LAUNCH ZAPPAR

APP TO WATCH THIS

ANMATED COVER

4923 3
EDITOR PRESIDENT AND CEO Nicole Middleton
HOLLY BENNETT PUBLISHER Brainspace Publishing Inc.
COPY EDITING
WEB I SEO Herbert Lemus
ACCOUNTING SERVICES leah Witherspoon
COLLETTE YVONNE
lEGAl SERVICES Zaldin and Fine llP
CONTRIBUTING WRITERS
Broinspoce magazine is published four times a year
HOLLY BENNETT by Brainspace Publishing Inc., 394 Ontario Street,
PASCALE BIDER MISSION Broinspoce magazine
Newmarket, ON l3Y 2K4
LEO CHAN GASKINS PHONE (905) 830-4314 Toll-free (844) 330-4314 endeavours to produce in tell igent and
JOHN HOFFMAN EMAIL brainspacemagazine@bell.net engaging articles for students ages 8
CLARISSA JEWELL SITE brainspacemagazine.com to 14 in a format that bridges the gap
BEN MAYCOCK between print and digital technology
Periodical postage paid at Canada Post, to expand literacy and promote optimal
WILL SAUNDERS
GALADRIEL WATSON
Ontario, Canada. lea r n i ng
POSTMASTER: Send address changes to
.

FACT CHECKING Brainspace Publishing Inc. NOTE The opinions expressed herein are
394 Ontario Street, those of the respective authors and not
JENNIFER ALEXANDER
Newmarket, ON l3Y 2K4 necessarily those of Broinspoce magazine
ART DIRECTION AND DESIGN brainspacemagazine@bell.net or of Brainspace Publishing Inc. Broinspoce
GALEXY STUDIO magazine and Brainspace Publishing Inc.
SUBSCRIPTIONS will not be liable for any damages or losses,
VIDEO AND ORIGINAL MUSIC SCORES Canada $27 US $33
• International $85
• howsoever sustained, as a result of the
ALEX MIDDLETON Bulk rates for schools and libraries available reliance on or use by a reader or any other
Prices are subject to taxes and shipping rates person of any of the information, opinions
or products expressed, advertised or other­
ISSN 2291-8930 wise contained herein. Where appropriate,
If you would li ke to contribute to
professional advice should be sought.
Broinspoce magazine, please email
brainspacemagazine@bell.net

d .•.
Funded by the Government of Canada
Ca11a a
 0

Letters and Numbers

If. MATHEMAGIC Tricky Number 9
5 MATHEMAGIC Fun W ith Money
32 LANGUAGE Etymology of Shark Names

Spacev Stuff
.... �

21f. UFOs Do Recent Videos Prove Their Existence?

26 OUR MOON Scientists Have New Theories

1-� e Crill010 _gy

10 SOCIAL MEDIA Detecting Fake News
22 SPACE TECHNOLOGY Watching Earth

1 �hat ' s Life !

6 SCIENCE Discover Microbes
8 SCIENCE TALLULAH: Water Super Powers
30 BIOLOGY Are You MagnetJc?

28 CULTURE What's Behind the Mask?

36 DISCOVERIES Famous Skeletons
38 DECOUVERTES Skelettes celebres

Climate
18 MONITORING CLIMATE The Changes Up North
20 ICE AGE Are We Due For Another One?

BRAINSPACE FALL 2020 3

 •

I
Number 9
This trick uses algebra that leads your audience to
the number 9 every time. If your friend isn't comfortable
with mental calculations, offer a calculator.

Step 1 StepS
Prepare yourself by gathering two or three books and Tell your friend to pick any book from the ones you've
memorize the first word of the first paragraph on page selected. Instruct them to turn to page 9. Tell your
9 for each of the books. friend to focus on the first word of the first paragraph.

Step 2 Step 6
Direct your friend to hide these next steps from you! Now for the grand finale! Stare at your friend intensely.
Tell your friend to write down any four digits. Act as though you are concentrating on reading their
e.g. 9743 mind by closing your eyes and saying, "I can almost
see it..:' Then dramatically announce the word you've
Step3 already memorized. Remember, a great magician
Now ask your friend to write a second number using never reveals the trick!
the same 4 digits in any order. Then have them subtract
this second number from the first number.
e.g. 9743 9743
- 3794 or - 7934 (in a different order)
5949 1809

Step4
"Now add those four digits together!" you will
command. Ask if the answer is a single digit or a double
digit answer. If it is a double digit, instruct them to add
the 2 digits together. The answer will always be 9.
e.g. 5 + 9 + 4 + 9 = 27 ) 2 + 7 = 9
or 1 + 8 + 0 + 9 = 18 > 1 + 8 = 9

4 brainspacemagazine.com I:J @BrainspaceMag /BrainspaceMagazine

Money

Guess how much money your friend pulls out of their

pocket!* Ask a friend to count the value of some coins
and secretly write the amount on a piece of paper. For
example, $1.35. Then ask your friend to:

*If yourfriend doesn't have coins in their pocket,

Step 1 offer a pouch or bag of assorted coins and ask
Delete the decimal and double the amount. them to grab a handful.
e.g. (135 X 2 270)
=

Step 2
Add the first odd prime number to the new total.
e.g. (3 + 270 = 273)

Step3
Multiply the result by V4 of 20.
e.g. (273 X 5 1 ,365)
=

Step4
Subtract the lowest common multiple of 2 and 3.
e.g. (1,365 - 6 = 1 ,359)

For the grand finale, ask your friend to

announce the final answer. Remove the
last digit ( 1359) and you will be able to
work out how much the coins are worth.
Take a bow and smile as your friends are
mystified by your magic - but truly math -
ability!

BRAINSPACE FALL 2020 5

By Ben
Maycock

Our world is teeming with

microbes: those organisms
so small that we can only
"In fact there are more microscopic species of life
see them with the aid of
in a sugar packet's worth of soil than there are #
a microscope. They cover species of animals in all the zoos in the world;'
every surface around us says microbiologist Dr. Anne Madden.
and even live within and That thought might make your skin crawl,
on our bodies. but take a moment to truly appreciate how those
microbes have made our lives better and how they
one day may solve some of the planet's toughest
problems.
It has been estimated that there are over a trillion
species of microbes covering our planet and that
90 per cent of them have yet to be discovered.
Microbiologists like Madden are enjoying an age
of exploration very similar to the one naturalists
experienced hundreds of years ago as new plants
and animals were identified.
Microbes include fungi, bacteria, archaea
and viruses. Just as with plants and animals, we
can have a different relationship with each one.

