3 HEART Q4 $872 MILLION Q5 A COMPUTER Q6 A SMALL BOAT What is it? ALGAE Spot the difference QUICKFIRE QUESTIONS Q1 How long can bowhead whales live for? ○ 25 years ○ 50 years ○ 100 years ○ 200 years Q2 Which scientist came up with the three laws of motion? ○ Isaac Newton…

Lions might be the apex predators of the African savannah, but that doesn’t deter the fury of a pack of spotted hyenas, which this lioness is quickly learning. Both carnivores, lions and hyenas compete for food, which means one tries to steal from or scare the other off to claim sustenance for themselves. But when the two predators face off, it’s often the lion that comes out on top. Scanning skin cells This shows the remains of squamous skin cells after they’ve been shed from the body and replaced. This process, called keratinisation, takes around 28 days and involves a skin cell moving through the epithelial layers of the skin before it’s shed. When the process is over, what’s left are shed skin cells that are essentially a cellular bag of…

A century ago, our planet was a much cooler place – around one degree Celsius cooler, to be exact. However, since the start of the Industrial Revolution in the late-18th century, Earth has been getting much hotter. The invention of fossil fuel-guzzling machines, such as internal combustion engines and steam trains, has propelled the planet into a new technological era, but has also set it on a trajectory of self-destruction. As a byproduct of early industrialisation, the atmosphere has been saturated by a global outpouring of toxic pollutants called greenhouse gases. One of the most damaging greenhouse gases is carbon dioxide, which acts like an atmospheric blanket, wrapping Earth in its cosy embrace. In 2023, the global output for carbon dioxide was 37.4 gigatonnes, growing 1.1 per cent from the…

Most underground car parks consist of four or five storeys. But beneath the Sydney Opera House there are more than double that, with 12 storeys that extend 37 metres deep. Within this structure, there is space for 1,100 cars to park, serving visitors of both the Opera House itself and the surrounding botanic gardens. It’s not only the deepest car park in the world, but the widest shallow-cover rock cavern, too. This means it’s the widest underground space that has been evacuated with a relatively thin layer of soil above it. The soil and rock between the car park and ground surface is just seven metres thick, and the cavern spans up to 19 metres wide. The shallower the cover, the more advanced engineering that’s required to prevent the structure…

When a volume has no matter within it, it’s considered a true vacuum. To create one, matter needs to be pumped out of a space, which in turn lowers its atmospheric pressure. This is something vacuum cleaners are constantly trying to achieve. For a vacuum cleaner to function, a high-speed fan spins to push air out of the machine. This creates a difference in air pressure between the inside of the vacuum cleaner and the air surrounding it. The air pressure within a typical working vacuum cleaner is around 20 per cent lower than the air outside. Creating a low air pressure environment within the vacuum cleaner forces the air outside the machine to rush inside, balancing out the pressure and creating suction. If the nozzle of a vacuum cleaner…

“She’s gone, boys,” Shackleton told his crew as the Endurance sank below the Antarctic ice in the late afternoon of 21 November 1915. Led by Anglo-Irish explorer Ernest Shackleton, the Endurance sailed 26 crew members, 69 sled dogs and one cat on a mission to the South Pole to embark on a trans-Antarctic expedition. But the ship never reached the shore. Instead, it got trapped in the Weddell Sea’s vast ice sheets and succumbed to immense crushing pressures before sinking beneath the waves. Endurance would not be seen again for 107 years. In 2022, explorers braved the same sea, following in the path of Endurance. The mission, coined Endurance22 and funded by the Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust, was an expedition run by the world’s top marine archaeologists, environmental scientists and…

MAKE A CHINESE LANTERN Craft and launch your own glowing sky lantern 1 CUT THE WAX PAPER Cut two pieces of wax paper that are slightly longer than 60 centimetres. 2 GLUE THEM TOGETHER Overlap the paper along the longer edges and glue them together. Do this on both sides to form a cylindrical shape. 3 ADD A SQUARE Cut an 18 by 18 centimetre square from the remaining wax paper. Glue this over the top of the cylinder at one end. 4 MEASURE THE WIRE Measure a piece of wire that is equal to the cylinder’s circumference when twisted into a circle. 5 CROSS THE CIRCLE Cut two pieces of wire that span the diameter of the wire circle at the centre, crossing in the middle. Twist these onto…

SPACE Scientists detect the most powerful cosmic rays ever WORDS BEN TURNER Scientists have detected the most energetic cosmic rays ever discovered, and they’re being produced by mysterious sources relatively close to Earth. The rays, which consist of electrons and their antimatter counterparts, positrons, were observed at energies all the way up to 40 teraelectronvolts (TeV), or 40,000 times the energy of visible light. Spotted by the High Energy Stereoscopic System (HESS) array in Namibia, the rays lose energy as they travel through space due to their interactions with light and magnetic fields. This means that for rays of this energy to be detected, their sources must be relatively nearby. Yet what exactly is producing them remains unknown. “This is an important result, as we can conclude that the measured…

Providing precision awareness of a car’s perimeter, some newer vehicles are equipped with sensors that listen to echoes, similar to the way that bats navigate the world. These echoes are the return of ultrasonic waves that are emitted by parking sensors. These small devices are positioned at the back of the car – or both the front and back – to act as the driver’s eyes where they cannot easily see, in close proximity to other cars and objects. To work out the distance between the car and another object, the sensor’s computer system multiplies the speed of ultrasound in the air by the time taken for the waves to return to the sensor after bouncing off any surrounding obstacles. When a car drives too close to something, a beeping…

Your brain reaches its full size by early adolescence and fully matures by around the age of 25. But did you know that your brain will continue to change forever, moulding itself around your physical condition, emotional experiences and daily activities? The constant adaptation to good and bad events, and the trillions of signals firing in your brain every day, is called neuroplasticity. Thanks to studies into the brain using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanners to study neural activity, scientists now know that the brain’s function isn’t fixed. Every thought, sensation and emotion felt is the work of the brain’s 86 billion neurons. These neurons pass signals between each other to spread information to core processing regions of the brain. These signals can travel at 300 miles per hour, releasing…

Chinese lanterns originate in a 2,000-year-old tale: when Chinese emperor Zhuge Liang needed to send a signal during a dark night, he turned to a sheet of rice paper and some bamboo. He wove together a bamboo frame in the same shape as the hat he was known for wearing. After placing the rice paper over the frame and a candle at the base, the first Chinese lantern was lit and the signal successfully rose into the sky. Zhuge Liang was known as Kongming, so today these lanterns are called Kongming lanterns. Today, these floating lanterns are a common feature in all Chinese festivities. They are intricately crafted, often with Chinese calligraphy and traditional symbols of good fortune. These include dragons, flowers and the zodiac animal of each New Year.…

764 The Vatican City is the world’s smallest country by population and area – it covers just 0.19 square miles 190 BEATS PER MINUTE The resting heart rate of a newborn baby can be over twice as fast as an average adult’s 117CE Nearly 900 years after Rome was founded, the Roman Empire covered most of Europe The galaxy Messier 87 contains a black hole with a mass 6.5 billion times that of the Sun 2030 Five years from now, the ISS will be decommissioned and brought back to Earth 10% One in ten cars on the road will be self-driving by 2030 LIQUORICE CAN INTERFERE WITH HEART MEDICATION 72% Nearly three-quarters of all businesses now use AI in some way ONE 320 to 195 million years ago, Earth had…