Blog | The Balanced Child

STEM Science – Slippery bottle solves ketchup problem

December 11, 2020December 11, 2020 by Cherian

STEM Science for the budding young scientist: The age-old problem: How do you get that last annoying drop of ketchup out of the bottle? Some of us swing the bottle vigorously in an arc, some pummel it, others simply break it. Many just give up and throw the partly-empty bottle out. But scientists at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston, USA) have developed a special coating that makes the …

Anyone Can Code – Even Kids

December 4, 2020December 4, 2020 by Cherian

Anyone can learn to code – children in particular. The last people you would expect: 2 remarkable computer coders surfaced at the recent Apple WWDC (World-Wide Developers’ Conference) held recently in California. 10-year old from AustraliaYuma Soerianto from Melbourne started coding at age 6 through online courses on Code.org and from Stanford University that he found on Apple iTunes U. In 4 years, he has created 4 Apple apps including …

STEM, Artificial Intelligence & Future Jobs

November 20, 2020November 20, 2020 by Cherian

GOOGLE’s head of research thinks that many of the jobs 20 years from now do not yet exist. There’s little we can do now to train for what we cannot foresee. What we can do is to be flexible and have an ability to learn new things and keep ahead of machines. Which means getting comfortable with AI (Artificial Intelligence), automation and related disciplines. For our kids now it means …

Khan Academy | You Can Learn Anything For Free

November 16, 2020November 13, 2020 by Cherian

Khan Academy | Watch. Practice. Learn almost anything – for free. (This article has been simplified for young children) Khan Academy is a respected and free US-based online learning platform. It produces short educational lessons in the form of YouTube videos. Supported by Google as well as Bill Gates of Microsoft. The free self-learning online tools are available to anyone, even students as young as Primary school, or as old …

Is the ‘Roof’ of the Earth really North?

November 7, 2020November 6, 2020 by Cherian

(This article has been simplified for young children) Turns out it really depends on culture, history and even religion – not so much on science! Imagine looking at Earth from space. The world’s not necessarily ‘this’ way up – it may not be the North Pole. As far as astronomers can tell, there really is no ‘up’ or ‘down’ in space. Which way is earth facing? Humans have a long …

AI (Artificial Intelligence) – So What’s All The Fuss About?

October 30, 2020October 30, 2020 by Cherian

(This article has been simplified for young children) Artificial Intelligence (AI) is no longer Science-Fiction. It’s not just for scientists and advanced computer programmers – even school kids are getting into it now. It is already in our daily livesGoogle’s driverless car Waymo, Apple’s ‘Siri’ speech recognition, IBM’s ‘Deep Blue’ computer beating Russian chess master Garry Kasparov, medical diagnostics, picking complex customer orders in Amazon’s giant warehouses …. the list …

If The Earth Is Spinning at Supersonic Speed Why Don’t We Feel It ?

November 16, 2020October 16, 2020 by Cherian

(This article has been simplified for young children) The Spinning Earth Did you know that the Earth spins at about 1,600 kilometres an hour? That’s supersonic, about 3 times faster than a flying jet plane. That’s how fast the Earth has to turn to make a complete rotation every day. So why don’t we feel it, or feel giddy, or queasy? After all our stomachs get queasy even when we …

Nanotechnology: Vantablack the world’s darkest material

October 30, 2020October 9, 2020 by Cherian

(This article has been simplified for young children) Is there anything blacker than black?! Science is advancing in fast and fun ways, helped by developments in computers, nanotechnology, science and engineering. And what we thought was science fiction is becoming real. One frontier of science is Nanotechnology. ‘Nano’ comes from the Greek word for ‘dwarf’, and means one-billionth. The science of the very, very tiny! Nanotechnology is therefore science and …

GRAPHENE the wonder material

October 30, 2020October 2, 2020 by Cherian

(This article has been simplified for young children) GRAPHENE is thought to be the new ‘miracle material’. It is unbreakable, tougher than diamond, but stretchable like rubber, and can carry electric charges far faster than currently used materials. Yet, it is only about a 1-atom thick sheet of graphite, a form of carbon. To get a sense of how thin that is, aluminium foil is thousands of atoms thick! It was …

Turning Seawater Into Fuel

October 30, 2020August 7, 2020 by Cherian

(This article has been simplified for young children) How Ships Can Produce Unlimited Fuel of Their Own. Scientists have discovered a process to turn seawater into hydrocarbon fuel. (Related article: ‘Salt Water Fueled Sports Car’: https://thebalancedchild.com/sports-car-runs-salt-water/#more-5973). Since 2014 they have made the process energy-efficient and affordable enough to use on a large scale out at sea. The basic idea of seawater fuel is simple. Ships collect seawater to convert to …