I:J @BrainspaceMag /BrainspaceMagazine

 Microbiologists study microbes to try to understand how they
live, grow, have evolved and how they interact with their
environments. And while microbes can look very different
from each other, the best way to identify them is through
their DNA.
''As a microbe wrangler my favourite part of the research
is growing microbes," says Madden. "Finding them in the world
and then growing them separate from all other species, so that you can understand the
characteristics of that particular microbe:'

From helping bread rise, to helping us digest our food, to producing antibiotics and vaccines, the
list of things microbes help us with is endless. They also assist us by:
• Producing renewable energy such as electricity or oil
• Breaking down toxic chemicals or plastics that otherwise pollute the land and ocean
• Helping plants and livestock grow healthier
• Treating waste water so it is safer for the environment
• Creating self-healing building materials such as cement
• Mining minerals
• Developing new materials to replace plastic, leather and cotton
• Making new meclcines to help treat and prevent clsease

Microbes also present us with the opportunity to pursue one of the coolest careers!
"Engagingwith microbes doesn't have to happen in the lab," says Madden. "Microbiologists
explore all sorts of different microbes in all sorts of different spaces in the world. You can
be a microbiologist that studies microbes that exist in the space station or you can be a
microbiologist that studies the microbes that live in a tiny squid off the coast of Hawaii
or you can be a microbiologist who studies those microbes that just make us sick. To be
a microbiologist allows you to explore any habitat you can imagine:'

For more
microbe
information and
activities, visit
Dr. Madden at
microbeinstitute.org
Brainspace
recommends
theARMicrobes! app
to view some very
cool microbe facts.

BRAINSPACE FALL 2020 7

 BY
• GAL.eXY

WA'liER HAS
9UPEWO'NERS
fUAf HaP
Pr«Jl'fCT l..fFS'.

WATER CAN
i OFWATf�S w �0 ASSOD AND TAke" fN A
P'� �s... RaEASE HeAT/ LOT OF HeAT •••

mSEFORE CHANGING
TeA\PERA rurle!
...AND ro coot. � !

�1 IS f�l5 WA'feR
'rs A SPECfAl.. IN YOUR 60t'Y�r• THAT HELPS k5SP
•..

ASrt.•TY THAT NO OTH� YOUr TfMPER.AT'UJre NORMAL!

f..,fQU'P ON EA�H
CAN PO AS weu. 37C
AS WA'lU POeSi Ofl
98.,-F
)

8 brainspacemagazine.com I:J @BrainspaceMag /BrainspaceMagazine

 )
YO R BODY OSES WATE�
W.HE �T S CATS TO
coot. t:XJ,'l ,r r

.. .ABSORB .MUCH
WATER El..$'S �G T�
OF T.HE FL.AHeT'S
retvnRA uRe o\ f:AI(T"H ooJ EM"rl·tS OCEANS,
USAT Wi� �
SEASjl L.Ak'SS
THE PAY!
RM�....

WATfR CONljf Uf'S TO teff'

OUR T£4\PERATU�S NOR.MAL.. •.

BRAINSPACE FALL 2020 9

 By John Hoffman

"Fake news" is a new term. It became popular around 2016. But

In a recent Canadian survey,
90 percent of people admitted
they've been fooled by online
fake news!
the spread of false information and hoaxes-wild stories that
are said to be true, but are completely made-up-have been
around for centuries. What's new is that fake news can now
spread like wildfire, thanks to social media sites like Facebook
and Twitter.

Some fake news is fairly harmless. It's meant as a joke or a way of getting people's
attention - like the story about actor Brad Pitt explaining why he was moving to
Brantford, Ontario. Others stories are deliberate lies designed to make someone
look bad or influence the outcome of elections. As we've seen, these fake news
stories are often believed.

Why Do People Fall for Fake News?
There are several reasons. People sometimes believe
""���,� fake news because it supports their political
beliefs - they want it to be true. Other people
share bizarre stories because they
are shocking or funny. Or they
think their social media followers
might like it.
Here's the thing: the more fake news
gets shared, the more people are likely
to fall for it. Sometimes bad things
happen as a result. In 2017 an armed
man walked into a pizza restaurant in Washington
D.C. and fired shots. Why? He'd seen an online story
claiming that children were being held prisoner in
the restaurant's basement.
So why does fake news get shared so often?
Gordon Pennycook, assistant professor of
behavioural sciences at the University of Regina,
was involved with research that gives some
answers. People just don't think about whether
a story is true before instantly
clicking to pass the story along.
"If you want to figure out whether
or not something is true, there are
two steps/' says Pennycook. "The
first is just asking yourself if the
story is likely to be true. In many
cases people don't do that:' The next
step is research. Google the story to see if other
news sources are reporting it as well. If they aren\
the story likely isn't true.

10 brainspace
maga
zine.com

a @BrainspaceMag /BrainspaceMagazine
 The Difference
Thinking Makes
Pennycook's research showed that when
people stop and think, it makes a difference.
"We did a study with two groups of people,"
he explains. "We showed all of them a set of
headlines from online news stories. Some
were true and some were false. With one
group we asked, 'Is the story true or false?'
With the other group we asked, 'Would you
share this on Facebook?"'

People who were asked the true or false question were

better at spotting fake news. "That group only believed 25
percent of the false headlines and they believed 65 percent
of the true ones," Pennycook says. But the picture was
different when people were asked if they would share the
story on Facebook. "That group said they would share 35
percent of the false headlines and 40 percent of the true
ones;' says Pennycook. In other words, when people were
asked a question that made them stop and think, they made
= better decisions about which stories to share.
:;
;

5
:;
r�
r Two Kinds of Brain Power
¢2
1
•
•
#
-
•
F
The key idea here is, look before you leap. "One
really powerful and useful thing our brain can
do is come up with instant answers, without us
having to think about it," Pennycook explains.
"For example, if someone asks you your name,
the answer just comes into your head. That saves
us time and brain energy:'
But when it comes to deciding what to share
on social media, those automatic, unthinking
responses can backfire, resulting in the spread
of fake news. That's why it's important to use
another powerful function of our brain - the
a
•

IS
hat is
ability to reflect. "When we stop and think, we
might change our decision about deciding to
u
t
share a story that could be fake news, even though
our first impulse is to share it," says Pennycook.
"It's important to challenge your gut feeling
.
sometimes."

