Page Type: Elementary

What’s the best part of summer? If you’re into thrills, it may just be a roller coaster ride. Did you know that roller coasters have been around for more than 200 years? It’s true! 

The world’s first roller coaster may have been the Aerial Walk in Paris, France. This thrill ride opened in 1817. Riders climbed a staircase that led to the top of a tower. Then they got into a three-wheeled car and rode down a sloped track at about 40 miles per hour (64.4 kilometers per hour). Then the car was towed back up the track for the next riders. 

Not long after the Aerial Walk opened, Coney Island in New York became a resort—a place where people went to relax and have fun. Beginning in the 1820s, hotels, theaters, and restaurants started popping up at Coney Island. Then, in 1884, an inventor named LaMarcus Thompson came up with a new way for Coney Island visitors to have fun: He built a roller coaster or, as he called it, the “Gravity Pleasure Switchback Railway.” This was the first roller coaster in the United States.

Like the Aerial Walk, the Gravity Pleasure Switchback Railway was different from many of today’s roller coasters. Passengers paid five cents (about $1.48 in today’s money) to ride from one end of a 600-foot-long (182.9 meters) track to the other. The ride traveled at only 6 miles per hour (9.7 kilometers per hour). There were no loops, so riders didn’t get to go upside down. Still, the coaster proved to be very popular. By 1900, there were hundreds of roller coasters all over the United States.

Scientists say a cypress tree in Chile might be the oldest tree in the world. They calculate that the tree is more than 5,000 years old!

Known as Great Grandfather, the Patagonian cypress tree (also called an alerce) is located in Chile’s Alerce Costero National Park. Dr. Jonathan Barichivich, a scientist from Chile who lives in France, first tried to estimate the tree’s age by taking a small sample of wood from its trunk. This method usually allows experts to tell how old a tree is by showing how many rings the tree has. But the sample Barichivich got did not capture all of the tree’s rings because its trunk is just too wide! So Barichivich used a computer to compare the tree to some other very old trees whose ages are known. He estimates that Great Grandfather is up to 5,484 years old. Barichivich adds that, according to his research, there is only a 20 percent chance that the tree is less than 5,000 years old. 

Until now, experts believed that Methuselah, a bristlecone pine tree in California, was the oldest tree on the planet. Methuselah’s age has been calculated at 4,853 years old. If Barichivich is correct, it would mean that Great Grandfather could be more than 500 years older than Methuselah!

But while the tree has survived for thousands of years, scientists say it faces threats now. Climate change is making the area where the tree is located drier, causing harm to the tree. Plus, Great Grandfather attracts visitors who step on its roots and strip away pieces of its bark. The locations of many other ancient trees, including Methuselah, have been hidden from the public so that no one will damage them.

“Is that a horse?” 

That’s the question some people ask when they see a dog named Zeus out walking with his family. It’s not really surprising that Zeus is big. After all, he’s a Great Dane, the world’s tallest breed of dog. But Zeus is even taller than the average Great Dane. In fact, he was just named the world’s tallest living dog by Guinness World Records! 

Zeus stands at 3 feet 5.18 inches tall (104.6 centimeters). His height is closer to that of a donkey than a horse. But since most dogs are much smaller than a donkey, Zeus attracts a lot of attention in his Bedford, Texas, neighborhood. Some people gasp, and others ask if they can take pictures of him. Zeus loves all of it. Like many dogs, he enjoys people and laps up attention.

“We counted 68 times once that we heard people say, ‘Whoa, that’s a horse,’” Brittany Davis, Zeus’s human mom, told the Today show. “It’s kind of a game now.” 

When Zeus is not getting the celebrity treatment, the “gentle giant” is at home with Davis and her family. He loves to play with the family’s three miniature Australian shepherds, all of which are much, much smaller than he is. Davis says the three smaller dogs have tons of energy, while Zeus is very laid back. 

Occasionally, he does get into a tiny bit of trouble. Sometimes he takes food right off the kitchen counter or uses his tongue to “clean” his human baby brother’s dinner plate. He just can’t help himself—the food and crumbs and spills are so easy for him to reach! In addition to the stolen snacks, Zeus eats 12 cups of dog food a day.

