Our mission here at News Bites (a monthly children’s newspaper) is to Engage, Inform, and Inspire by bringing news, STEM, sport and entertainment to young people in a language they understand and in a manner they can easily relate to.
Hello, News Biters! Welcome to issue #25. We hope you enjoyed learning about the very important work of the World Wide Fund for Nature last month. Now, more than ever, awareness is so important if we are going to help bring about the change that our planet dearly needs to recover and thrive. In this month’s issue, we are looking at some of history’s greatest secrets, many of which lay buried beneath us for years, centuries and millenniums. Throughout history, accidental discoveries have led to the most amazing finds. Join us on pages 12 and 13 and you will see what we mean. World Food Day falls on October 16 so we decided to take a novel (if not a little gross) look at some of the more wacky dishes…
World Space Week Special Women in Space Did you know that October is the month in which World Space Week is held? From October 4-10, we’re invited to look beyond the skies and read, learn and wonder about the mysteries of space. And, boy, is there lots to marvel at! This year’s theme is Women in Space. Check out these trailblazing cosmonauts, astronauts and space engineers. Valentina Tereshkova Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman in space when she piloted the Vostok 6 spacecraft on June 16, 1963. She spent three days in space, where she completed 48 orbits of the Earth. On the occasion of her 70th birthday in 2007, Valentina offered to travel to Mars if the opportunity ever arose … even it meant a one-way journey!…
Barbie Pandemic Heroes In August 2021, Mattel announced they had produced a very special group of Barbie dolls modelled on female heroes of the COVID-19 pandemic from around the world. The dolls were meant to honour these real-life role models and to encourage young girls to study and pursue careers in the areas of STEM: Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths. Meet the real-life heroes! Amy O’Sullivan is an A&E nurse from the United States. who cared for the first COVID patient in New York – and almost died herself. Dr. Chika Stacy Oriuwa is from Canada and fights against racism in healthcare. Dr. Audrey Sue Cruz is a frontline doctor from the U.S. who also works to alleviate racial bias. In Australia, Dr. Kirby White co-founded ‘Gowns for Doctors’, which…
The Real SB & P?! A team of scientists who were examining the sea floor off the American state of Massachusetts recently were amazed by one of the photographs taken by their robotic camera. The unusual picture showed a yellow sea sponge and a bright pink starfish side-by-side. They looked exactly like SpongeBob and his friend Patrick as we see them on our TV screens in the popular SpongeBob SquarePants cartoon. The scientists shared the image on Facebook and the picture of the real-life cartoon characters quickly spread around the world. While SpongeBob and Patrick are the best of friends in the TV show, starfish and sea sponges are deadly enemies in the wild. In fact, the real Patrick probably ate SpongeBob soon after the picture was taken! BITE-SIZE! Starfish…
What’s on the menu? This month, in honour of World Food Day on October 16, we’re taking a look at some of the world’s weirdest foods, just to see if we can tempt you to try something different! *Warning – you may feel very hungry or very queasy after reading this feature, depending on your tastes. MENU Tuna with a Twist Tuna eyeballs are a cheap meal in Japan. They’re best served up boiled or steamed with garlic or soy sauce, and are supposed to taste a bit like squid – if you dare taste them! Crispy Legs Cambodians seem to like crispy tarantulas – a dish they started eating during a time of famine. These deep-fried snacks are now popular all over Cambodia and apparently taste like crab. We’ll…
SCIENCE FACT OR FICTION? FACT? OR FICTION? STATEMENT: You can fold an A4 sheet of paper a maximum of 7 times! This is one of the better science facts – because if you don’t believe it, you can try it out for yourself! Paper gets thicker and stronger when it is folded. The more folds you have, the stronger the paper becomes. Most paper is around 0.1 millimetres in thickness, but every time you fold it, the thickness is doubled. If you folded it 40 times, it would be over 10,000 kilometres thick – enough to stretch into space! Although the popular science TV show Mythbusters managed to fold a super-thin piece of paper (the size of a football field) 11 times, they needed a steamroller and a forklift to…