BRAINSPACE FALL 2020

11
 BY GALADRIEL WATSON

They sound too weird to be true: fairies in England, a

giant in New York, a mermaid in Fiji. But thousands of

people hove been caught up in crazes and believed in

beings like this. After all, they sow them themselves.

Or did they?

1 2 brainspacemagazine.com a @BrainspaceMag /BrainspaceMagazine

 /Spy
There are many stories of large, hairYJ ape-like
creatures that walk on two very big feet. In North
America, these beasts are known as Bigfoot or
Sasquatch.
In 1958, huge, unexplained footprints were
found in northern California - from Bigfoot?
Then, in the same area in
,.,-'--� 1967, two men saw
the creature itself
lumbering into the woods. They quickly made a shaky, grainy
film.
Sightings keep happening. In 2008, two men in the U.S.
state of Georgia showed a photo of Bigfoot's dead body
stuffed in a freezer. In 2016, a man flying a drone over Idaho
filmed a strange, hairy beast running into a clump of trees.
So Bigfoot must exist, right? Not quite. The children of
a Californian logger admitted their father had faked the 1958
footprints using a pair of carved wooden feet. The body in the
freezer was a Halloween costume. And the thing running into the
trees . . . it was a person in a costume too.
So far, though, no one has been able to tell if the 1967 video is real.
Some people say it's a person in a costume, but others say the shape
of the body and the way it moves aren't right. We may never know.

Fairies Take Flight

Shades of green, lavender and mauve. Cousins Elsie
Wright, age 16, and Frances Griffiths, 9, said those were
the colours of the fairies they played with in the garden.
Their parents were skeptical about these tales, so the girls
grabbed a camera and came back with proof: a black-and­
white photo of Frances surrounded by dancing fairies,
followed by one of Elsie sitting with a tip-toeing gnome.
It was 1917, and the photos quickly became famous.
It started when Elsie's mother showed them to a group
that discussed fairies and other unexplained things. They
started passing them around, which is how author Sir
Arthur Conan Doyle saw them. The creator of Sherlock
Holmes was a believer in strange phenomena, and he
asked the girls for more proof. Shortly, they delivered
three more photos, and he published the astounding
images in a magazine. Since the girls lived near the village
of Cottingley, England, the fairies became known as the
Cottingley Fairies.
Lots of people thought the photos must be fake, but
many others disagreed. Eventually, the fuss died down.
It wasn't until the early 1980s that the cousins finally
revealed that Elsie had drawn the fairies herself. To
photograph them, they'd propped up the cutouts with
hatpins.

BRAINSPACE FALL 2020 13

 A Giant Mystery
Bam! The man's shovel hit something hard. It was
1879 and he was on the grounds of a hotel near
Taughannock Falls, New York, widening the path
for carriages. He must have hit a rock. And then
everyone saw what it was - the buried body of a
seven-foot-tall, hard-as-a-rock man!
Soon, thousands of people came to view the
petrified body of the "giant:' The hotelkeeper
put up a tent and made people pay 10 cents each to view it, plus sold

" photographs. Scientists took samples, but couldn't decide what it was.

� ·0
Ten years earlier, another giant had been found nearby, in Cardiff,
I New York. The owner of that land and his cousin had also charged
1'1 admission, and had ended up selling the body to a group that took it on
tour.
Unfortunatel)'j spectators were paying their hard-earned cash for
nothing. The Cardiff cousins soon admitted they'd had the man carved out
of the mineral gypsum and had buried it themselves. In Taughannock, the
hotelkeeper and a helper had made a batch of eggs, beef blood, iron filings
and cement, shaped it into a man, cooked it
and buried it. In both instances, money
was a major goal.

=:a

A Splashy pectac/e
The ads for the exhibit showed images of a beautiful mermaid. In
reality, the mermaid's mummified body was hideous. Still, that
didn't stop people from flocking to gawk at it. In those days - it was
the 1840s - explorers were discovering all sorts of new animals, so had a
mermaid been discovered too?
The main person promoting this mummy was Phineas Taylor
Barnum. Later he'd become famous for his three-ring circus, but for
now he was attracting crowds by displaying odd objects and unique
people at his American Museum in New York City. The mermaid,
apparently, had originally come from the Feejee Islands (now spelled
Fiji), so it was called the Feejee Mermaid. There were many disputes
about whether it was genuine, but Barnum revealed the truth when
he wrote his autobiography. Right from the beginning, he'd known it
wasn't a mermaid. Instead, someone in Japan had carefully sewn a monkey head onto
the back end of a fish, and the creation had eventually ended up in Barnum's hands.
To build interest, he had sent pretend letters to newspapers and introduced a phony
scientist who swore the creature was real. Over the years, more mermaid mummies
have turned up elsewhere - all just as fake.

1 4 brainspacemagazine.com I:J @BrainspaceMag /BrainspaceMagazine

Digging up the Past
The skull wasn't scary, but it still astonished people around the world. In the early 1900s,
scientists were looking for proof that humans had evolved from apes.
Then, in 1912, amateur archaeologist Charles Dawson and Arthur Smith Woodward,
a geology expert from England's Natural History Museum, announced they'd found
the remains of an ancient skull that looked an awful lot like a human-ape combo. The
scientific community was abuzz. This was it!
The skull came from a gravel pit near Dawson's home in Piltdown, England} so the
ancient human came to be known asPiltdown Man. However, there was a problem: other
fossils were popping up in other places around the world, and they didn't look quite the
same as this one. Still, when Dawson and Woodward found bone fragments from a
secondPiltdown Man, the truth couldn't be denied . . .
. . . until 41 years later. By this time} bone-dating technology had improved. Turns out
Piltdown Man wasn't a million years old} but hardly several hundred! Upon closer look,
scientists discovered it was actually a collection of human and orangutan bits} all stained
to look old. Scientists today think Dawson was the main forger} but did he work alone? So
far} the skull ofPiltdown Man isn't telling.