Zeus’s other hobby is lounging. He’s the king of the couch, but he also takes every chance he can to try to sit on a person’s lap. It may be a little bit awkward, but the family loves every minute of it.

Robots are amazing. They can deliver stuff, move heavy equipment, and even do some repairs. All of this saves humans a lot of time and energy. Now, thanks to scientists in Japan, at least one robot can peel a banana!

Why teach a robot to peel a banana? As great as robots are at certain tasks, they’re not known for being good at delicate tasks. Humans have fine motor skills, which enable us to use small muscles in our wrists, hands, and fingers to do things like hold a pen or peel a banana. Robots don’t have human hands, of course. But could they learn these skills? Scientists decided to find out. They wanted to see if they could teach a robot to do a delicate task—like peeling a banana without squishing it and making a big mess.

Scientists used a robot that has two arms. They trained the robot by showing it how to peel a banana hundreds of times. Each time, the robot collected more data (information) about what to do. This allowed it to learn the action and copy it. It took the robot 13 hours of training before it could peel a banana. Even then, it did the task successfully only a little more than half the time. It took the robot about 3 minutes to peel one banana. 

While the robot couldn’t peel a banana as well as a human can, scientists did show that robots can learn at least one delicate task. This suggests that robots may be able to learn other delicate tasks, too. If they can, companies that use robots will be able to put them to work in many more ways.

Jessica Watkins is the first Black woman to live and work in space. Watkins, an astronaut with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), arrived at the International Space Station (ISS) on April 27. 

Watkins will remain on board the ISS for six months. During this time, she’ll be a mission specialist. One of her jobs is to study and photograph features of Earth to see how they are changing over time. She’ll also observe how plants grow in space. She and the other ISS astronauts will study themselves, too! They’re interested in learning more about how being in space for a long time affects the human body. 

Watkins is a geologist, which means she studies rocks and other materials on Earth and other planets. She went to school for many years, earning a Ph.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). (A Ph.D. is a degree that a person can earn after finishing college.) While she was studying geology, Watkins began working at NASA. In 2017, she was on a team that helped prepare for a mission to send a rover (a kind of robot) to Mars. That year, NASA chose her to be an astronaut candidate. Watkins spent two years training to go to space.

Watkins is the fifth Black woman to travel into space. The first, Mae Jemison, orbited Earth in 1992. Watkins hopes she will inspire girls to dream big. And she hopes her time in space will open opportunities for more people of color.

After her ISS mission is complete, Watkins could be headed to the Moon. Watkins is one of the astronauts working on a project called Artemis, which aims to put humans on the Moon for the first time since 1972. 

Crystal Owens had a dream. She wanted to be able to twist open an Oreo sandwich cookie and find an even amount of the creamy filling on each side. But could this ever happen? Owens decided to find out.

Owens is a scientist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). She likes Oreos, but every time she opens one, the famous Oreo creme ends up on one side only. Owens had questions. Why doesn’t the creme get split evenly so that it ends up on both sides? Is there a trick to make this happen? 

Owens and other scientists tested Oreo after Oreo. They tried dunking the Oreos in milk before opening them. They tried using a machine to spin the wafers in opposite directions, which is the same as twisting the cookie open really fast. They even tried twisting open Double Stuf Oreos, which contain more creme filling. Sometimes the creme ended up on just one wafer, while the other wafer was bare. Other times, the creme ended up on both wafers but covered only half of each wafer. 

Owens now believes it’s nearly impossible to twist an Oreo and get even amount of filling on both of the wafers. 

“It turns out there’s not really a trick to it,” Owens told Popular Science. “Everything you try to do will get mostly a clean break. It’s a bit disappointing that there’s not some secret twist.”

There’s one thing Owens didn’t try. She didn’t heat the cookies before twisting them open. Owens suspects that once the filling gets warmer, it might separate more easily.

Sink your teeth into this: Scientists have discovered a new species of saber-toothed mammal that lived about 42 million years ago! The animal, which scientists named Diegoaelurus vanvalkenburghae, lived in forests where San Diego, California, is located now.

