Articles for Grade 3

While the start of a new school year is always exciting, this year was even more so for some elementary school students in Auckland, New Zealand. They became the world’s first kids to be “taught” by a digital teacher. Before you start imagining a human-like robot walking around the classroom, Will is just an avatar that pops up on the student’s desktop, tablet, or smartphone screen, when summoned....

With the Halloween festivities over, most people will spend the next few days taking down the spine-chilling decorations and tossing the pumpkin Jack-o’-Lanterns, or scary monsters, that they spent hours creating. While the millions of gourds that end up in landfills every November is alarming, even more so is the massive amount of food waste generated since most people fail to take advantage of the fruit’s edible flesh and seeds....

From creating crazy mnemonics to constructing elaborate mind maps, all of us have at some point experimented with techniques to help us recall relevant information during tests and exams. Now, a group of researchers at the RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia have devised a new trick to help boost our memories – a gap-ridden, and oddly slanted, typeface that they ironically called Sans Forgetica!...

It’s creepy, spooky, and scheduled to rendezvous with Earth shortly after Halloween, on November 11, 2018. Before you get your hopes up, we are not talking about an alien, but asteroid 2015 TB145, a skull-shaped space rock nicknamed ”Death Comet.” This is the second appearance of the eerie-looking asteroid that was first observed by the University of Hawaii's Pan-STARRS-1 (Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System) telescope on October 10, 2015....

While the discovery of a new species is always newsworthy, that of a fish spectacular enough to be named Tosanoides Aphrodite, after the Greek goddess of love and beauty, is even more so! Hudson Pinheiro and Luiz Rocha were exploring the deep-sea coral reefs, nearly 400-feet underwater, around Brazil’s Saint Paul’s Rocks archipelago, when they spotted the dazzling pink and yellow fish. The California Academy Of Sciences researchers were so mesmerized by the colorful ocean-dweller that it was only later, when viewing the video footage, that they noticed the 10-foot sixgill shark that had been hovering above....

Natural blue light, which lies in the portion of the electromagnetic spectrum that is visible to the human eye, has several health benefits. These include regulating the body’s circadian rhythm, boosting alertness, and increasing one’s overall feeling of wellbeing. However, the same cannot be said about the stronger artificial blue light, which has permeated our households by way of digital devices such as televisions, smartphones, laptops, and gaming systems. Previous studies have shown that extended exposure causes eye strain, fatigue, headaches, and sleeplessness. Now, new research by Ohio’s University of Toledo (UT) has found that the blue-tinted screens of our addictive gadgets may be accelerating macular degeneration – a condition that results in significant vision loss, eventually leading to blindness....

Yellowstone Park officials were thrilled when the Ear Spring geyser suddenly came to life on September 15, 2018. Visitors fortunate enough to be in the area, watched in awe as the hot pool’s largest eruption since 1957, caused sprays of steaming 200 degree Fahrenheit (93 degree Celsius) water to leap as high as 30 feet (9 meters) in the air. However, the joy turned to shock when employees discovered that in addition to the expected rocks and dirt, the geyser had also ejected human-generated trash....

Every October, farmers across the US harvest millions of pumpkins. Some make it to the dinner table in the form of delicious soups or pies, while others get transformed into scary Halloween monsters. Then there are the select few whose only purpose is to win contests like the Safeway World Championship Pumpkin Weigh-Off held annually in Half Moon Bay, CA – the self-proclaimed “World Pumpkin Capital.”...

Virtual reality (VR)-enhanced roller coasters that keep fans at the edge of their seats are not a new concept. Visitors aboard the Superman: Ride of Steel coaster at Six Flags in Maryland have been immersing themselves in the superhero’s world since 2016, while those aboard Cedar Point, Ohio’s suspended Iron Dragon ride have been dodging ogres and orcs since 2017. But given that water does not bode well for the sensitive electronics, the experience has been harder to offer for water slides. That, however, changed recently with the opening of the Space Glider, the world’s first virtual reality water slide....