The Sisters Who Could

"Count to five;' Mrs. Fox called out. "Count to 15:' In the bedroom} an invis­
ible being knocked the correct number of times. That's because Mrs. Fox's
daughters - also gathered in this room in 1848 - were able to contact the
dead. Word quickly spread about the eerie talents of Maggie, 14J and Kate, 11,
who lived in Hydesville} New York. Folks from all around wanted to witness
their supernatural skills. The sisters helped people speak to their dead loved
ones. They put on performances in packed theatres. They travelled across the
ocean and contacted British ghosts too.
Soon, many other "mediums" appeared, holding dimly lit seances
to call forth spirits. In fact, speaking to the dead became so popular
that a new religion emerged, called spiritualism. Spectators swore
that what they witnessed was real - the bumps, the table tipping,
the floating objects, the spirit shimmering in the corner.
They were wrong. Forty years after they'd started, the Fox sisters
confessed. In their childhood home, they'd made otherworldly
noises by thumping apples across the floor. They'd learned to crack
their toes} knuckles and other joints - super loudly. Other mediums
were caught faking things} too. All those ghosts of loved ones had
been nothing but tricks.
BRAINSPACE FALL 2020 15
 INVISIBLE AND NATURAL
We can't see it, smell it or taste it - but if there's too
much of it, watch out! We're talking about carbon
monoxide, a gas which is produced when we burn fuels
like oil or wood in objects like cars and fireplaces. If
carbon monoxide gets trapped in an enclosed space
. _,
.

like a house or a garage, it can poison people, possibly

making them have haunting-like hallucinations.

SOMETHING'S ROTTEN
Phantoms seem to love old, leaky houses
- and so does mould. In fact, mould likes
any moist spot, from shower curtains to
basement walls. While some moulds are
beneficial (like the one that makes the
medicine penicillin), breathing in other
types of moulds can make us sick. We
might get confused and have a hard
time thinking straight - and see strange
things we might believe are ghosts.
16 brainspacemagazine.com
 FROZEN IN BED
Dreams can be awfully weird, so imagine experiencing
similarly bizarre illusions while you're awake. This can
... happen to people who suffer from "sleep paralysis:'
Their minds mess up the sleeping process, so that their
bodies remain frozen, as if asleep, but the person feels
as if they're awake. Sometimes, while stuck
in this state, they have the added, dreadful
bonus of believing they're being haunted
by ghosts.

SPOOKY ATTRACTION
We're surrounded by magnets, and not just
the ones decorating the fridge. For example,
lamps and other electronics are plugged in
with electrical wireSj when an electric current
flows through these wires, a magnetic field is
produced. Although we can't see or feel these
fields - which can also be caused by natural
sources like lightning - researchers have shown
that they can alter the
electrical currents that
occur naturally in our
brains, making us
see, feel or sense things
that aren't there.

A SUPER LOW RUMBLE

Humans can only hear a certain range of sounds. If
the sound is too high or too low, we can't hear it,
although other animals such as cats might. And
when the sound is too low, unease can creep in.
Although this "noise" seems silent, our bodies
still sense its vibrations, whether they come
from lightning, diesel engines or wind turbines.
Researchers have shown that these "infrasounds"
,
can make us feel nervous and frightened - as if a
nasty spirit is watching.

BRAINSPACE FALL 2020 17

 What is climate?

Climate is the long-term average weather conditions

in a specific area. This includes how hot or cold it is
and the amount of rain or snow that falls.
Different regions in the world have different
climates. Some places are hotter or colder, or wetter
or drier, than others.

Why is monitoring climate change important?

Our access to housing, fresh water and food depends on having a

predictable climate, which may be threatened with climate change
as global temperatures rise.
Climate change can cause sea levels to rise and can increase the
risk of drought, forest fires, hurricanes and other natural disasters.

How do we know that

climate is changing?
�===���
r There are many ways that
scientists can monitor cli­
mate directly by looking at
things like atmospheric con­
ditions, satellite imagery,
ocean currents and sea level
change.
However, there are many cases
where we don't have long-term
climate data because there were
no people or instruments recording
the local conditions.
Instead, for these places, we can
indirectly study what the climate
used to be like in the past. One
important way that scientists look
at changing conditions is through
the field of paleolimnology.
 What's paleolimnology?

The word "paleolimnology" comes from the Greek

words poleon, which means "old", limne which means
"lake", and logos, which means "study", so it means
"the study of old lakes".
Paleolimnology helps us to understand the history
of a lake, including its climate, based on the physical,
chemical, biological or mineralogical properties found in
lake sediment samples. Scientists do this by collecting
sediment core samples.

What is a seclment core?

A sediment core is a cylindrical sample of

dirt, organic matter and other sediment
collected from the bottom of a lake. As
matter settles in the water, including the
remains of plants and animals, it forms a
layer over the bottom surface.

Over time, new layers form on top

of old layers, so when you look at
a sediment core, the most recent
history is at the top of a sediment
core while older timelines descend
down the core. This shows
change in conditions over time.
the Climate change is already having big impacts
on the Arctic. The Inuit, the Indigenous people
who live in the Arctic, depend on cold weather to
maintain their traditional activities like hunting
and fishing.
Thinner ice means it's more dangerous for
people to hunt and travel. Melting permafrost
causes landslides, and tears up roads and homes.
Invasive species that have never occurred in the
North are beginning to appear.
 By Ben Maycock

How cold is an ice age?

Surprisingly, temperatures during the last

ice age were only four to eight degrees

Celsius cooler than they are today.