Known for their long, tusk-like upper teeth, saber-toothed animals were hypercarnivores, meaning their diet was mostly meat. These mammals had the tools to kill. In addition to their enormous fangs, some of their other teeth could slice right into muscle!

Scientists believe that saber-toothed mammals first appeared several million years after the dinosaurs died out. Diegoaelurus vanvalkenburghae was one of the earliest. Unlike many other saber-toothed mammals, this one was fairly small. It was about the size of a bobcat (about 25 pounds, or 11.3 kilograms).

While Diegoaelurus vanvalkenburghae probably looked a bit like a cat, scientists say it wasn’t closely related to today’s big cats, like lions and tigers. And it was very different from another, more famous saber-toothed mammal, Smilodon. Smilodon (sometimes mistakenly called a saber-toothed tiger) was a distant cousin to today’s cats. It was much larger than Diegoaelurus vanvalkenburghae, with even larger teeth.

You don’t have to worry about coming across those massive fangs, though. The last saber-toothed animals went extinct about 8,000 years ago. But if you have a cat, then there’s a hypercarnivore in your house!

Fourteen-year-old Xeo Chu is a talented artist. His paintings have been in art shows all over the world. But Xeo Chu says he doesn’t really care about fame. He just loves to paint.

Xeo Chu, who lives in Vietnam, started painting when he was 4 years old. His mom was taking his two older brothers to their art class. Xeo Chu wanted to go to art class, too. Once he started painting, he didn’t want to stop. 

Xeo Chu’s mom, who owns two art galleries (places where art is shown and sold), thought her son had a special gift. Pretty soon, it was clear that other people agreed. When Xeo Chu was about 6 years old, his mom hung a painting of his in one of her galleries and someone bought it. When people heard about Xeo Chu, they also wanted to see his paintings. Xeo Chu had his first art show when he was 10. Since then, his art has been shown and sold all over the world. 

Xeo Chu’s paintings show flowers and fields and big, swirling seas.

“I love nature,” he told the Guardian. “That is what I find beautiful. I want to draw and paint what I see.”

Some art experts say Xeo Chu’s paintings are a lot like the paintings of Jackson Pollock, an American artist who lived in the 20th century. Like Pollock’s paintings, Xeo Chu’s work sells for a lot of money.

But Xeo Chu says he doesn’t paint because he wants to make money. In fact, he donated some money to hospitals so they could buy more medical equipment. He has also given money to help children and the elderly.

On May 4, 1912, there was a parade on Fifth Avenue in New York City. The parade wasn’t a celebration. It was a way to get people’s attention. The goal of the parade was to let the government know that women should have the right to vote. Leading the marchers on horseback was a 16-year-old named Mabel Ping-Hua Lee. Although she was young, Lee had already become a leader in this cause, which was called “women’s suffrage.”  

 Lee was interested in rights and fairness from an early age. Born in China, she arrived in the U.S. with her family when she was about 9 years old. She saw that women were not treated the same as men. She also saw that Chinese Americans faced racism. In fact, the U.S. government had made a law in 1882 called the Chinese Exclusion Act. This law stated that most Chinese people would no longer be allowed to move to the U.S. (Lee’s family had only been allowed because she was invited to go to a U.S. school.) Lee believed the U.S. should be a place where everyone is treated equally. 

After the parade, Lee went to Columbia University and became a doctor of economics. She also continued to speak out for women’s suffrage. Lee published articles and gave speeches. She said that giving women the right to vote was an important part of democracy. After all, government leaders were only being chosen by half the adults—the men. That meant women didn’t have a say in what their government was doing.

Lee also knew that Chinese Americans—especially Chinese American women—did not have enough of a say. She wrote and spoke about the need to make sure Chinese American girls could go to school and Chinese American women could vote and participate in other community activities. 

Over time, voting laws changed. In 1917, New York State granted women the right to vote. In 1920, the U.S. Constitution was amended (changed) to give women the right to vote. 

But the fight wasn’t over. The Chinese Exclusion Act stated that Chinese Americans couldn’t become citizens. And that meant that Chinese Americans, including Lee, couldn’t vote. The Chinese Exclusion Act remained a law until 1943. 

Lee died in 1966 after a lifetime working to help others. She was an important part of the hard work that gave so many people the power to vote.