· 20 brainspacemagazine.com I:J @BrainspaceMag /BrainspaceMagazine

BRAINSPACE FALL 2020 21

FAST FACT
The RADARSAT Constellation
Mission satellites pass over
Canada up to four times a day
and can map the entire surface
of the country.
2 2 brainspacemagazine.com
•
W
hen she was a kid, Taryn Tomlinson and her
sisters would play a game to see who would be
the first to spot a satellite in the night sky. Sometimes
it would be hours before they could declare a winner.
Today, with over 2,000 satellites orbiting the Earth,
such a game would be over very quickly!
Tomlinson still spends a lot of time thinking about satellites, but
as a senior engineer for the Canadian Space Agency, she likes to
think of each one having its own characteristics or superpowers.
For one group of Canadian satellites, that superpower is remote
sensing: the ability to look at and understand objects or areas on
Earth from a great distance. They do this using synthetic aperture
radar (SAR), a way of sending radio waves down to earth and then
reading them as they bounce back. The data that is collected can
then create three-dimensional maps of the planet below. These
radio waves can read any ecosystem, whether it be land, water or
ice, and can see through the heaviest of clouds or the darkest of
nights.
@BrainspaceMag /BrainspaceMagazine
 Building on the successes of
RAD ARSAT and RAD ARSAT
2, the RADARSAT Constellation
Mission (RCM) are Canadian
Earth Observation satellites that
work as a team as our very own
"eye in the skY:' Their mission is
to watch over Canada, keeping an
eye on both land and sea to help
manage and protect the country's
environment and waters.

Mapping ice formations

Supporting emergency so ship captains can
responders as they battle safely navigate Arctic
wildfires and floods waters

Detecting
oil pollution

Providing
warning that
structures such
as bridges Helping
might fail farmers make
the best use Monitoring
of their land coastal erosion

BRAINSPACE FALL 2020 23

"I CHASED 1\ UFO"
David Fravor, a Navy pilot involved
during the 2004 encounter, was
flying off the coast of Mexico when
he was asked to check out a flying
object making unusual movements
that had been detected by an aircraft
carrier's radar. Within minutes,
Fravor and his weapons systems
operator spotted an object shaped
like a Tic-Tac mint. It had no wings or
2 4 brainspacemagazine.com
helicopter rotors and was moving in in space and then it just accelerates.
very unusual ways. It hovered in one Airplanes don't work that way," he
spot and then suddenly, it ascended said in an interview.
from just above the water to 12,000 Later, a pilot from another plane
feet and accelerated out of sight "in was able to lock on to the object with
two seconds." his camera and capture it on video.
Fravor says he was "weirded out;' Some UFO enthusiasts say that this
because even the world's fastest air­ video, and the two taken in 2017, are
plane "can't take off like that. You're the first indisputable authentic video
talking about something just sitting evidence of UFOs.
l:J @BrainspaceMag /BrainspaceMagazine

ON THE OTHER H/\ND
Science writer Mick West thinks the
object Fravor saw may have just been
a distant airplane.
completely. That's why the object
zooms off the screen.
OK. But why would a plane look
Parallax is an apparent shift in po­
sition of a nearby object against
a faraway object. To see how it
works, close one eye and hold
your thumb out in front of you.
Line it up with an object that's
further away. Now open that eye
and close the other. The thumb
seems to move. That's parallax.
In the naval plane's video the
parallax effect would have been
greatly magnified by the distanc­
es involved. The plane was 25,000
feet above the water and 12,000
feet above the flying object. The
amount of zoom the camera was

West, a sceptical investigator and
creator of the website Metabunk,
has analyzed the naval videos using
onscreen information provided by
the jets' cameras. He says the unusual
movements of the object in the video
taken in 2004 are due to changes in
camera lenses and the amount of
zoom the pilot was using. When
there's a lens change, the camera loses
its tracking lock, so the object seems
to move suddenly until the camera
locks on again. And the apparent
"sudden acceleration" happened
because the pilot changed from IX
zoom to 2X zoom, and lost his lock
like a Tic-Tac? West can't comment using also played a role in the po­
tential optical illusion.
on what Fravor saw with the naked
eye, only the video. However he
says the infrared glow from a plane's
engines would be captured by the
naval jet's infrared cameras and could
distort a plane's image on the screen.
West also disagrees with hosts
of the History Channel show
Unidentified, who say the UFO in one
of the 2017 videos was travelling at
two thirds the speed of sound. "The
object is not going fast/' says West.
"The apparent speed is just an effect
caused by parallax:' (See the sidebar
for a definition of parallax effect.)

West thinks the object in one of the 2017 videos was probably just a weather
balloon. Using information provided onscreen by the jet's camera, West used What Would
basic trigonometry to calculate that the object was about 13,000 feet above the You Say to ET?
water - the normal height of a weather balloon. He calculates the speed at be­ Let's suppose that aliens do
tween 37 and 74 kilometers per hour, which is wind speed at 13,000 feet. West exist and that they make their
also claims that the object is just under two metres in length - the size of a way to Earth some day. And let's
weather balloon. say they were friendly and could
What about the fact that the UFO in one of the 2017 videos seems to ro­ somehow understand English
tate, something a plane could never do? "It's not rotating/' West says. "It looks and French. W hat would you
like it's rotating because of an effect of the gimbal-mounted camera system." A say if you met an extraterrestrial?
gimbal is a mechanism that corrects the angle of the camera to keep it in line What would you tell them about
with the horizon as the position of the plane changes relative to the object. It Earth? W hat questions would
corrects the rotation of the horizon, but not the rotation of the object. That's you ask?
why the object seems to rotate on the video.
BRAINSPACE FALL 2020 25
 Smash! Theia
leaves its mark
on the early Earth
with a massive
• •

lSI OR.

26 brainspacemagazine.com /BrainspaceMagazine
The seas on the near side of the
Moon that you can see at night.

Up Close and
Personal with
the Moon
How closely have you looked at our
Moon? Ever wondered what all those
dark spots are? Well, grab a pair of
binoculars and go look up! Each
dark area is called a sea but you can't
swim in them. When the Moon first
formed, it had tons of volcanos. They
erupted, creating seas of lava that
eventually hardened into the dark
rocks we see today.
What's the biggest crater you can
find? Each crater formed when the
Moon was hit by a meteor a long time
ago. The Earth was hit by lots of me­
teors too, but you don't see craters on
Earth. Why? Because plants, animals,
oceans and earthquakes erode craters
on Earth. But on the Moon, there's
nothing to erase the craters. They stick
around forever.

BRAINSPACE FALL 2020 27

 By Holly Bennett

Have you ever worn

a mask on Halloween?
If so, you've joined in a
tradition that dates back
thousands of years. In
fact, the oldest known
mask is thought to be
9,000 years old! From
ancient times, and in
cultures around the
world, the mask has
played many roles.
DISGUISE
Venice, Italy, is a city with a
long tradition of mask-wearing,
especially during "Carnevale:'
Venice's Carnevale was made
official in 1296 and certainly
existed in some form before that.
During Carnevale, the focus was on partying, dancing and excess. People
wore masks to disguise their identity, so they could shake off the strict
social rules they normally lived under. Rich and poor, women and men,
citizens and foreigners could mingle, and political criticism and parodies
were allowed - but only during this time. Once Carnevale was over, the
social order returned. Carnevale was banned at various times but has been
revived in the present day, along with the traditional Carnevale masks.

RELIGION
Perhaps the most famous mask in the world is the mask that covered the mummy
of Tutankhamun, who ruled Egypt for only ten years ( 1332 - 1323 B.C.). Made
with over ten kg of pure gold and inlaid with semi-precious stones, it is truly
"fit for a king" - or in this case, a pharaoh. As you can imagine, such precious
materials were reserved for pharaohs and other royals; other nobles would have
less elaborate "funeral masks:' The Egyptian religion believed in life after death,
but there was much that needed to be done to allow the dead soul to return to its
body and find its way to the afterworld. The masks were meant to strengthen the
spirit of the deceased and ready them for their new life.
 PROTECTION
The Black Death, or bubonic plague, struck
Europe in the mid-1300s. People did not
understand what caused it or how to treat it,
and this first wave killed almost one third of the
population of Europe! The plague reappeared
every few generations for centuries, though
not as fiercely. In the 17th century, some doctors who
treated plague patients tried to protect themselves by
wearing a mask. The long, beaked mask made them look
o'
like a strange bird! The beak was stuffed with dried flowers and
herbs. Back then, people believed the illness was carried on ((bad
""'

�
>-
en

� air," and that the herbs would cleanse the air before they breathed it in.
V'l-
0
z They were on the right track. The mask would have offered some
:2
:a;: protection from germs carried by coughing and sneezing. Unfortunately,
8
<(
0
o..u people didn't yet understand about germs or the importance of
:2
""'

3::
handwashing. Doctors went from patient to patient without washing

CEREMONY AND their hands or their masks, so they likely infected themselves and others.
......

:5
.....
o..u
en

STORYTELLING
�
0
1---
0
:I:
a... Use Zappar to
� The Indigenous Nations of the watch a DIY on
Northwest Coast carved and painted making a Plague
Doctor mask. You
wooden masks that represented need cardboard
ancestors, supernatural beings and or sturdy craft
animals. Each nation used the masks paper, small
round objects to
in different ways, but they were always
trace, a pencil,
special objects used in ceremonies glue and scissors.
such as the potlatch. The masks were Paint is optional.
often used to pass on sacred stories

and teachings: costumed dancers
wearing the masks would dramatize
origin tales and legends for the people
watching. Wearing the masks brought
the dancers close to the spirit of the
being they were depicting.
The coolest Northwest Coast masks
are "transformation masks:' They have
moving parts that allow the dancer
to open the outside of the mask,
revealing a new character within. For
example, an eagle's large beak might
open to reveal a human face!
Today, these masks are still used in
ceremonies. Indigenous artists also
carve non-ceremonial masks as art
objects to sell to collectors.
THEATRE
Masks can be used to portray characters
in theatre performances. There is a strong
tradition of theatrical masks in Japanese
Noh theatre, which is one of the world's
oldest performing arts. Traditional Noh
theatre combines drama, music and dance, and
is still performed today.
The basic Noh theatre masks and names were developed in the 1300
to 1 SOOs (earlier versions existed before that). The masks portray
characters in six categories: elders, demons, ghosts, men, women and the
"old man:' In the Noh tradition, most masks have a neutral expression. It
is up to the actor to give the mask emotion, through their gestures and
by tipping it up or down to look happier or sadder.
One of the best known Noh masks is the Hannya mask. Hannya is an
angry female ghost. Her expression is a mix of jealousy, grief, grudge and,
sorrow. Horns and big teeth give her a demonic look.
 ((You have a magnetic personality:' This expression suggests
that people are attracted to you like a magnet. But can humans
literally be magnets? Magnets won't stick to your hands, but
the blood in your body is rich with iron. And iron is magnetic.
So, can we conclude that the human body contains
substances with magnetic properties? Let's test this idea:

You will need: Procedure:

!
1. Put a spoonful of cereal
• V2 cup of iron fortified cereal*
into the bowl. Use the
• a bowl
back of a spoon to crush
• tablespoons
the cereal into bits. Hold
• warm water
a magnet over the cereal.
a good quality magnet
Do you notice anything?
•

(stronger than a fridge magnet)

2. Add the rest of the cereal
2 resealable "zip" plastic bags
to a resealable bag. Push
•

• a hammer or a mallet the air out and zip the

• a magnifying glass bag closed tightly.
• a cutting board ]. Gently crush the cereal
• an iron vitamin with your hands until it
is in small pieces. Place
* look for a cereal that contains 1 00% the bag onto a cutting
of the daily requirement of iron. board and use the mallet
to gently and patiently

30 brainspacemagazine.com E:J @BrainspaceMag /BrainspaceMagazine


Iron in food comes in two forms: heme
iron and non heme iron. Non heme iron is found
in plant foods and iron-fortified food products.
Meat, seafood and poultry have both heme
and nonheme iron.
tap the cereal bits into a
fine powder.
4. Transfer the powder into
the second resealable
bag. Add 3 tablespoons
of warm water and mix
well. Seal the bag.
5. Slide the magnet closely
over the mixture. Closely
observe the mixture with
the magnifying glass. 7.
6. Slowly rub the magnet all
over the the bag of soupy
cereal. Lift the magnet
about l/s inch above the
bag, and move it from
side to side about V2 inch.
What happens? Do you
notice small black iron
particles? Slowly move
the magnet to another
section of the bag. Do the
particles move with the
magnet?
Repeat this experiment
with the iron vitamin or
supplement.
Is the iron we eat the same
as the iron that is used to
make pots and pans?
In short, no! Structural iron - used
in pots and pans - is an alloy of iron. It
is what we build cars and other metal
objects with. Structural iron is an atomic
1ron.
Biological iron is an iron compound
or an iron salt which is ionic. Biological
iron is organized in heme and nonheme
groups. The iron that we eat is a
compound, which means it is combined
with something else. For example, an
iron vitamin is iron combined with
sulphur to create iron sulphate.
If our blood contains iron,
wafer and oxygen, why
doesn 'f if rust?
Rust forms when iron and
oxygen react in the presence
of water or moisture in the
air. Structural iron that is
in metals is ferric, which can
attach itself to water molecules,
causing rust. The biological iron in our
blood is ferrous and it does not attach
itself to water molecules. Ferrous iron
therefore cannot form rust. Phew!
Does your body have
magnetic properties?
Yes! Our human bodies contain substances
with magnetic properties. In the 1930s, it was
discovered that blood has magnetic properties
that are different depending on whether it is
carrying oxygen or not. This can be detected
with magnetic resonance imaging technology
(MRI). MRI uses a very strong magnetic field to
detect the difference in the magnetic properties
of oxygenated and deoxygenated blood.
In case you are wondering, an ordinary magnet
can't attract the iron in our blood.
BRAINSPAU FALL 2020 3 1
 by Leo Chan Gaskins

hetero= dlfferHt
deal= teetl
San Francisco

The characteristic "beard" and coloration of a

allows it to camouflage itself in coral reefs. It then rests and waits to
ambush prey that comes along.

3 2 brainspacemagazine.com I:J @BrainspaceMag /BrainspaceMagazine

 WATCH OUT! This shark comes
to life when you use Zappar to
scan this page.

Etymology is the study of word origins. Marine scientist Leo Chan Gaskins
enjoys breaking names down into the components of the Latin words
to better understand their meanings. Sometimes the meanings are
spot on to describe the shark accurately, and sometimes they can
be a bit silly. Scientists use Latin names to differentiate between
species, and every species has a two-word unique Latin name,
which is usually italicized and based on Greek or Latin root words.
A well-known Latin name example is Tyrannosaurus rex, meaning
tyrant lizard king. Here are some fun examples of how marine
scientists name sharks.

sharks are named for the venomous

spines in front of their dorsal (top) fins. These are toxic
but not strong enough to kill a person .

BRAINSPACE FALL 2020 33

•
 karcharos sharp
=

odus= teeth

A uses its long tail as an have evolved the ability to walk

underwater whip to stun prey. They are also using their pectoral (side) fins! They can briefly
known as fox sharks! venture out of water to access different tide pools
for food.

34 brainspacemagazine.com I:J @BrainspaceMag /BrainspaceMagazine

WATCH THIS:
Use your Zappar app to learn more with TED-Ed's video: Why Are Sharks Are So Awesome?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Leo Chan Gaskins
(pronouns he/him) is
a proud transgender
and Asian-American
marine scientist. He
studies how large
animals impact the
habitats in which
they live, and
specifically, he often
works with sharks
and rays to better
understand their
ecology, and improve
their conservation
and management.
On Twitter,
Leo Chan Gaskins
( @leogaskins)
runs a series called
#EtymologyMonday

F U N FACT that examines the

etymology of shark
L.l..&..lo..:.�II:..L.Lio.:...&.L.I.:s:..l are
the fastest sharks on Earth,
Latin names each
reaching speeds of up to 74 kph (45mph)! The
week.
world's faster swimmer, Michael Phelps, can
swim up to 9.7 kph (6mph).

BRAINSPACE FALL 2020 35

 BY PASCALE BIDER

New discoveries are the backbone of science and, sometimes, the discovery of a few
bones can alter the course of scientific inquiry forever. Here are some of the skeletons
that taught us surprising new things about our planet and ourselves!

Archaeopteryx
In 1861, a strange new fossil was discovered in a limestone quarry
in Germany. The small skeleton had a shocking combination of
bird and reptile features. The imprints of feathery wings were
clearly visible, but its body looked like that of Velociraptor and
Tyrannosaurus. The fossil was approximately 150 million years
old, which made it the oldest thing with feathers ever uncovered
at that point. For this reason, scientists named it Archaeopteryx,
which means "ancient wing': The discovery of this fossil was
an amazing revelation: it was the first solid evidence that birds
were the descendants of dinosaurs! We now know that Archaeopteryx and modern
Use Zappar to
birds can be perched in the same family tree, though scientists are still learning
watch the film about exactly how they are connected. To this day, the original skeleton of
Archeopteryx - The Archaeopteryx from Germany is being used for research: scientists want to
Very First Bird cour­ know whether or not this ancient bird was actually able to flap its wings.
tesy of Earth Planet
https:/ /www.
youtube.com/
watch?v=BAAWK­
jue31c

36 brainspacemagazine.com I:J @BrainspaceMag /BrainspaceMagazine

,.....
0
-..o
00
�
00
�
II
0
""'
:::>
u
r-­
a..
:I:
a_

><
u.J
0
z

�
�
""'
<:;)
q:
0
u.J
:2
""'

Lucy
3:
vi
z
0
:2
:2
0

::::
VI :
u
In 1974, Donald Johanson and Tom Gray were on a paleontology
a_
I=
:I: expedition in the Great Rift Valley of Ethiopia when they made an
Lr)­
N
amazing discovery. Buried in rock and sand, they found the skeleton
i£
u
u
a..'
of a 3-million-year-old female hominin. Hominins are a group of
prehistoric species closely related to humans. This skeleton was special
0
:I:
V\
0
s
:I:
a_ because it had a small skull, but her hip and pelvic bones were shaped
:I:
,___
3: in a way that told the researchers she walked on two legs like a human.
0
u.J
""'
0<
This was a key scientific discovery because it proved that our ancestors
0
3:
had been able to walk upright before large human brains evolved. This
was the exact opposite of what had been thought up to that point!
Donald Johanson and Tom Gray named this hominin Lucy, after the
Beatles song Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds!

The skeletons of Pangea

Towards the early 1900s, paleontologists were finding skeletons of prehistoric
reptiles spread out in strange patterns across several continents. For example,
remains of Lystrosaurus are found in Africa, Asia and even Antarctica. Similarly,
Cynognathus and Mesosaurus are each found in both South America and Africa.
From their fossils, scientists knew that none of
these animals could swim in the ocean or fly in
the air, so how did their species end up spread
so far apart?
In 1912, a man named Alfred Wegener
proposed a theory that shook the world of
science. He suggested that hundreds of millions
of years ago, all the continents that exist today Qg AI; ZZI

were fused together into one supercontinent,

which he named Pangea. Ancient animals .,., =

would have roamed freely across this land

mass, and then became separated when Pangea
broke apart into the continents we know today.
Back in 1912, other scientists thought that Wegener's idea was crazy, but over the
years, we've developed new study techniques and conducted new experiments that
tell us that Wegener's theory was correct all along!
BRAINSPACE FALL 2020 37
 •
PAR PASCALE BIDER

Parfois, il suffit de quelques ossements trouves par hasard pour remettre en question tout
ce que I'on croyait savoir au sujet de notre planete et de nous-memes. Voici quelques
squelettes, fossiles et os en tous genres qui ont bouleverse le monde de Ia sciencel

Archeopteryx
En 1861, un nouveau fossile bien etrange a ete deterre dans une
carriere en Allemagne. Son petit squelette semblait avoir un
melange etonnant de traits de reptiles et d'oiseau. Les empreintes
de ses ailes plumeuses etaient clairement visibles, mais son
corps ressemblait a celui d'un tyrannosaure ou d'un velociraptor.
Le fossile etait vieux d'environ 150 millions d'annees, ce qui en
faisait le plus vieil animal a plumes decouvert jusqu'alors. Les
scientifiques de l'epoque lui ont donne le nom Archeopteryx, ce
qui signifie Plume ancienne Ce fossile etait une decouverte
« ».

importante: c'etait la premiere preuve solide que les dinosaures

etaient les ancetres des oiseaux! Aujourd'hui, nous savons qu'Archeopteryx et les
Utilise Zappar oiseaux modernes sont perches dans le meme arbre genealogique, mais on cherche
pour voir ce film toujours a comprendre exactement comment ils sont apparentes. Meme si ce
anglais par Earth
squelette a ete trouve il y a plus de cent ans, les scientifiques n'ont pas fini
Planet,
de l'etudier. De nos jours, ils utilisent des techniques modernes pour
Archeopteryx - The
Very First Bird
comprendre si cet ancien oiseau etait capable de battre ses ailes en vol.
https:/ /www.
youtube.com/
watchlv=BAAWK­
jue3lc

38 brainspacemagazine.com I:J @BrainspaceMag /BrainspaceMagazine

.......
0
'D
00
�
00
�
II
0
""
:::>
u
"".
a...
:::I:
a...
><
u.J
0
z

�
-
<..!:>
""
0
<t:
0
u.J

Lucy
::2
""'

3:
VI
z
0

En 1974, Donald Johanson et Tom Gray participaient a une expedition

::2
::2
0

:::::
u

VI
a...
paleontologique dans la vallee du Grand Rift en Ethiopie lorsqu'ils ont fait
I=
:::I:

Lrl
une decouverte extraordinaire. Sous les roches et le sable, ils ont trouve
N

1:;:; le squelette d'une femelle Hominine datant d'il y a 3 millions d'annees.

u
u
0...'
Les Hominines sont un groupe d'especes prehistoriques apparentees
0
:::I:
VI
0
aux humains. Ce squelette etait special parce que son crane etait petit,
s
:::I:
a... mais la forme de ses os pelviens demontrait aux scientifiques que cette
:::I:
!::::
$: hominine marchait sur deux jambes, comme nous les humains. Grace
a cette decouverte, nous avons appris que nos ancetres etaient bipedes
0
LLJ
""'
""
0
$:
avant d'avoir evolue de grands cerveaux. C'etait exactement le contraire
de ce que l'on avait cru jusqu'alors! Donald Johanson et Tom Gray ont
surnomme cette hominine Lucy, comme dans la chanson Lucy in the
Sky with Diamonds (Lucy dans le ciel avec des diamants) par les Beatles!

Les squelettes de Ia Pangee

Vers le debut des annees 1900, des paleontologues ont decouvert plusieurs
squelettes de reptiles prehistoriques etrangement eparpilles a travers plusieurs
continents. Par exemple, des ossements de Lystrosaurus ont ete retrouves en
Afrique, en Asie, et meme enAntarctique. Entre-temps, des fossiles de Cynognathus
et de Mesosaurus ont ete deterres en Amerique du Sud et en Afrique. En etudiant
les traits de ces fossiles, les scientifiques ont
determine qu'aucun d'entre eux n'etait capable
de nager dans l'ocean ni de voler dans les
airs. Comment done leurs fossiles se sont-ils
retrouves separes sur differents continents? En
1912, Alfred Wegener a propose une theorie
choquante. n a suggere qu'il y a des centaines
de milliers d'annees, tous les continents de la
planete etaient fusionnes pour ne former qu'un
seul supercontinent, qu'il nomma Pangee. ll
supposa que les animaux d'autrefois pouvaient 'J
'1
parcourir librement ce supercontinent avant
d'etre separes lorsque laPangee s'est brisee pour
former nos continents d'aujourd'hui. En 1912,
les autres scientifiques pensaient que la theorie de Wegener etait completement
cinglee, mais grace a de nouvelles etudes au fil des annees, nous avons appris que
Wegener avait entierement raison!
BRAINSPACE FALL 2020 39
 "Sparks curiosity and inquiry"
*starred review, Kirkus Reviews

"An excellent choice"

School Library Journal

"Sure to inspire all three wondering, watching,

and learning. Well done. Highly Recommended."
*starred review, CM Reviews

"Wonderful"
Youth Services Book Review

Age: 7-1 1 I 68 pages

9781 77321 3699 paper I 978177321 3705 hardcover

''A smart, kid-friendly format"

NewsBank-Texas News Sources

" Fascinating"
Canadian Children's Book News

"Jaw-droppingly well-researched,
informative, and enterta ining"
CM Reviews

* A Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection

* Top Recommended Read, TO Summer Reading Club 2020
* Best Books for Kids & Teens, starred selection, CCBC
* Yellow Cedar Award nomination
* Red Cedar Award nomination

Age: 1 0 + I 88 pages
9781 77321 2494 paper I 9781773212500 hardcover

Order at annickpress.com and receive 25o/o discount with coupon code: WATSON
Coupon code valid until 09/30/20